 So my name is Sean Downs. This is JoJo. We both work here at the Radiant Church. So I am the director of production here at Radiant Church. I've been on staff here for about a year and a month now. We both work together in a ministry in Kansas City for many, many years. And I'm one of the pastors as well. And then JoJo, so we have three production staff members. So everything you see here, it's three staff members, it's me. And then JoJo oversees all audio for every department, whatever it needs, that might be. He runs our main service, Richland's audio and all the teaching and training for that. And then David, he oversees all lighting and video. And then everything else is all volunteers. So you have about a team of 50 volunteers, which sounds like a lot, but we also have two campuses, about five services. We have student services and kids and special events. So even though it's 50, it also feels like it's not enough at times. And I'm sure you guys know. So we also try to, one of my goals is to make sure that, you know, volunteers aren't overworking themselves. That's one of the key points of being prophetic and being in a prophetic environment is actually having the energy in the band would be able to do it. If you're always overworked, you're not going to be able to feel that sensitivity. So anyway, it's just us. And that's kind of it for introductions. This little context too is JoJo and I, we didn't start off as like production people. When I came here, it wasn't production. We're both worship leaders, singers, musicians. That's my background. So the ministry I worked at, I was... We both played guitar in the band. We both, we both were in a band. We played guitar together. We actually played with Ryan Condo in Kansas City. My wife, I mean, I was with Corey and Kayla. We were all in Kansas City together. So our background is actually music and worship leading and singers and musicians. And so we took, that's a major part of how can you do production for an environment is actually we took our worship leader mindset and put it inserted into production. And so I think that's what's really kind of set us in a certain field is by basically we think like worship leaders, not as technicians. And that's a major component. So that was a really long introduction. Best one is to give you guys a context of what's going on. We do want to do mostly Q&A. And so I'm going to try to, I am very long-winded. I love teaching. I love, I love to talk. So I'll just go and go and go. So I'm going to interrupt you real quick. Yeah. I love to get a pulse just for the room of... Like literally pulses. Yeah. It's hot. Are you talking to Eric? No. Who here actually does production at their church? Who here is here because they're like Jack Wall Trades wears a bunch of hats. Worship, that sort of thing. And then who's strictly just like worship? I mean, if I didn't push any categories in your hand. What's up, Jerry? What's up, Jerry? Jerry wears the most hats out of anybody. Yeah. So technically I did push one group. Yeah. Technically not wearing that right now. That's awesome. I love the spread. So we're going to talk just for a little bit. And then we want to open up for questions on just whatever it might be as far as practical, spiritual, how do we apply this in our church or with volunteers or with staff or whatever it might be. We want to be able to do that. So we just want to hit a couple of points just to kind of prime the pump and kind of let you know like from our heart, this is how we set our hearts when it comes to a worship environment in the idea of production. Like how do we production in a worship environment? So there's this, I'm going to open with this quote this time like I would say this quote. People are like, wow, that's really cheesy. Why would you say that? But I'm going to do it again. 15 times the charm. I read this quote really stuck with me, but this is kind of something I've been setting for me. It's cool is only cool as long as cool is cool. It's really cheesy. It's really cheesy. So cool is only cool as long as cool is cool, meaning it's fleeting. Something's going to be cool. And then like everyone wears black and denim and probably in two years, everyone's going to look like nerds as we're wearing black and denim. Like it's only cool for a little bit. So we can't chase being cool. We can't chase being unique. We can't chase something just for the sake of it being cool and different because cool and different never last. So the things that last are the two things that I want to hit which is excellence and Jesus. Jesus will always last and excellence or stewardship will always last. And so we want to kind of break down those two points a little bit because those are the things we want to break down. But the most important thing that I want to hit down first is Jesus. Okay, so like I said, when I came here to do production, I did 10% production before I came here. I was pastoring. I was discipling. I was teaching the word. I was worship leading. That was all that I did. And the only thing that was different is I just took what I did and I just inserted it into production. You could have put me in the cafe. You could have put me in parking. You could have put me in worship. You could have put me in the school. It's just been me in production because it comes from what you do with your hands comes from an overflow of your heart. Okay, so you cannot do anything with excellence or love or obedience if it's not coming from an inward health. So when I sit down all my volunteers before I meet with them, I tell them, I actually could care less how great you are at what you're doing. I actually care about the health of your heart because what you do with your hands, it'll be excellent and it'll be great because you care about it because it's coming from a relationship with the Lord. And so I'm trying to get people to buy into, I want to serve the Lord and I want to have a relationship with them. I want to worship Him because then you're going to care about what you're doing. We don't want technicians. Technicians can never be prophetic. Technicians can never be sensitive because they're only thinking of the next step. Okay, so... That's so good. Thank you. So two ways that you can do this is the word and a relationship with the Holy Spirit. Okay, so you cannot be... I'm going to keep looking back because I keep wanting to say prophetic in the production environment but it's a production and prophetic environment. But I'm going to say prophetic in the production environment. We're just breaking boundaries right here. So you can't be prophetic in the realm of production or worship whatever if you don't know the word. Okay, so what enables me to... So I've been doing graphics for almost every session in here and I'm a terrible speller. I never did graphics where I came here but I was finding... Wow, I'm actually really quick at putting up choruses or verses because I know the scripture because I'm like... I can see where is the pastor going? Where are the singers going? Because we're rooted in a central authority of the scripture. Okay, we're all singing from the scripture. We're all teaching from the scripture. It's our beacon. It's our... Well, not to beat you on the nose but it's our true north. Like that. On bread. Thank you. On bread. And so it's our true north. It's everything that we're gazing and focusing on is the word of God. And then it also comes from a friendship with the Holy Spirit. Okay, so I encourage all of you if you are like, I want to be spontaneous, I want to be prophetic, I want to do this and then the two things you need to do is you need to read the scripture in the morning. You need to read 10 chapters a day or one chapter a day or two verses a day. Whatever it is, start off successful. Read the scripture and just talk with the Holy Spirit. And just pray, talk, but not like in a, okay, oh dear God, I'm gonna, but just actually talk to him like a friend because when you start to recognize his voice, then you can start moving in nuances. There's times where things just happen because I've developed a relationship with the Lord. So there's a small movement. And so when a team of people does that, the Lord isn't like, the Lord's gonna move on a team and we all move together and all of a sudden you'll find there's things that are happening that are like, wow, how did we just time all of that? It's like, that's the Holy Spirit. He's just moving on us. So those are the two important things, you know, the word and the spirit that will never fade. You can pour every minute you have into this and it'll never be in vain. It'll never be wasted. It'll always produce fruit. Okay, that's the first thing. The second thing is excellence is always excellence. But I want to try to clarify what the idea of excellence is. And so, first of all, excellence can be confused with perfection. Meaning, if you're excellent, that means we have no more faults. You have no more weaknesses or you lack nothing. Or excellence can be confused with maturity. Meaning, excellence is when I finally obtain that level and only after I cross that threshold. Okay, so if we kind of put excellence up on this pedestal and we kind of see, okay, this is a kind of, we tend to idolize it like this thing that we have to search after and we can never be excellent until we get there. So the problem with that is it ends up kind of, what's the word I want to use, paralyzing us. Because either we idolize it in a proper way or we feel like we can never obtain it so why you can try. Okay, so there's two things, two ways I can do that. But biblical excellence, what does excellence actually mean is just this. It's doing the best you can right now with what you have. Okay, so all of us are in a season where you have a certain resource, whether that be time, people, money, and you have a certain level of skill, craft, maturity, but that does not mean that you can't be excellent. Excellence is not perfection, excellence is not weakness, excellence is not a state of maturity. Excellence is, right now God, I'm going to do the best I can with what I have, with what you've given me. And when we steward what we have, the Lord gives more. And we can see that all throughout Scripture. And so that's what we want to strive for, is when we strive for excellence, I'm going to steward this. And then there's going to, because if you get more and you can't steward you already have, you're not going to be able to steward that. So you can't just keep waiting until, man I can't wait until I have this or these microphones. Like no, if you can't make this microphone sound good, you're not going to make any microphone sound good. So there's just different things that you have to be able to work on. So I want you to hit a little bit of, so when it comes to excellence, though, when we set ourselves up with, okay, I'm going to do the best I can with what we have, there's, what's a practical way that we can do it. And I'm going to do the best I can with what I have, with what I have, with what I have, with what I have, with what I have, with what I have, with what I have, and that's a practical way that we can do that. So Jojo. Yeah, so one of the important things for me is making excellent execution our starting point with the race, not the finish line. Looking at execution as sort of like the base level, this is our starting point, especially in a prophetic environment which all of this kind of ties in, which I'll go down to. Setlist and run sheets should only be used to increase our flexibility, not in bold and rigidity, rigidity. If our systems aren't set up in a way that enables us to be excellent with the run sheet, then we'll never be able to adequately support prophetic moments that take us beyond our PCO service order. So looking at, okay, what do I have? What have I been given? What am I stewarding right now? How can I, with a spirit of excellence, execute that on weekends or for prayer meetings or for whatever it is that you're doing in an excellent way and make that, you know, this is the expectation that we're going to do the most of what we have, even if it's a little, even if sometimes that means scaling back so that you can actually execute with excellence with what you have so that, you know what, you're not stressed out, you're not, your mind's not going in a million different places because you're overwhelmed, you're not able to support what you have been given, which ties into stewardship because in order to operate in the prophetic, at least for me, some people thrive in chaos. I don't, I don't, Sean loves chaos, I love feeling comfortable, like all of my boxes have been checked, everything's working, things are going well, and just start practical now. For me, that's after a lot of the time in a service element or for a worship service, after that's done is the moment where I can say, okay, hold the spirit, what are you doing? Hold the spirit, what are you saying? And then you can enter in with where the worship leaders go in, because if you're 90%, maybe 100% down at the board for me, a sound board, if you're, if your focus is down here and not necessarily what's happening on stage, you can miss where core is trying to take it, or where the Holy Spirit's moving in the room at the time, because you're focused on just trying to stay afloat, which is essentially just treading water. You don't touch on anything in there? Yeah, so to kind of give another picture to what Josh was talking about, so he's talking about how we want to make excellence our starting point on the, not the final goal. So structure is important, we need to have structure, so it can almost seem like structure and spontaneousness or spontaneity are two opposite ends of the spectrum. But we can either be, you know, like the robot churches that dislike, they hit play at the beginning of the service and nothing changes until they get to the end of the service. Or you could be like the other churches are just kind of like wild and free and they don't even, pastors, they're always going to talk about when he goes up there and songs aren't picked and we don't know what's happening. Which both is great. Yes, and we've had both happened at our church and we've, you know, and it's, you know, both are good, but they are not on two opposite ends of the spectrum. So what we need to look at is structure actually promotes spontaneity. And so you have to have structure in order to be spontaneous. Now to give you an example, so we actually used to come from an environment of, we used to work at a house of prayer in Kansas City and it was very spontaneous, but we had a certain model that we followed so that we could easily flow in and out of spontaneous moments. So we use the language of on-ramps and off-ramps. So if you were to go and say, is everyone here from Michigan or is people not really from your pocket? So I'm not really from Michigan, I'm from Kansas City, so I don't know if they're going to say yes, I'm so pregnant now. So I'm not going to use any cities because I'll botch them all. So I'm driving from point A to point B. It's going to take me 20 minutes to get there. I'm just going to start. I'm going to get in my car. And as I know the end goal, I know where I'm going. I'm going to go to point B. Everybody in the car with me knows we're going to point B. But all of a sudden we get hungry, we're starting to feel something. Man, I can go to the bathroom, I'm going to get hungry, whatever. And so you pull off to an off-ramp. That's an interstate off-ramp. And you get off and you get some food, you get a bathroom, blah, blah. And they're like, okay, I'm not really feeling anything. They aren't feeling good now. Now what do we do? And you're not just stranded up on the side of the road and like, oh my gosh, we just got off the road or lost. But it's like, no, you know where you're going to go to point B, get back on the highway and start driving to point B. Now take that picture, you can put that and flow in with the Holy Spirit. So we have a service order. We put work into our service order. We know these are songs. These are our times. These are our verbal points. This is our message. This is how long a person's going to speak for. This is how long this is going to happen. But then at any point in time, all of a sudden you might feel the Holy Spirit hitting on a song to where like, all of a sudden the Holy Spirit is hitting on a song in a way where you're like, wow, let's start singing a chorus, let's sing some music out of that. But then let's say you've gone off the trail and you've been going for like five minutes and then now you feel the Holy Spirit's kind of like lifted off that moment. Now you're like, oh god, what do I do? What do I do? What do I do? And then you just kind of like, okay, I want to sit down. Like, we don't have to end it. But you can say, okay, well, I don't know what to do now, but actually I know what the next thing is. The next thing is song number three, or you know what, let's go on to this next point. And you can easily bring it back in and then keep flowing in and flowing out, but you can only do that if you have a structure. It's like another quick picture is like a football, a football team. I'm also a terrible at sports, so I don't know anything about sports. I'm looking forward to this. Jojo's really smart at sports. I know nothing. That's something that I've purposely stayed away from. So when the guys that have the ball know, so when a quarterback is in a huddle, he tells everybody, this is what we're going to do. Okay, you're going to run here. You're going to run here. I'm going to throw to you. You're going to fake everyone out over here. Everyone's got it. Okay, we're good to go. Okay, ready? We're going to do the play. And they're doing the play that all of a sudden something changes. Okay, something happens and so it's not everyone just like panics and like runs around, but they know that, okay, this is what we're supposed to do. We're going to call an audible and we all know what we're going to do and how we're going to respond. But they can only do that because they know the plays, they have the structure. So you have to, that's the whole point of all this, you have to have the structure in order to promote the spontaneity. Okay? Oh wow, your phone or something? Yeah, it's great. It's so sorry. It's not like he's behind me. I know. Okay, so closing point and then we're going to open it up for questions. We'll talk about, you know, half hours for questions is the other important thing to look at. So all of you have, you work in the past, some of you are purely singers, musicians, worship leaders, some of you are purely production or whatever language you want to use if they say tech team or production team or whatever I don't care. And then some of you work both hats, but what you need to look at is no matter who you are, whether you're a bass player, whether you're the actual person playing the acoustic and leading the songs or you're the graphics operator or whatever you might be, you are all worship leaders. Okay? And this every single one of your worship leaders, I actually, my favorite, so I've led worship on acoustic, I've been the one that picks the songs and leads the teams, done that for many, many years. I actually love playing bass the most because I feel like I could be the like the best worship leader I'm doing that because it's a simple, it's simple enough for me that I can raise my head above like what I'm actually playing and I can actually lead the team what I'm doing because it's, it's, I can cruise a little bit more and I can actually direct and move and flow to Holy Spirit. So the same thing when I'm running graphics, like which I was running for the service, like I'm actually leading you all in worship. Okay yeah, like people are singing but I'm also choosing like what not only what we're hearing but we're engaging the other senses, we're engaging what we're seeing, we're engaging what we're feeling, we're invoking emotion through lights and sound which is what's just happening in heaven. I mean all of you read, if you've never read Book of Revelation, you can read this, it's I'm not making this up, but around the throne of heaven there's lightnings, there's rumblings, there's there's thunder, there's flashes of light, there's colors, it's not just let's listen to a cool song on Apple Music but actually God wants all of our senses and so we are all worship leaders, there's not one person, we're all coming together and we're leading the church in the body of Christ, or leading the body of Christ, you know, leading the church in worship to Jesus, yeah all of the above, all of those things are leading, all of the bodies. So anyway so you need to, production needs to be more than just a support role, if you have for either, it's like come on, breeze, faster, if you have designated yourself into I'm just this or I'm just that guy, it's actually insecurity, it's not humility, it's not oh I like being in the background of things, it's because you're not seeing the full mantle of responsibility towards placing upon you because in heaven there is not a worship team and a tech team, in heaven it's surrounded by a sea of worshipers and they're all doing different things but we're all leading worship, we're all worshiping Jesus, so it's more than just a support role so because of that we need to actually be stewards of what God has given us and carry the prophetic spirit, carry the responsibility of knowing the scriptures, what is on the Lord's heart and then moving with the Holy Spirit and actually being the spear as opposed to always being in the background, we need to actually be innovative and pushing forward and it's going to be messy, it's going to be, you're going to make a lot of mistakes but you don't know what's right or wrong until you actually do something that could be right or wrong, you have to push forward, you have to do something, so there's many times where we're doing something like you know what this may flop but we're going to go for it, we're going to try it because we're coming out through a spirit of we want to worship the Lord, again if you keep those two things this is all about Jesus and He alone, it deserves all my praise, I'm going to give everything I have and I'm going to steward what I have and what you're doing doesn't come from a, well I don't want to be too flashy or I don't want to be this like, no you're not being flashy if you're if you're doing it from the spirit of worshiping God, when you try to do it from a fear of man or spirit performance then you're going to be doing it for the wrong reasons, okay? Cool? All right, awesome. Any questions? All right, I just like, I got to your breath, I just like got into it so sorry if I was yelling at any of you. Any questions can be anything, so that we talked about what percentage you run here, I'm just like all along. So what's the temperature here? I got a question for you guys, specifically on Thursday nights, right? If we were here at Radiant on a Thursday night rehearsal, I've been a part of churches where the tech director calls the shots, kind of go with the sports analogy, he's the quarterback, I think more churches than worship leaders in the quarterback, kind of calling things out. What I'm hearing you guys describe as kind of like more like a basketball team, you guys are kind of working their cohesiveness from the stage and sound, which I think is really awesome. If I was here on a Thursday night, like very practically, how are you guys kicking things off? What's the communication between front of the stage, front of the house, how much back and forth is there? Yeah, I actually love that, it is kind of like, you know, it's like a motion offense, you know. Everybody's moving, everybody has input, everybody's important. On a Thursday night specifically, the way that we would start it off is usually we start off like our sound check to help dial meters. And it's very simple, we go through, we don't really line check everything, I usually line check everything before everybody gets there because I hate long sound checks, I hate doing the whole like, all right, give me a kick, give me a smer. So we start with the first song that we're going to do, and we have keyboard player runs the click, around the click, and we just have the drums play the chorus root of the first song. And that gives people, because we do personal and ear monitor mixes, that gives people to dial in the drums without the pressure or the difficult atmosphere of like everybody's like, one, two, three, everybody comes in and it's like, when everybody's trying to like mix their ears and they're like, do I turn something up if I want to hear it, do I turn something down if I want to hear it me, I don't know. So we start off and I come in the talk about, let's do drums, I need drums for maybe 20 seconds, and then I come in the talk back again and I go, all right, let's do bass and let's do electric one, let's do electric two, let's do about a keys, usually takes maybe two minutes max, and that's helpful for me because I can get a full band mix, usually in that time, and for stuff outside of sound, we don't really run graphics for rehearsals a lot of time on Thursday specifically, it's mostly just band rehearsing, it's more of a band rehearsal than like a production run, production run through sort of thing. And also, so a lot of this too is like, so Jojo, you've been here how many years? Two years, I've been here for a year, David's been here like two years, it's a lot of like the worship leaders here, I've only been here for less than four years, like less than three years, it's a relatively new like worship and production staff. So like we are, we all have had experience in different areas, there's not like one like top dogs, we're here for like 20 years, he's kind of like one of the shots, like yeah I'm the production guy, I'm like here, running everything, we've been to churches where it's like the production director, he runs everything, he calls everything, he is the boss over worship and production and everything else, he tells the pastors what's going on next, like he like runs everything. That doesn't happen here, there's a lot of people that like, they have a role and we kind of all work together, but then we all kind of work a lot of hats, so like Jojo and I, we run things, but also like we're also musicians and singers, so the way that we might run things is a little different, and then like Caleb's over all of worship production, but also there's different worship leaders, so there's just, there's a lot of different hats going on, so it's, I think your question could be answered, it kind of depends on your staffing, your volunteers, your specific situation, because I've seen it all, I think all of it work, it just kind of depends on specifically how you follow up to that, the idea of like spontaneity, do you guys practice spontaneity? Like these ideas of like, you know, where you're off the track and the prophetic to me kind of implies spontaneity? I've been in a rehearsal where I was onstage playing and we went into a spontaneous moment and it was like five minutes of the spontaneous like worship, we were doing songs and musical ride and I was like, this is some of those amazing music I've ever heard, I feel so hot, this is so cool, I love that we're doing this, and then we did the session, we didn't even like do it, or we like did it, it was like one minute long, it was terrible, I was like, what happened? Like, and then some of that is like, well, we're not doing it, that's like, what's the reasons why we're doing it, like it's like doing it until like show it, but there are moments where like, like, well, we were going to like, it's like tomorrow we're doing like 45 minutes of just like prophetic worship, in the middle of the corporate worship set, it's just like prayer room style, like just like worship, and we were going to rehearse on Tuesday to get close and like musical sketches and we kind of like, ah, it's busy, we're not going to do it. So, nothing we're doing tomorrow is rehearsed, but there's been times where we've had rehearsals for some things, I know like, so Michael raised her hand, so we were on the, we were in that band together playing guitar, Michael was one of the bass player for it, so there's been times where we've come together, can't say we've rehearsed things, there's times where it's like, no, just kind of, as you begin to develop relationship and confidence, you can kind of move in and out of things. Yeah, I'll piggyback off that too, because I think what I'm about to say is really awesome. With prophetic moments, I feel like you can break down probably 90% of prophetic moments, at least what we do in two categories. One of them is we rest into prophetic moments, and two is you break open into prophetic moments, and what I mean by that is a lot of the time the worship leader will come with something prepared, whatever their heart is, and they might stay as little as, you know what, we might have some room for spontaneous out of this song, and then out of that song, we will rest into that prophetic moment, and it might be 30 seconds and be like, okay, we didn't find anything, or it might, you know, turn into something that like what Katie did today for the nine amateurs is unbelievable, whereas that I think was more of a breaking into a prophetic moment, like something. And so I was, I fell, so I know that, so in rehearsal, Ryan said, hey, let's plan on waiting for a little bit after here's an end rehearsal. And so I was like, okay, whatever we'll do. So then we're playing it, and as we're playing, I'm thinking we're about to go into something. I want to start, I want to start asking the Holy Spirit for a melody, for an idea or whatever. So I was actively, like in my head as I'm playing like Holy Spirit, what should I play? And I'm kind of like, not noodling, but kind of like, I'm playing like a note. Everyone's like, I feel like what feels like the Lord is on us right now. And I played three things, and that I hate it. I was like, nope, that sucks. And so I stopped. And I was like, okay, but I really want to break into something. So I played a little bit and I was like, nope, that wasn't it. And I played it and then I played something. And I felt like all of a sudden it was like, everybody just jumped into it. And we didn't talk about it. And but then we hit that for a long time and Katie was singing out there and we had this, this vibe going with it. And so it was kind of like we were resting. But then also it was, it took people to be like, we're going to, we're going to reach for something. Let's push and see where it is. And then when we hit that vein, the Holy Spirit breathed on it, but it took our partnership with it too. Like it's a, it's a partnership aspect. Yeah. And then on the other side of that, I was in the booth, Sean was on stage and because I'm ready and almost expectant for that moment, I'm watching, I'm way far off the run sheet. I know that something else is happening and I'm just sort of, you know, waiting, watching to see what is happening, seeing who's playing what and what to highlight in that moment. And a lot of it's really practical and a lot of it I like to look at as pretty spiritual and try and, you know, invite the Holy Spirit into everything that we do. So that was a long tangent that we got onto. Yeah. But yeah, it's good. All right. Yes. What's your name? Yeah. Merriam. Merriam. Hi. I am Ben, the worship pastor at our church for a long time, but I just recently, the production part came underneath my department. I know nothing. I don't know how to talk to them about the techie stuff that they're talking about, but they're awesome people. And we believe in the Holy Spirit and flow in the Holy Spirit and spontaneity in our services. I want to be able to appreciate the technology and just the like brains that our team has. Honestly, I feel like a lot of their systems are super difficult that volunteers can't grasp. So I guess my question is how in depth is the technology like in your booth? Like I can see the max, like they're beautiful. Like I recognize the awesomeness of the Mac, you know, but, you know, and trying to have lead, honestly, a very young team. Yeah. So you, all of you need to set yourself up to never stop learning. Okay, you have to, you are all, with the moment that you decide, I haven't figured out or I'm not going to learn anymore, you are, you are going to go downhill. You're not going to, you're never going to plateau. You're always going to go down. And so you have to constantly learn. So some of you might be more adept to like quickly picking up on things or you might feel like, well, I'm more of a naturally like gifted tech person's like, no, everyone just like spent like some people maybe a little more logical or more abstract. I'm, people say I'm logical. I'm actually not super logical, but I like, I like learning things. So when I took this job, I actually knew nothing about production. I did a little bit of audio. I knew zero about cameras, zero about lights. I knew zero about how to style cast on the campus, how that wall works or pro presenter. I didn't use pro presenter, but they actually like made me do like a, when they were like talking about hiring me was like, you need to show us what happens when you point a camera at someone and how does it get to someone's TV at their house go every week? And I have to like study how to do that in order to like basically get hired. And so that just gives you like, I learned it in a week, not because I'm like a genius, because I was like, I'm going to throw everything I have at this because I need to be able to like move here kind of thing, but let's joke though. Yeah. Oh, sorry. Sorry. I was a bit close this point that you go for it. So to show the appreciation to your team is to throw yourself as much as you can at it, ask them questions, take notes and learn as much as you can. Even I, David Blaniguy genius, Jojo genius, when it comes to their field and there's half the set that comes out, I don't understand what they're saying, but I understand a small portion of it. And so that I can either know when they're like with the blog smoke or like, I know that like, I can help like start some conversation with them and they at least see that. So they can see that like I'm trying and I'm actually like trying to have that conversation with them. So it is a big world and you can it depends on it can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be. But I think starting small chunks, YouTube is amazing. Ask people that you like like talk with people, ask them questions and just take as much notes as you can know that you it's not impossible if you learn. Is it hard to learn anything is difficult to learn that nothing is impossible to learn. Sorry. Yeah. And the second part of your question, you said that like systems seem really difficult and almost as if they weren't totally successful at the moment. Thank you. Yeah. We definitely experience that all the time and a lot of our systems we have set up. So not dummy proof, obviously you can't dummy proof anything. Like, we don't want to train people to just hit buttons because then there's no buying. We want people to take ownership over certain things. So you want to push volunteers be like, okay, this is awesome. Go run learn learn it and whatever that looks like for you. But there is a good healthy balance between like, okay, what are we actually going to be able to pull up? What can I give someone that they're going to feel confident in? Because if you're giving someone something and they don't feel confident, that's that you're almost doing them a disjustice. It's not necessarily there's like a good balance between like you don't want to just have somebody who's like, okay, hit button, hit button, hit button. I don't know why because there's no buying, but you don't want it to you don't want them to be ill equipped to the point where you're kind of setting off for failure at the same time. So we pretty much everything we try to do it's like we find the balance between like, okay, what's going to be awesome? And what can we pull off every weekend without without many points and a lot of systems because again, we're new probably all of them. We blew up every single one. We took stuff from one room, we put it in the other room, we did this, then we were like, okay, we did that wrong. So let's take it over there. Let's do this. We make it simple, but mostly for the goal of simplify and just having something that's going to fit what is best. Like you said, you just came into the position of being over this. Sometimes that comes with just you know, changing some stuff. That's okay. Yeah, because there's things that sometimes we'll say no to, even though we're like, we would love this, but we can't sustain that level right now. Like when it comes to like buying an audio console, they're like, oh, yeah, we'd love to buy this one, you know, we can run it, but no one else can run it. So that doesn't work. And so not that we but we don't step down in excellence. We just have to be creative. How can we keep that excellence, but also sustain it and make systems simple when it comes to people wanting to step in and help? Yes. Do you have a question? Yeah, I saw that on the corner of my eye. Yeah, hi, my name's Kate. So I'm both, I'm a worshiper like music and production. So being a worshiper, how do you balance like doing production, like running production and being able to worship at the same time, but like freely worship to where you're like, you're paying attention to what you're doing, but you're not worried about it. And you can still worship at the same time. Yeah, I mean, I have the same problem when I was playing electric today. Like it's, it's to me, it's not it, it's not an idea of how can I do this specific thing and worship at the same time. It's how can I do anything and worship at the same time? How can I like work my job? How can I like drive in the car and worship at the same time? How can I play guitar to a song I've played before and try to learn apart and also work at the same time? Or how can I run graphics and try to worship at the same time? It's all of that comes down to time because you need to be able to just, it needs to be like, uh, what's, oh, it was in another workshop. I was like, where did I hear this? So Pastor Joe Sorgi was talking about video editing. And one of the things he said was like, you work, keep giving time and time and time to get, I'm paraphrasing now because you were in there. So no, I was paraphrasing, but it's turned into muscle memory because once something becomes muscle memory, you then your brain can separate from it and do something else. And so there's, if I don't know a song on the guitar, I'm not a muscle member right now. I mean, I look like I'm like 100% focused on what I'm doing. I look like I'm not even worshiping anymore. I'm just like constantly looking down on my fingers, make sure I don't mess up. And, but then if I'm like, oh, I know this song and it's like great, I can play this song on my sleep. I can, I can enjoy myself, have fun. So when it comes to like graphics, if I don't know the program or I don't feel confident, I'm there in no way I'm going to be worshiping because I'm just, it takes all my memory and my concentration about like screw something up. But once you get used to it, I'm able to start worshiping a little bit more and it's taken time. It's taken me like a year now to feel like I'm, I can at least do it without being a complete idiot. So I think time is your best friend for all of us in practice, which is because of the time. He's got to do it over and over again. Yeah. Yes. Two questions. Number one, we manage a team about the same amount as far as volunteers. How do you maintain, like you guys personally, how do you maintain philosophy while Can you rephrase philosophy? Well, it's broad because I know you guys have a, you chase after a certain sound. You chase after a certain creative look as far as lights or the way that you do graphics, how you want that to be. How do you make that consistent within those philosophies while having volunteers and pushing them to be the ones to actually perform the tasks? So it's a good question. What's funny is like, so how old is your high production staff? Do you have staff? Yeah. Like who's, see you. Okay. And how long you've been doing that? And do you feel a hundred percent settled in your creative philosophy? Because it comes from the top down. I mean, yeah. No, no, no. So that it's not like a, it's not like a dog on you. Like when we came in, we were, we were all new and we were trying to figure out what do we want radiant chairs to be like, because radiant chairs have been going up to like 20 years. Right. It's been different. I mean, Jerry was my old job, like two people's ago. Like and Jerry had his, it wasn't a wrong thing, but Jerry had a philosophy to use your word of philosophy when he wanted it to look like. And someone else came in, they had their thoughts. So it comes from the top down. So you have, it has to trickle down. Everything trickles down. Your relationship with the Lord, that'll trickle down. Your bias, that'll trickle down. Your excellence that will trickle down. If my team doesn't see me care about what's going on, they will not care what's going on. If my team does not see me in prayer in the Word, they will not be in prayer in the Word. If my team does not see me pushing forward, they will not push forward. And so you have to be the tip of the tip of that spear to, to enable that. So you have to kind of figure out what do I want it to be and that you could change it if it changes in the year, changing year in the year that I've had this team. Like we've changed things. Like we've, we've, we've decided on different avenues and we've decided on different creative ideas because, but we're all doing it together. We're kind of like, let's try this. And so it kind of comes from the top down. And once it comes from the top down, like, well, let's say the first step is you, you have to just figure that out first. And then the next step, hit that one, you get there. That's going to take you some time because a lot of that's going to come from absorption. When they see what you're doing and you're communicating it, it'll, it'll buy you. It's like a kid, like 80% of what they see from their parents is what they learn. It's excellent. They don't, only 20% is what they hear. It's 80% is what they see. And that's how they do it. So how do you do that? Multicampuses? I mean, I travel, I go back and forth. So I'm here on a Saturday and I go there on a Sunday. And so I didn't always do that, but I was seeing that happen where I was, I need to make sure that I'm just kind of bouncing around. We have regular team nights where we all bring all, you know, teams together. A lot of that more is the user work philosophy. That's not so much style or look, but it's more about discipleship and value and heart. I want to, I want to create a culture. So again, my heart is not necessarily like to, like, this is the look we want. I'm not trying to promote a brand. Like, I'm like, actually, I want this as a community of people because brand and culture, that's going to be brilliant. Yeah, the color of this stuff has changed like 15 times. Like, you know, like our logo has changed and I'm sure it's going to change again. So it's like, that's always going to change. But culture, that's what you don't want to change. You want culture to be cultured. You want it to be like a solid foundation. Thanks, man. Yes. Oh, yeah. Now here, no one ever complains. Nothing's too loud. Nothing's too quiet. Nothing. No lobby speakers are too loud or quiet. The lights are too bright or too flashy. That never happens here. So you just have to move churches. So you need to go up. So if anybody comes to my team, I say, I either, I feel it. I try to step in as fast as I can. If I can see it, because I don't, they should not be responsible and having to try to figure out, should I be listening to you or not? I don't know who you are. Are you, are you like the second command here? Are you, like, are you just a visitor? Like, I don't know who you are. And so, and so I will field everything, but also I just send them to our campus pastor. Like, it's just like, hey, yeah, go talk to Pastor John and let him filter that, because we're not going to turn it up or down or brighter or softer for everybody that comes to the building. Yeah. Well, it's like, what do you, you might as well, it's like, we just turn house lights on. It's just like, we'll just play a CD, like, there. Everyone's happy. And then we'll, we'll, we'll song we're playing. We're like, okay, I'm gonna put on headphones. I'm gonna just go, like, just go home. Like, I'm gonna church anyone. So, yes. So always go up. So send them to someone out. But then, if you're having problems with people around you, like your level, not like, not people come from the outside coming in, still go up. So if you have people from your team that are saying, it's too loud, too bright to this or whatever, then go, okay, let's go talk with the person above us to see what do you want? Because ultimately, at the end of the day, we could have an idea of a pastorly, I mean, veto power. It's a pastorly thinks it's too loud, okay, it's too loud, you know, it's just because it's, it's his church. I mean, like, yes, it's all our church, we're all the body and Christ, we're all this together. But ultimately, like, he is our visionary leader. And so we're all, we're all following his vision and his leadership. So you just got to go up with that. And then, and then take every one of those moments as an opportunity to practice humility. That's a side effect. Yeah. Yeah, on a practical note, just finding ways to be consistent. Once you get those things dialed with your campus pastor or a pastor or whoever it is, finding ways that you know what, you run, you might have a different volunteer, you have a decimal meter, and we run the same for every service or you might have different lighting operators. And then it's like, Hey, maybe don't we're not going to use the blinders at 100% this angle or whatever lights do that sort of thing is really important because especially if it's like congregants or stuff like that. One, again, it doesn't totally matter if it's set up in that way. But they notice just stuff being different, you know, just finding ways to get it consistent, you know, get on the same page with whoever's in charge and set up your systems in a way that it can be consistent week and week out. So it's not like 90 decibels one week on its way 100 decibels one week on its 80. Yeah, let's go in the back here. So my name's Larry. I didn't know that my worship leader was in here. But she's like, so I've been having a problem with that worship. So this guy named Larry. Actually, my question was about your size. Our entire congregation doesn't match your staff. Oh, church staff. You guys have a team. So your team, do you do things together like for that camaraderie? Oh, yeah, it's my favorite thing. We went to the movies one time. Yeah. After Rise Shine, our Rise Shine conference, I was like, you guys knocked out of the park. I love you guys. You guys are amazing. We're taking the day off. We're going to go see the Avengers movie. I'm going to invite you to see it. It's just one of the We are now called Light Church. Speaking to Planting Center all the time and then prophetic environment. So because at the end of the day, like, people aren't following a system. They're following people. And so like, you want to build a team and you want to build camaraderie. One thing I love about, I'm going to brag on one of our campus pastors, our Portage campus pastor, Seven Davis, he does this super well. I mean, he is constantly doing things with his team, fun things or whatever things, just to kind of help build that like, we're a family, like we're doing this together. Like we're not, we're not employees out of business, but we are, we are part of God's family. We're brothers and sisters in Christ. We're doing this together. So we do things and like in production, we do things with the volunteers, like with team night, like I have, like my team nights is like, they come to my house, I cook food, we play games, we might, you know, pray with each other, worship or whatever, we just do different things like that. But then like, just as a staff, like I try to, you know, I try to once a month, sometimes it's more, sometimes it's less to like, Hey, let's just, let's go out, we might talk for a minute, let's just go out and just like, just just be like friends as well. Like not because we have to be best friends, although, JoJo, you're my best friend, right? I was in JoJo's wedding, I have anything, so. I was in the child's wedding. He was not my wife. So anyway, yes, to answer your question, it's very important to do that. Yeah, so how important was she was here? I was going to drag, I had to share a little. In fact, there's only about 80 people in the whole church, five of us on the worship team in worship, and she got us, she brought us here. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. That's awesome. I love that. All right, we have time for a few more because we started at 335, so we'll go to 435. And so, because I want to keep on time, so we'll do a few more questions. Okay, so, a preface real quick. So, hi, Brandon. Hi. Great to be here. Good to be here. Oh, what's up, man? So we, over the last year, we've been. He's like, I'm having problems with my passwords. I have a follow up question. So, we're relatively small staff, as far as like small volunteers. So over the last year, we've been pushing a lot of like automation, everything from automated pro presenter through Ableton and things like that. Our next big project is going to be automating some lighting and stuff. So with that, one of my questions is that with some of this change and being small volunteer base, what do you find works really well for the training aspect? Because even though some of it's automated, like building those pockets for prophetic worship, you can't really automate that because you don't know how long you're going to be there or, you know, you might extend or go a different direction and things like that. Yeah, you're going to get back on, you know, the ramp, but those moments. So you need to still be trained even though a lot of it's going. Yes. So do you find that, do you do training sessions? Do you let people like come in and just use the equipment and like mess around? What do you find works well for that? So we've actually been a big goal this year for us. Our team kind of decided like what we want to want to do is not necessarily do a bunch of cool new things. We want to really work on building up our team as far as building owners, not just employees. And so that's a big project we're taking out, we're working on training material, we're trying to write material, we're looking at like video material or brain story about it, like to try to figure out how to do that. And one of the the hiccups in that was trying to, how much can we teach them without like just melting their minds with the amount of information you can teach them on something, but also teach them enough they can actually own what they're doing. And so you have to strike that balance where is, if I were to bring in like, like I always joke with my wife when I'm like, hey, so you want to like serve production with me sometimes? And she's like, no, like she hasn't been there. She's like, she's, I can't be bothered with that. She's like, no, I don't need that. But I sometimes use like my wife as example, because she's super smart, super amazing, but she's also like not great with technology. Like she's just not super smart with that. So I sometimes I'll use like my wife as example, like, could she like understand what I'm saying right now? Like when as I'm writing out training with my background, I actually have training to my backpack for reading as I'm reading through this training material. Like if I just give this to someone who doesn't know how to do it, like can they understand what I'm talking about? But so we try to automate a ton of that stuff. So a lot I actually set up a ton of automation, not like crazy automation, but a lot of stuff to where they can hit it and not have to, like there's less points of failure. But I need to be able to train them in a way where when it doesn't work, which happens all the time, because the ProPresenter somehow they're crazy monopoly, they're terrible, but somehow the only ones available was like, screw you guys. All right. So I'm going to make a competing ProPresenter. I'm going to just put everything into that because I hate that. Okay, anyway, I hate one option. So ProPresenter doesn't always work. But so I need them to be able when they hit that button as I work, they almost go, what just happened? Like where I've looked at one of my volunteers and where like something just started working and they just they don't have to do is they sit there. I'm like, wow, like running over there like, I can't tell you right now, like it's just like, it's black, like you have to do something. So you got to teach them enough to where they can have some ownership, but also strike the balance of like, they don't want to know every single detail, you know, it's how much they're buying. But then I have people like Rebecca raise your hand right here. So Rebecca is one of our volunteers and Dave raise your hand. Dave. So both they're actually volunteers of radio production. They both have like full-time jobs and their families and kids. And these are two people that I just saw you said there's more here. Sorry, but there's two people right here where I use them as examples, not even I use them as examples all the time where they're like, Hey, I want to I want to know everything I can about this. And they they come they take notes they figure things out. So those are people where I'm like, you know what, I can start pushing more things onto it, but there's some volunteers that they just they're they're there they want to serve, but they're not going to learn a lot because they just don't have that like, either on the capacity or they're on the buy-in to kind of like see what you have. So you have to strike the balance between that that helps. That's good. But I think automation making things simple, like it's all about simplicity, but sustainability. And it's spontaneousness is important in your church, spontaneity is important in your church. It's how can you easily get in and out of that? Yeah. Yeah. Yes, sir. I haven't been here on a Sunday morning. We're actually from Alabama and we're happy. Nice, welcome. But yeah, so I was wondering if you have a specific order of service that you have every week? And if you do differ from that, how you decide to do it to differ from that and how you decide about the creative elements that you will add? Yeah, it's a it's a messy process. It's not perfect. Again, it's in young staff right now, but within the last like probably three or four years, it's been almost a whole new staff. It's it's it's radically different staffing. So I kind of I create the order of service. It's about 95% the same every week. The elements that change like are we going to do child dedications or water baptism? Is there going to be like a special like, you know, extra thing that we're going to add at the end of something? Or are you going to do communion or not? You know, then like what will the verbal announcements be or what's the you know, what what information we want to share like in our news video? Who's preaching? Who's leading worship? Those little things will will change, but it's basically the same as far as our normal weekend service is basically the same. Now what goes in that process? There's a our creative communications team. They will meet with the campus pastors. They have the whole I think they have two years. They have the whole year planned out. What are we going to hit every weekend? They have a whole like, this verbal, this verbal, this verbal work. We're going to plug this here. We're going to plug this here. And they start making all that stuff like months and months and months in advance. And then they just basically give it. I used to have a meeting where we talked to them and we kind of stopped doing that. And so basically it is tell me here are the two verbals. Here are your slides. I have some plug in and and it's ready to go. But all that's been discussed with like the like senior pastorals, staff, which is even less than most those people and the creative communications team. So we don't run that. And I don't really want to run that. There's a lot of stuff that I've been kind of getting up. Yeah. Sure. So in what role does Ableton play in all that? And how that relates to perfect environments? Yeah, I love Ableton. We both love Ableton. We used to have all the time. Yeah, at the moment again, everything changes at the moment. Ableton is used to used by our keyboard players are the ones that launched tracks. They run the click and they use Ableton for the keyboard sounds. And that's that's about it. We don't use it for any production. Yeah, we don't do any send the time code MIDI sticking with Ableton. So what's the reason on that? The reason on that is we don't like sometimes it's the the skill level of everybody involved. Like so if we were like fully staffed, like it was just our staff production team like running like lights all the time. Like it was just David running lights every weekend. And we had like cable culver playing keys every weekend and they just like they knew their system that would work. We've talked about doing that maybe like special events where it's that. But when you have volunteers running and if something were to go wrong with time code, they don't know how to fix it. So most of the time when we have very few lighting operators that actually know how to use the light. So it's mostly David programming and then they're kind of just hitting Q. So again, it's the sustaining it. We could do it. We could mix video backgrounds in our suite wall. We can do all this stuff. But if you know, sweet Susie Q walks in there and something goes wrong because she know how to operate this system. So again, it's finding the balance between that and all of our Ableton rates are personal to the keyboard player. We don't have a house Ableton setup or anything because it's it's primarily the focus for Ableton is four keys for us. And that's just kind of how we have enough issues with Ableton all the time that I'd rather not run my service. If you're having problems with your click getting off the tracks, yeah, you ain't touching the screen. It's a sign of the times. Yeah, I'm gonna use that. I'm gonna use my finger for that. Is there a final question or is that a really good one? Yeah, it has to be really nice. Oh, Ableton was the last question. All right. No, they give the screen. It's like, oh, I don't know, it's hundreds of feet. I made that up. I think it's I'm terrible with anything. I think it's 32 by 16. Yeah. Yes, sir. Final question. So one one question is I'm over over audio and we have issues with like where worship we keep something everybody else are playing something different all the time. Getting their same sound all the time has been an ongoing issue where you have one keyboard player that uses this sound and that one and that one. And then we don't know. Okay, so we have a guy playing strings and of course on the keyboard and they're both playing strings all of a sudden. It's like, okay, which one can I pull down or we have a lot of issues with that. Yeah, totally. No, we actually have this all the time. It happens to us all the time. We love variety and I never want to cook anything other than snares. I never want to so that it's the same for the most part. I don't want to do it either. But we do have a very open line of communication that we're really lucky to have. And personally, I'm really fortunate in our volunteers that run audio and it's probably from the top down just the culture that Caleb wanted to have when he came past your Caleb when he's our executive worship pastor. The culture that he wanted to have was a very open line of communication where the sound tech or the sound technician has a lot of input. And that comes from having trust. You need to trust your sound tech. So a lot of times in sound checks I'm giving the most feedback. More so than a worship leader unless Corey is introducing a new song or something like that. And the purpose of that is just to get things sounding good. Not necessarily consistent because I get bored. I mix audio all the time when I'm not mixing audio here. I'm usually mixing audio somewhere else. So I love variety but you just want it to sound good. The difference between something that's like a quality sound or a bad sound or sometimes there's a great sound that just doesn't fit in the moment. And it's how you approach that moment and how you communicate. Don't be like, hey that's the worst possible thing you could do at that moment. And it's totally masking with the electric guitar although sometimes I have said stuff like that. Because there is relational equity with some people I would say that's a show on the right. I'd say that to Jonathan most probably just because it's quicker. But they would be like okay that's great let's try something else. It's how you approach that and doing it for the context of you know the mixing team and stuff like that. A lot of times I'm talking like hey that sound isn't necessarily cutting through. It's getting a little bit muddy. Do you have something else? And then propose another option. Always have a solution that you can suggest. Even if you don't think it's like totally the right thing to do. Like maybe what if it was something like this. Because you don't want to be the person that's just like no bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. Because a lot of times you don't know. So that really just comes from developing healthy communication with whoever your executive worship leader is. And I always defer to the worship leader. I'll never like exert or you know step into the situation that I feel like I'm stepping in the worship leader's toes or something like that. My primary job was to serve worship leader in that moment. So if that makes sense. Sweet. I'm just going to pray for us real quick. Holy Spirit I thank you that you long to speak to us. And not just a few of us not just certain ones but you long to speak to all of us. Everyone in this room that you want to develop a relationship with. You want to develop a story within the history of them. So I asked in this season as they begin to step into whatever might be worship leading production or pastoring or all of the above that they would move into a season of friendship with you. That as they're doing what seems like technical work they would begin to find a way to marry the overflow of their heart with what they're doing with their hands. If there'd be an overflow of the friendship with the spirit and a familiarity with the word that it would begin to just pour out through their hands into the work that they're doing. And they would begin to find that they don't actually need to get you know smarter or more skilled in what they're doing to be prophetic in production but actually just to to read the scripture and develop a relationship with the Holy Spirit. And that is what's going to push them in their ministry their church into a realm of and a breakthrough anointing of flowing with the Holy Spirit in a powerful way with Jesus name.