Media Ministry Quick Guide needs comments

[videoguru]

I posted this in general discussion, but after some reviewing I wanted to post here as well as it may be a better placement to get some comments and suggestions.

Below is a Ministry Quick Guide article I am writing and would welcome comments, suggestions, any editing as I tend to change tenses in my writing. I especially need your wise input on the "choosing the right guy" section.


Media Ministry Quick Guide

This manual will contain various points necessary to effectively run, or not ruin, a Media Ministry. Points highlighted will include: The Creative Mind, Value, Criticism, and Choosing The Right Guy.


THE CREATIVE MIND
Persons working in Graphic Design, Video Production/Post-Production, Web Design, and various other Media related fields tend to more right brain. With this type of workforce, managers and directors have to cater to certain personalities and character traits. Just as you would not try to motivate a construction worker by offering them a sleek, well-designed desk to sit at, you wouldn’t buy a creative media worker a new pair of steel-toed boots. Too many managers and directors come from administrative office backgrounds where efficiency is thought to be tied to ability and are evaluated by a money earned to a money paid ratio; as long as he is producing us X-amount more than we paying him we are good. For a creative person, this would be hell. Every Project to the creative worker is a personal investment of their own, it represent the church as a whole, but to that graphic designer, this year’s theme is a personal testimony to his abilities. A ministry minded creative personnel member has two very strong driving forces: his/her passion for telling others about Christ, and their passion for using the gifts God has given them to bring Him honor and glory with works of art and testament to the work He has done in their life. A collection of two very strong driving forces showing up uniformly in a single industry, is a great privilege and can be used to make some of the best work possible. But managing a person with such passion and drive can be one of the most difficult, even if you are one of these creative thinkers yourself.

There are various stimulants and distractions that affect the Creative Mind, for these there are no manual, you must get to know each of your creative team members personally to know their triggers. An incentive for one may be an inhibitor for another. For Example, one of the web designers at a church I worked for would often play Ping-Pong with some of our teenage assistants as a way to clear his head before starting an intense project. I enjoy Ping-Pong, but the thought of doing this before working on a creative intense project drove me crazy, I saw it as wasteful and inefficient. However, this same individual work often take naps when tired because otherwise he hit a creative stall, I on the other hand was nearly addicted to all-nighters because I felt my brain’s frontal logical lobe would disengage under excessive drowsiness, thus sparking new vision and creative juices. The point I mainly want to make in this section is that, one thing every creative team member I have served with had in common is the desire to be believed in, trusted, and cared for. My first supervisor was very good at taking us out to lunch on a weekly basis, finding out what was going on in our lives, because he knew as a fellow creative team member, that as stresses built up in our lives, our work output would diminish and we often did not produce our best work. The same is true in everyday life of any worker, we tend to be less efficient when we are bummed out or thinking about other things. The different for creative employment is that, unlike physical labor where your body can still hammer nails and cut wood, or a financial person where the numbers can still be added and subtracted, we cannot force our brains to see the unseen or morph images to tell a new story when we “don’t feel like it”. One thing that helped the most with this was when my supervisor prayed for us. He did not simply take us out to lunch to get it off our chest; he helped us lay it at the feet of Jesus, the only one who could carry the load.

VALUE
I have already touched on this a little bit, I mentioned how creative people have various stimulants and distractions that differ from person to person, and how they personally invest in every project a piece of themselves, but one word is particularly important to your creative team member and to you: Value. Value has about as many definitions as there are people who are valued. The key concept to understand about your creative team member is that as YOU value them, they will feel valued, and will in turn operate in a way you value. The saying really is true that “everything rises and falls on leadership”. Though creative persons often take “creative liberties” they are not usually initiators, so it would be contradictory to expect them to constantly put out valuable content when you, their manager, are not showing them they are of any value to you. I never like to tell people to do or not to do something without secondly giving them examples of what that should or could look like.

First off, because I know it was on everyone’s mind as soon as you saw this section, pay scale; money talks as everyone knows it. Unless your church media workers are expressively wealthy, their church paycheck buys their food, clothes, mortgage, gas, vacations, weekend trips, and everything else you do and want for your family. I think too often, church workers are under appreciated but even more underpaid. As a long time church worker, I know every excuse of how we are to do it for Jesus, not for the money, and while I can personally testify that God’s grace is enough and if the church is providing for you, Jesus is more than capable to make ends meet, but it did not come without stress and that did in turn effected the quality of my work and my efficiency. It also, let me know real fast just how valuable that church viewed my work and just how fast I would be leaving. As I will talk about in a moment, It can take lengthy amount of time to mold your creative team so every jives and they are able to produce work within the church’s “identity”. Once you get to this point, you don’t want to lose these guys and gals, you want to make sure they stay around, otherwise you will have to repeat this process all over again with the new guy.

Part 2 of this pay scale and value is YOU. As their manager, you are personally dubbed in charge of protecting them and sticking up for them. I have had my thumb on the heartbeat of a lot various areas of church life, and I have found no one else who is taken advantage of quite as often as the Media Ministry. As manager or director, YOU are usually the direct link to the administrative personnel, you are like a dam in that you have to control the flow of work and information to your creative personnel. You need to help your team members manage their time as well as watch their load. Because every project is something they personally invest in, they are at risk of investing too much, spending too much time making it better than it’s worth. You cannot be a dictator in this by controlling everything, but there will be times you need to give them a clear direction on just how much time they should spend or if they are spending too much time. These kinds of remarks can be balanced out with giving them more freedom when you have a lighter workload to really make something “pop” if they want to invest that extra time into the projeect, just make sure they are getting rest as well. Rest is another keyword, Pastors can be burned out when they are in ministries that believe the pastor should be visiting all 12,000 members weekly and leading every community project; likewise if your video team members are writing the script, managing the people on the shoot, filming, editing, and getting it ready for the Sunday worship service, plus working all day on Sunday, they are going to be burned out. Make sure you are giving them time off, or come in late. A trend I have come to appreciate in many church media ministries include: a rotating weekend schedule where staff who have Sunday responsibilities rotate with other staff members so no one is working every Sunday, also they take at least one Monday – Friday work day off each week, usually Friday so families can do some type of weekend activity. Along with protecting them from being overworked, you have to be the one requesting a raise and any extra compensation for their work, if not YOU, who.

CRITICISM
One thing I don’t want you coming away with from this is that you have to be all lovey-dovey to your creative people all the time, and have to take whatever product they give you for fear of making them feel unvalued. Criticism is part of the creative process, and though some may be more sensitive than others to it, it’s a part all of them know and expect. The first thing you need to consider is who is criticizing and their credentials. At an early job I had doing post-production work, my supervisor was not at all skilled in the video realm of art and we butted heads for over two years on how to talk to one another. He came from a graphics/print background and would use words that had no meaning or a very different meaning in the video realm. It was like the singer saying to the sound engineer, “I just want it to sound more green, I can feel too much yellow.” With our different backgrounds shaping our speech, we spent much of the time frustrated when working on projects. I in particular was frustrated when he would criticize an idea I had for a video because it was too fast or breaks some print rule. I felt like he had no right to judge or criticize my work that he had no experience in. This was also usually topped off when I would get in trouble for spending too much time on something because he felt like it should have been done quicker, but again with no idea what the process entailed. I am not a confrontational person, so I never confronted him about these issues, but simply prayed about them. I don’t think the elements that caused the issue ever went away, instead we both adapted. He took the time to ask me how long it should take, and learn what the process entailed instead of assuming. Likewise, I asked him to show me examples of what he was looking for, and through this we learned to communicate in our native tongue, visual examples. From this, I want you to learn that if you are not a fellow expert in the same creative field as the team member whose work is under review, help them to feel like you understand their work before criticizing any choices. Remember that it is unlikely they would ever blatantly create something that looks awful, they probably had a logical thought process, but either did not completely understand your expectations, or perhaps took some “creative liberties” to make it something of their own. If the end product is not what you were expecting, first examine whether it accomplishes the same goals you expected. If it still lacks the completeness you wanted, compliment their ideas and offer them to be used on a different product and help them to have a clearer direction for the revision.

CHOOSING THE RIGHT GUY
The hiring process, some churches understand it, others do not have a clue. I have seen the effects of a bad hire; the Media Ministries reputation tarnished, their recommendations ignored, trust broken, and their expectations ground zero. Aside from the facilities department, the Media Ministry touches and supports every arm of the church, from preschool to senior adults. The team is like a family, and just as you wouldn’t want your child marrying some lazy hobo, you don’t want the wrong guy working in your Media Ministry. I believe all staff of a church should be a saved and devoted Christian, serving Christ’s church, certain ministries do have the opportunity to reach out to the unsaved by giving those “down on their luck” a job as a way of showing Christ Love to them. It is my personal recommendation that any Media Ministry planning on taking on such an opportunity should be well prayed about and a decision discussion with the senior and/or associate pastor.

With that piece of business out of the way, we can get on with the important stuff. The team is like a family, once you have some potential candidates, keyword is plural, let the rest of the team meet them. Never narrow down your choices to just one candidate early on in the process, give good candidate a chance. Personally, I believe every resume is worth a phone call just to talk to them and get a quick overview of who they are outside of a piece of paper. Also, unless the job is extremely technical in nature, work experience should compensate for any lack in education; 5 years experience can more than make up for an Associates Degree over a Bachelors Degree. Once you get a couple of people picked out and you want to do a physical interview, consider letting any of the people that will be working under them or with them be part of the meeting; advise them not to ask any questions, unless they ask you first, but to just see what they think. If not in the first interview consider even more strongly for the second or third interviews. No one is perfect, everyone has character and personality flaws, some of these can be overcome and some cannot. Do not do the person or your ministry’s reputation the injustice by hiring them just to be disappointed in a couple of years when you cannot take it any longer.

[Gracetech]

Seems a bit one sided and i don't exactly get the purpose. Not to be harsh but quick doesn't describe this guide.

I do agree with alot of your points. My concern is that you think Media Ministry is a Creative job. My travels have always shown that churches are full of creative people. What they are not full of are technical people. It's for this reason that i usually lead churches, that are looking to start a media ministry, to look for someone with technical gifting. A technically gifted person with administration skill can develop both technical and artistic teams. Then watch as they thrive in their gifting.

Sure it can be argued both ways. What i find though is that artistic types are horrible at administration. While artistic types are great to have around they are not always thinking of maintaining gear. Technical types generally are about building and maintaining the systems. If you can get a Technician that has good Administration gifting then they can really build teams. You give ideas to a creative team and they will devour it.

All to often i've come in behind creative people and it was a struggle just to get everything working again and to develop structure. It generally takes about 2 years to develop teams because people usually left because of "Creative differences". You ever here someone leaving because of "Technical differences".

So if i've spoken without good context let me know. I'm sure some great arguments could be made in the opposite direction.

crt

[videoguru]

Originally Posted by Gracetech

Seems a bit one sided and i don't exactly get the purpose. Not to be harsh but quick doesn't describe this guide.

I do agree with alot of your points. My concern is that you think Media Ministry is a Creative job. My travels have always shown that churches are full of creative people. What they are not full of are technical people. It's for this reason that i usually lead churches, that are looking to start a media ministry, to look for someone with technical gifting. A technically gifted person with administration skill can develop both technical and artistic teams. Then watch as they thrive in their gifting.

I understand what you are saying, and as a rough draft, I think I may need to go back and make sure the theme and purpose is presented in each part, which is to teach and inform the administrative type people of how to work with their creative workers. I am a particularly technical person, but also have a great deal of creativity when it comes to video production. My supervisors tend to be creative people as well, but the problem always came with administrative personnel who don't seem to understand us. I never wanted anyone to doubt whether there are creative people in a church, but rather to help the administrative leader that you are talking about, work with the creative people.

What are your thoughts about this?

[Gracetech]

I see what you are doing now. My only thought is that this is alot of reading and was wondering if you could condense the ideas you have.

Recently i rolled out I.T. Policies to our staff and church and i could count on one finger the amount of people that actually read them. My point is people want the key points, they don't care about the details.

Is it strange that i find it funny that you have to explain creative people to others?

I really wish i could be of more help but maybe someone else could chime in and do better than me?

Maybe some more thinking time will bring me some ideas.

crt