Hey, folks.
Our church has about 8-10 faithful folks who help out with our sound and video ministries. Turnover is not an issue--I've only had one person leave in 2 years and that was because he moved away. In those 2 years I have been able to determine which people excel in which areas (video, sound, computers). During worship services I have two people scheduled--a video operator and a sound operator. I schedule only a sound operator for Sunday school and Wednesday prayer meeting.
We are currently in the process of reconfiguring/upgrading our equipment, and it seems like now would be a good time to revisit our ministry schedule. I'm looking for advice and opinions on how to set the service schedule so that everybody gets an opportunity to serve somewhere. I also want to schedule folks with enough frequency so that they stay in-practice.
We have a traditional, 4-service-a-week calendar. It's also worth noting that most other ministries in the church are on monthly rotations.
I'm looking forward to your input!
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not sure what 4 services a week means. 1 on wednesday night, 2 sunday morning, 1 sunday night?
anyway, not sure if you're using an online scheduling tool, but you should be. planning center online is awesome. there are others as well. i know that wasn't the question you asked, but i thought i'd mention it.
i've found with my teams that the trick is to schedule often enough that their skills stay fresh, but not so often as to burn them out. i've tended to shy away from 'everybody serves once a month' kind of systems because people are all different and some really can serve very well more often than others. you've had low turnover, so you may already be doing a very good job with this.
you didn't mention the size of your church, and depending on that, what i'm about to say may not work for you. but i'll share anyway.
when i started running our tech teams at our church, everyone did every job. i come from a professional production background where i learned that the only way to get really good at something was to specialize in it. the general A/V guys i came across just weren't as proficient in a show environment as the guys i worked with who specialized in one area. which really is pretty logical. so i changed our system such that most of my people specialize in one particular area. so sound guys do sound. ProPresenter techs do PP4. video does video. lights do lights. i got a bit of resistance when i started this from people who said that everyone would get bored with this arrangement, but that just hasn't happened. instead, i've got volunteers that really can do their jobs at a near professional level, and they take great pride in doing so. and the quality of all our tech has dramatically improved.
again, that may be totally stupid for your church. we're a 1500 member, total contemporary church with full production, including IMAG. it works well for us.
hope thats helpful. all the usual caveats apply. YMMV. IMHO. you know the drill...
