Posted by Greg Ligon
I recently connected with Bob Adams, a consultant with National Association of Church Design Builders (NACDB). In preparation for a presentation at the NACDB national conference, Bob conducted some research about design challenges and issues associated with multi-site facility design. Here is what he discovered:
1) Friendly, flexible worship space with high-quality AVL package
2) quality nursery/child care space
3) intimate fellowship area
1) more space, especially foyer-fellowship area
2) build more venues on-site
3) better space planning
To have #1 (Friendly, flexible worship space with high-quality AVL - Audio, Video, Lighting - package) it requires a commitment to recruiting, training and retaining tech volunteers. This is such a massively overlooked area that we assume that if the tech's home VCR isn't flashing "12:00", they must be qualified.
Training and building strong technical teams is difficult. Retaining them is even harder. There's so much to say on this subject...but I don't want to dominate this comments section.
Posted by: Anthony D. Coppedge | October 26, 2005 at 12:59 PM
Hey Anthony,
What are the best resources available for training tech teams?
Posted by: Geoff Surratt | October 26, 2005 at 11:55 PM
Geoff, you've just pinpointed the big void when it comes to ministry-minded tech training.
There are several good books on tech training, including Yamaha's Sound Reinforcement for Houses of Worship, but none aimed at tech training, per se.
I do have a book "Church Tech Handbook: Resource Guide for Audio, Video and Lighting in Churches" coming out within a couple of months.
There are a handful of books on Media Ministry including "The Wired Church" and "Media Ministry Made Easy". Both are light on the tech side, but still are good reads for their specific content.
Then there are the conferences: WFX, T3, Inspiration, Techxplosion, and others that have varying degrees of technical training.
Finally, there are a few of us who actually do hands-on training at the local church in their environment and on their equipment.
I don't intend this reply to sound like a plug for myself, as I do make my living as a Church Media Consultant. However, I am more than happy to provide a list of my friends and peers who also do training on various aspects of audio, video and lighting. Really, when you're talking about pure consultants (consultants do not sell gear), there's only a few doing this now. But when you talk about local dealers, there are quite a few who offer training on equipment that they sell.
I hope this is helpful...
Posted by: Anthony D. Coppedge | October 27, 2005 at 01:36 AM
"Wow" space? I'm confused as to what this is exactly, could you define? Thanks.
Posted by: Seminary Student | October 27, 2005 at 04:54 AM
RE: "wow" space - this was a quote from one of the survey respondents, but it also reflected similar comments by several other respondents. I think the idea they were trying to get across is to have space that lends itself to providing a multi-sensory worship experience, or a caring environment for kids, or a warm, intimate place for fellowship. Whatever the space's purpose (and it can have several as needed), it needs to "speak" that purpose to the occupants. In our design planning, we are learning that "everything speaks".
Posted by: Bob Adams | October 27, 2005 at 05:55 PM