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Filling a void
ak909:
Go for it! I was in your shoes at one time. Still am (18 here).
My best advice is three things.
1. Learn to use what you have to the best of your abilities.
2. Read the books of Timothy and James.
And Finally the most important one of all.
3. Keep your hands, eyes, and opinions to yourself.
I still have trouble with no.3...
Just read my posts...
Anyways.
Go get em!
Jeff Ekstrand:
I think most, if not all of us have been in the position Derrick described. I think back to my days as a 20-23-year-old TD (at a mega church???) . What was I thinking? And what were the people who hired me thinking? I had a few good sound-checks, a few great services, and I showed-up with a smile on my face. My first impression got me a job.
The problem was the same for me. I was starry-eyed, pretty-much fresh out of college, and thought that I had the right way of doing everything. Looking back, I was kinda' the same idiot you're talking about, but with actual power behind my position, which made me 30-times more dangerous.
I was in a similar situation to yours, in that most of my volunteers were at least 20 years older than I am... some were friends of my parents, so they'd known me since I was 2, and had seen me as the stupid Jr. HIgher, and I thought they needed to get past that and realize that I knew it all now. Man, God had fun kicking me around for a little while.
I spent some time doing live production based in Chicago and Las Vegas, and doing a ton of church consulting with the same company. If you want to find-out how much you don't know, I highly recommend the route I took. From getting my butt kicked (literally and figuratively) by the pros in Vegas/New York/Chicago/etc, to seeing just about every type of church production one can find in this great country, I got what seemed to be one, gigantic, proverbial kick in the butt from the man upstairs.
Now I'm back at the same mega-church, through some amazing stretch of Human Resources imagination, and handling special projects within my realm of knowledge... which is exponentially greater than when I "knew it all." I still don't know everything, and often have to take a step back, put myself on hold, and figure-out what the deuce is going on before I shoot my mouth off (which is still too big for my own good).
Some of the best relationships I have with volunteers are they ones where I have been asked a question, and I've outright said, "I don't know, let me see if I can find you he right answer." Some of the worst relationships I have are the ones where I said, "No, no, no, you're going the wrong direction, do it this way, trust me, you're just an amateur, I get paid to do this." I was the guy who said that and everyone could tell, pretty-much right away, that I was talking out my... you know...
So, as a 16-year-old. Get in there and show them what you can do. Keep working your butt off, and do it with a spirit of humility. Put together great mixes, be the friendly guy behind the faders that the band loves to work with. Be tactful with ushers or congregation members who outright tell you they don't like how it sounds (I still suck at that). There are a ton of guys out there who can put together an excellent mix, and we should all learn from them... however, nobody wants to learn from a jerk, and they are doing a disservice to this "industry" by not being friendly enough to impart their wisdom in a humble, helpful way. If you're doing what you do with the right motives, people will notice, and they will naturally gravitate to asking you questions and getting your advice. If you're a jerk, it won't matter how skilled you are.
In short, don't be "that guy."
Brian Kent Tennyson:
Jeff Ekstrand wrote on Mon, 30 June 2008 09:06
I think most, if not all of us have been in the position Derrick described. I think back to my days as a 20-23-year-old TD (at a mega church???) . What was I thinking? And what were the people who hired me thinking? I had a few good sound-checks, a few great services, and I showed-up with a smile on my face. My first impression got me a job.
The problem was the same for me. I was starry-eyed, pretty-much fresh out of college, and thought that I had the right way of doing everything. Looking back, I was kinda' the same idiot you're talking about, but with actual power behind my position, which made me 30-times more dangerous.
I was in a similar situation to yours, in that most of my volunteers were at least 20 years older than I am... some were friends of my parents, so they'd known me since I was 2, and had seen me as the stupid Jr. HIgher, and I thought they needed to get past that and realize that I knew it all now. Man, God had fun kicking me around for a little while.
I spent some time doing live production based in Chicago and Las Vegas, and doing a ton of church consulting with the same company. If you want to find-out how much you don't know, I highly recommend the route I took. From getting my butt kicked (literally and figuratively) by the pros in Vegas/New York/Chicago/etc, to seeing just about every type of church production one can find in this great country, I got what seemed to be one, gigantic, proverbial kick in the butt from the man upstairs.
Now I'm back at the same mega-church, through some amazing stretch of Human Resources imagination, and handling special projects within my realm of knowledge... which is exponentially greater than when I "knew it all." I still don't know everything, and often have to take a step back, put myself on hold, and figure-out what the deuce is going on before I shoot my mouth off (which is still too big for my own good).
Some of the best relationships I have with volunteers are they ones where I have been asked a question, and I've outright said, "I don't know, let me see if I can find you he right answer." Some of the worst relationships I have are the ones where I said, "No, no, no, you're going the wrong direction, do it this way, trust me, you're just an amateur, I get paid to do this." I was the guy who said that and everyone could tell, pretty-much right away, that I was talking out my... you know...
So, as a 16-year-old. Get in there and show them what you can do. Keep working your butt off, and do it with a spirit of humility. Put together great mixes, be the friendly guy behind the faders that the band loves to work with. Be tactful with ushers or congregation members who outright tell you they don't like how it sounds (I still suck at that). There are a ton of guys out there who can put together an excellent mix, and we should all learn from them... however, nobody wants to learn from a jerk, and they are doing a disservice to this "industry" by not being friendly enough to impart their wisdom in a humble, helpful way. If you're doing what you do with the right motives, people will notice, and they will naturally gravitate to asking you questions and getting your advice. If you're a jerk, it won't matter how skilled you are.
In short, don't be "that guy."
WOW! Great post. Thank you for typing that so I didn't have to. Sounds like we lived identical lives right up to the point where you went back to your old church. Then you lost me.
I think back to how brash and authoritarian I was in my twenties, bossing 45 year olds around. I would never have that confidence today knowing what I don't know. I will qualify by saying that I was only a little Napoleon on live production days. I made sure my crew knew that they could argue all they wanted with me once tape stopped rolling (and I would listen), but wrong or right, there was no democratic process when we were spooled up.
Zach Amason:
Seems like my dad did teach me well after all...
I'm trying the approach of keeping my mouth shut while our "that guy" acts like a total rectum and learning as much as I can from the occasional visit of the extremely knowledgeable guys in our A/V consulting company.
Thanks for the input you guys!
Karl P(eterson):
I am with Brian here, what an utterly terrific post. I am halve tempted to say it should be immortalized in a sticky.
Although one does wonder what these amazing stretch of Human Resources imagination might have been .
Karl "I have been that guy too" P
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