Learning

Yesterday I learned a few things. I am not, by nature, ‘the sound guy.’ I have always looked at those guys who are running the sound board with a bit of awe. They hand you the lapel mic at the beginning of the service and no one thinks of them unless they mess up. During the service you see various facial expressions as you have it too close or too far or walk in front of a speaker with it. They struggle valiantly to give everyone a pleasant experience during the service with little or know recognition.

At our church in Budapest, Kelenfold Evangelical Church (KEGy), they needed someone to give the ‘sound guy’ a break. They asked for several weeks and got no takers. Since my son Tim plays guitar for one of the worship teams, I thought I could help out in a small way by helping the sound guy. He spent a couple of weeks teaching me about the system and how to run things. I even had a couple of ‘solo’ runs with various instruments, singing arrangements, and even a baptism.

Yesterday I learned something. It was a simple arrangement: two singers and two guitars. So I started looking at the way we had the mic set up for the speaker. In an attempt to make the mic less obvious, I moved it from the side of the table/podium to the front. It looked better from where I stood and before the service it seemed to be okay. It wasn’t. It was too far away. I could barely get the pastor without a little ringing in the system. On top of that, the real sound guy showed up because his wife was singing a special song. It was a good thing that he did show, because he did some magic to make things bearable. I was also taping the sermon on an MP3 player for the first time. All that together made for a bad sound day for me.

What did I learn? If it works and you want to improve it, make sure you do plenty of testing before you actually make the change. I still don’t know what all the knobs on the sound board do. It doesn’t matter if I’m gifted or not in an area of service, if when I am serving humility and confidence in my Father are two aspects of my attitude.