Have you heard the one about the guy who fell into a coma in January of 2020 and recently awoke, asking if “anything interesting happened while I was away?” If we don’t laugh a little, we cry a lot, especially since March 2020. But, all kidding aside, after a rough and tumble year, we’re all praying for brighter skies in 2021. The world didn’t magically transform back into its normal old pre-Covid self at midnight on January 1st, but now with vaccines being administered, there’s reason to believe that better days are in sight.
There is one predictably dependable phenomenon we see every January: the time-honored tradition of New Year’s resolutions. I like to be a wiseacre when asked what mine is… my response: “24-bit, 96k Hz.” But silly traditions aside, the first of the year is a time of renewal and looking forward with optimism and hope. From a more practical standpoint, we typically also sit down and formally map out a plan — what changes will we deliberately choose to make this year? This time it’s obviously more difficult, with challenges we’ve never faced before. We may not be able to predict the future, but we’ve never had to guess whether people would be able to attend church… they’ve always just shown up. The only certain thing right now is uncertainty.
As there’s literally no way to overcome this uncertainty, we can choose to err on one side or the other but be prepared to shift gears if things don’t work out the way we predict. Me? I’m an optimist. I’m not a dreamer or a fool, but I do believe that the vaccines will start to have a positive impact and I believe that we’ll finally start to see things more logically and act accordingly. By taking what we’ve learned about the virus, we can make better decisions about how to protect the most vulnerable without destroying the economy. But enough of my soapbox rant…
Streaming, Part II
If our congregants return in big numbers, we’ll need to be ready. I don’t know about you, but my church has experienced the blessing of being able to leverage the time without folks attending to resolve some existing tech issues, while preparing for the move into our new building, and improving our live streaming game. We’ve returned to in-person services — with masks and distancing — and we are continuing to build on our early successes in live streaming. We were among the fortunate churches that were already producing an online service, but it was not live before March. Now we’re live with three cameras, a pretty hip switcher and a high-quality, discrete broadcast mix. We’ve already made adjustments in the planned use of space in the new facility to accommodate a mixing suite dedicated to the live stream. It already looks and sounds good, and we’re going to keep improving it.
It’s hard for me to imagine a church that did not shift to some kind of live stream, even if it was rudimentary — audio only, for instance, or even if it was not live, at least some kind of recorded sermon posted for later playback. In many cases, the only alternative to this was to literally just shut down, and I’m sure that was the sad reality for a few churches out there. But going forward, the optimistic view for those who started humbly with live streams of minimal sophistication is that there’s nowhere to go but up! Not only has our collective expertise expanded in a big way, but there are numerous hardware and software solutions that were not front of mind this time last year, and the retailers have worked to help us understand and integrate them. Honestly, if you are not already live streaming, get on it — it’s never been easier, and it has essentially emerged as a minimal obligation as a result of the virus.
So if your church is live streaming, before you stand up with your chest puffed out, are you doing it well? Are you maximizing the quality of your lighting, video image, and — most importantly — your audio? The virus pushed us out of our comfort zone, and we can choose to either cling to the notion that we can return to in-person services and stop live streaming, or to embrace the new normal and join the majority of churches who continue to raise the bar and not simply live stream, but to do it well. Of course, we all want to return to in-person fellowship in our buildings, but now that live streaming has become an expectation, we must do it and we must do it in a high-quality fashion.
Staffing and Training
One consideration that emerges from this new way of thinking is mix staffing. It has impacted my church in a way that’s very tangible to me. I was mixing front of house a couple times a month but now I’m mixing either FOH or broadcast usually three weeks a month, and I get the feeling that if I didn’t block out the occasional date on Planning Center, I’d be there every Sunday. What used to require one mixer at a time now requires two. And lest my whining irritate the video folks, my heart goes out to them as well. Last March, we had one static camera. Now we have two moving cameras in addition to the original, and a switcher as well. One would expect down-staffing during this season, but our tech team has had to up-staff to make live streaming happen, and to be honest, we could probably use two more mix engineers.
Another thing to ponder at this point: training and education. The vast majority of church staff are volunteers, and during this odd time that’s not quite “downtime” but not fully “uptime” either, it might be a good idea to look into some training. It can be conducted in-house and it can leverage the expertise of your tech leaders. Considering that additional staff are likely necessary to facilitate simultaneous in-person services and live streaming going forward, so we’d do well to train some additional hands now to help make these things happen in the future.
Returning to Normal
Of course, the world will eventually get back to normal — and I hope and pray it will be sooner rather than later. In the meantime, we can get ourselves into the process of preparing for it. Have you been thinking about shifting from floor wedges to IEMs? Maybe the time is now. Thinking about adding subs or flying your rig? It might make sense to do so now before the masses flock back to Sunday services. I’m inclined to believe that your congregation (and your staff, volunteer or otherwise) will be much more understanding of such disruptive shifts right now than if you wait until things get “back to normal.”
We live in a challenging time, and the challenges are not yet over. But if we’re smart and proactive about it, we can leverage these strange days and re-emerge stronger, better and happier when the dust clears. Happy New Year!
John McJunkin is the chief engineer and staff producer in the studio at Grand Canyon University.
