57 – the number of things that must occur at any one time in the sound booth for the worship service to flow
1 – the number of things that must go wrong to cause a distraction
50 – the highest percentage of people you can please at any one time
5- the average number of complaints on any given Sunday
14 – the number of people in the church who could do it better than I can, but won’t because of the complaints
1/2 – the fraction of people older than me who tell me it is too loud
1/2 – the fraction of people older than me who tell me they can’t hear
7 – the thickness (in inches) my skin must become in order to enjoy running sound
I ran sound at my church and for various bands and parachurch ministries for a few years. Thankless job for sure. I admire your committment to service.
Amen to this! A good day of running sound is a day when no one realizes you are even there. You might also have added something special about the kinds of complaints people make when you’re just starting sound check. “I can’t hear the vocals!” (I answer, “I haven’t turned them on quite yet….”)
(Note to members of my current church: that didn’t happen here, it was before I came to SBC. Y’all are great!)
As a worship leader in our church, I can definitely appreciate the problems our sound engineers encounter. We currently meet in a school and there is no a week that goes by that there isn’t some type of issue with our sound system. But our guys do a great job and don’t get appreciated enough. I admire anyone who is willing to take on the thankless job of sound engineer.
Um… AMEN!!! LOLOL I have run sound and the multimedia stuff (we have 3 projectors with one running keynote, two running powerpoint, and a live camera, and a switcher along with a full soundboard with 50 channels and various combinations of things going wrong… in a large church. Some days you might just pull your hair out… when you are fighting with the computer to run an .avi for you and can’t figure out why you can’t get the audio channel to open (gee, they moved things and didn’t label them last practice)… but nobody notices that most everything went well… they just notice you had the wrong slide up during praise and worship because the worship leader decided not to repeat like he did in practice… *bangs head on keyboard*
Has anyone found a “catch-all” for church sound resources and such? I’ve been thinking about doing a couple podcasts specifically on church sound. And i’d like to build community with church sound people.
The fruit of my labor can be heard on our church website: http://www.cfcmankato.org, follow the sermon audio link on the navbar.
Hi, my name is Robert and I’m the FOH engineer for CEMM in Los Angeles. CEMM is a ministry of the word and I have been doing their sound for 3 years. The fact is that we sound engineers go through a “whisper to a roar” and is at times challenging. It “keeps me on my toes”. I feel doing sound at a ministry is challenging in a positive way, you never know whats gonna happen so you just gotta pay attention and demand sound checks, if needed. I certainly can relate to you guys setting up in a gym, oh man a square box, and making it go. The guy that doesn’t feel it’s important to do a sound check with a wireless headset is not anyones fault but his own, especially if you ask for a sound check! bless you all