I think the easiest option is to forget the stand alone cd recorder and record directly into a laptop or desktop computer. There you can either "normalize" the audio to max it out, or manually adjust the levels to bring them up to better gain. To top it off if you are burning cd's you already have it backed up on your hard drive for future reference or burning. And since it's already in the computer you can make mp3's, email audio etc. I feel the same way about video as well. Lots of churches are going direct to a stand alone dvd burner instead of importing straight into the computer to edit & burn.
Tim