Vacation Time!

Hi everyone, I am going on vacation. I am going to take my own advice and completely shut down for the next two weeks. I need some time to rest, refocus, and revitalize.

Thank you for reading. You can expect new posts beginning August 7. I will see you in August.

Blogging Preferences, who knew?

My apologies, I somehow disabled the ability to comment on my posts. Sorry to anyone who tried and couldn't. I have since fixed that issue. If you have comments on my last two posts, please title your comments with the post title and comment under this post.

Again my apologies!

What Should the Future Hold?

Today, I find myself thinking about relationships; how important they really are.

I spent part of Friday night talking to a friend who also plays on stage at the church. We were able to have good conversation. I was a little surprised at how different our viewpoints are based on which side of the mixer we are usually on.

Through some honest conversation, I was able to hear about his frustrations and his hopes and expectations as a musical performer. In turn, I think he heard about some of the challenges that are faced both as a mixing engineer and some the challenges of being the leader of mixing engineers in a volunteer/church setting.

We even discussed the possibility of getting the mixing engineers and the musicians together at a casual event such as a cookout, hoping to stimulate the same kind of conversation between more than me and him. I truly think the idea has merit. We will have to organize it in the next six to eight weeks.

Thinking about Friday night and letting the future simmer in my mind brings me full circle. I have not done much in the last year beyond my job description. That said; I truly appreciate the time to heal and rehabilitate my knee. (For those who don’t know, I shattered a kneecap in December) The rehabilitation was more time consuming and required more resources that I expected, but enough is enough. I am done with rehab and ready to look forward.

Looking into the next year, I see relationships taking a much bigger part in the overall picture. Some of it will need to happen at fellowship events such as the cookout. The rest really needs to happen in training sessions.

What specifically to train? That requires more thought. What will be the schedule of training? Also, more thought.

I have a few ideas, but what are your thoughts?

How Do We Go Forward?

What drives technical ministry forward? Is it solid dependable equipment? A good vision for the ministry? Servant hearted team members?

I have been reflecting on this lately. With the economic recession budgeting has become more difficult than ever. I am challenged to bottom line my budget to maintain the status quo. That is not my usual approach to the ministry. I look to upgrade equipment before it breaks and use the older equipment in less demanding applications until it no longer works and it is no longer worth fixing. The bottom line approach also cuts down my training budget and I am forced to re-think how to increase the skill sets of my team members.

This church has also been somewhat a victim of the “purchase the best equipment without carefully considering what was truly needed and the maintenance requirements of the system.” So it is expensive to maintain and equipment breakdowns are not cheap to fix. Also, by now we are used to what we have so simplifying would not really provide the results to which the congregation is accustomed.

So I find myself trying to re-cast the vision to uphold quality without being able to upgrade and unable to spend money to invest in training. There are training ideas that do not cost money, but the time commitment to writing the materials is extensive. As I wrote in the “Pacing” post, I usually feel behind and like I am making this up as I go. The whole training model becomes more complex when I consider the diverse skill sets my teams require.

My team members are incredible and we would be seriously challenged to stay running if it wasn’t for them. I regularly find myself blessed by their willingness to put in time and energy working to maintain our aging technical systems. I feel like they deserve more support and feeding from the organization they work so hard to support.

Anyone who has ideas, please comment! I’m going to sign off here for the day and go think of some training ideas and hopefully vision.