If you are a portable church, or an established church running a portable setup, you are probably familiar with the challenges that time constraints place on setup.  If you are regularly in the trenches, you probably have a six sense of the clock ticking away in your subconscious.  I recently volunteered at a portable church that struggled with consistency in setup.  As a result, this church experienced a variety of “technical difficulties” during services.  Occasionally delays in setup led to delaying the start of service all together.  Technical difficulties are often distracting to the audience, worship leaders, and speakers.  So how do you combat the tech diff plague?  Below are my five tips for getting consistent setups.

Stage Load In (photo courtesy of MercyMe)

5 Tips for getting consistent stage setups

1.  Allot more time than you need

A tech proverb as old as the wheel goes like this, “if it can go wrong it will.”  Allotting more time than you need ensures that WHEN something is not right, you have time to sort things out without delaying service.  Even if something can not be fixed in that moment, you have time to implement an alternative.  If all goes well, then you have a few moments to breath.  If you find that you consistently don’t have a moment to spare, try adding an hour to your setup.

2.  Work in pairs

If your setup team is relatively inexperienced, pair them up and assign each pair only a few tasks that they can repeat every week.  Once they’ve mastered a few tasks, you can rotate the pairs or tasks until everyone is experienced with everything required to get the system live and on time.

3.  Teach best practices as you go

If you are supervising the setup team, work with one pair at a time and demonstrate best practices as you go from team to team.  Teach them to look for common mistakes on their own.  Instill in them confidence especially when they do a good job.  Communicate why what they do really matters. Once they get each task down, they’ll be able to perform them largely unsupervised.

4.  Listen to your crew

Crew members probably have very good insights as to why certain problems persist.  Make sure your are not lording over your volunteers in a way that isolates them as mere laborers.  After all, there would be no service without volunteers.  Ask them if they believe there is a way the team could save time on setup.  Bring a notepad and a pen. You’ll be surprised.

5.  Have those tough conversations

If you are consistently experiencing delays and distractions to service, undoubtedly, there are more than likely several frustrated parties.  It’s important to bring the worship team, setup crew, and AV techs together and allow them to voice their frustrations in a productive manor.  Acknowledge the shortcomings and ensure your teams that you are committed to seeing each team work with excellence.  Implementing the new procedures requires follow through by the leaders.  Lead by example, show up on time or early and crush any attitudes with positivity and confidence in the new plan.

In part II, I’ll break down exactly how I implemented these tips at the portable church I was at.  It was easier said than done, but once we put these ideas into practice it transformed the way we setup and the way we related to each other.

What are your keys to a smooth tech setup and on-time service?

( Featured Image courtesy of phanlop88 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net)