Please don't touch the dial; there is nothing wrong. At the time of this writing, Richard Rutherford is immersed in the House of Worship portion of Pro Production 2005, so yours truly is sitting in. Yes, some magazine editors/sound guys actually go to church and therefore get tapped with the inevitable requests for donated gear and services. This is my latest take on that sticky subject. Some of years back, I was at a trade show chatting with Mark Johnson. Mark is now the editor of Sound and Video Contractor, but at the time he was still handling all the PR and media for Meyer Sound. Somehow the talk came around to the subject of doing volunteer sound work for our churches or our kids' schools. We bemoaned the often all-but-impossible tasks we were called on to pull off with little or no notice, and how they never seemed to learn that the tech side of things needed just as much attention, time and planning as any other part of a production or event.
I remember saying to Mark, "The only way they will ever learn is if we let them fail." Mark answered, "You're right, but it's your church–how can you allow them to fail?" I was stumped and knew he was right. If called upon, I would do everything I could to work an audio miracle–because how could I let my church fail?
But some things have happened in the past few months that have me rethinking that. The time has come to let them fail.
Back in July of last year, I got a last-minute call to mix monitors for a musical being put on by my church. The denomination to which I belong is not among the most tech-friendly or savvy. In fact, some of the church leadership deeply holds onto a sense of being different from the production-oriented mega churches springing up, making them sometimes downright hostile to the idea of any production equipment other than a single podium mic. But, since the church is located on the outskirts of a major media center, a number of members of the flock work in the entertainment industry, and it had been decided to do this one musical right–the organizers operated on the "it is easier to get forgiveness than permission" principle and arranged for full sound, lighting and sets, and worked like maniacs for months pulling it all together. It went so well that the regional leadership has decided to do it all again next year, now that they have seen what a difference a little production value makes. Except that the system provider–who drove the system in from 600 miles away, charged for a week what he would normally charge for a day, and slept on someone's couch or on the church floor the entire week–got nothing but grief about the "ridiculous" amount of money the sound was going to cost.
More recently, the same person who provided the full-on system for that production at a deeply reduced cost called to tell me about his latest church experience. He was asked to bid for a similar production, but this one involved several events over the space of a week, and another week of tech rehearsals in varying locations. Trying to be the helpful church member, his bid for two weeks' work was less than he would charge someone else for two days. The leadership was stunned at the cost and said they could only pay about 15% of that amount. He swallowed his professional pride, reminded himself that this was for his church and agreed to do it. A couple of days later, he was told that the church would not even pay the token sum and that if he was a good member he would do it for free–which is what he is doing.
So in both cases the church got a steal. But what have they really gotten? My friend has already said he will never do work for the church again, and I do believe he means it. The production they want to do next year? Well, the person who tech directed it and pulled a pro sound, lighting and video system together on a shoestring budget has moved out of the area. I am getting ready to move as well, and the system provider was left with such a bitter taste over things that he will surely not pack up the truck and drive 600 miles again next year. It is time to let them fail.
I look at it like this: I have a teenage daughter who I love dearly, but who is at that point where she wants to make her own decisions–and sometimes they are not good ones. While I stand on the lookout for decisions with far-reaching consequences or things that could really hurt her or her future, I am slowly learning to let her make decisions I know to be bad if I think she will learn something from them. Sometimes we have to fail in order to learn. If you are one of the many of us who are called on to save our churches from production purgatory on a regular basis, perhaps it is time to keep that in mind.
