ADHD STAFF!

[jksbc]

I need some good advice on how to deal with a situation. Our staff and leaders are all volunteers except for our senior pastor. He is looking to add me as well as our W/L to the staff on at least a part time basis in the next few months. Our church is a year old and the tech team is in it's infancy. I am the video guy and the leader of the department. I have two sound guys and that's it. We just had our first discovery class last night. That is a class that helps people discover their spiritual gifts and personality traits so they can get plugged in the ministry they fit the best. I know of at least two young ladies that are most likely going to join my team. I am excited about it. I finally get some help. Here is the situation. Our Childrens' Minister has been having issues with the laptop computer I provided for her to run her DVD's on. It basically boils down to impatience and lack of training. I booted everything up for her yesterday morning and had it ready to go. She went in there and switched DVD's and couldn't get it to play. In her panic she ran into the worship center media booth where I was two minutes away from beginning the countdown video. I told her I had 2 minutes and we hurried over to the children's center. One of the young ladies who is getting ready to join my team was working on it. She is somewhat of a computer expert and knows what she's doing. I told the CM that it was in good hands I had to get back to my post. She seemed fine with that. Well here is the kicker. Last night at the close of our discovery meeting she ran up to the front, literally grabbed the microphone out of the instructors hand, and pleaded with the audience to join the children's ministry and said she needed technical people to get her stuff working right! That was a kick in the teeth. I haven't addressed the issue but I want to get a handle on it before it goes too far. I understand her frustrations. I realize that the whole incident with the DVD not playing made me look bad. I have already had one run in with her. The cheap DVD player she was originally using stopped working. I recommended the laptop to replace it so they wouldn't be limited to just DVD's. I told her I would look into it for her and she went behind my back the very next day and asked one of her volunteers to look at it. He knows nothing about multimedia, computers, etc. He called me from the church that afternoon asking me a million and one questions about it. I talked to the pastor and told him I don't have a problem with people willing to help and I don't have a problem with her asking others for help but I do have a problem with her doing it after I told her I would take care of it. He talked to her and she came to me and apologized. She admits that she gets in a panic and when she wants something done she's very impatient. I told her that I understand but please give me the opportunity to stand by my word. It was all handled very delicately and with love. We were okay or so I thought.

[waynehoskins]

Sounds like you need a "help me help you" meeting. I say "meeting"; lunch, whatever. Explain that you really want to help all the ministries of the church with what they need, but running around in an impatient panic makes it not only harder for you to help, but may also hinder other ministries (the sky falling at two minutes to downbeat, for example).

"I want to help you. Help me help you by doing this this and this." For example, if there's a video to be played Sunday morning, test it out first thing. Or submit it by Wednesday and you'll get it loaded and ready to go -- if it comes in on Sunday morning, you can't guarantee it. Or whatever it is in your case.

A few weeks ago -- like a month ago now -- our youth went to camp over spring break. One of our youth interns took a bunch of pictures and set out to make a slideshow. Bless her heart, she tried, but she did it the wrong way (I even said "no, you don't want to do it that way; put it through an editor and give me a file") and handed me the video DVD on Wednesday night to play on Wednesday night, no time for a test run. So we fire it off, and it plays fine, the first three minutes or so. Then it stops abruptly, and my friend the youth intern gal is standing up there with the mike saying "no, that can't be the end, it's not the end, there's more". But that's all there is; when the little Samsung DVD logo bounces around the screen and changes color, that's all there is. My friend the intern was disappointed ("but everything's supposed to be easy on a Mac"), but with short notice that's what happens. If you don't give me three days, I can't guarantee anything. But now, the next time they need a slideshow or video or whatever, I can teach them to use an editor, and chances are they'll listen.

Help me help you. If you rush in panicked just minutes before downbeat about a problem that could have been avoided or detected sooner, I'm sorry, I can't really help you.

[[Admin] osborn4]

There are certainly issues here and I like what Wayne has to say.

It also sounds like an investment in a cheap DVD player as a back up for her may be a good investment.

[tedanderson]

You can't concern yourself with looking bad. It goes with the territory. When I first joined my church and told one of the leaders about my background, he immediately said, "Good! We need somebody who knows what they are doing! We have a bunch of knuckle-head idiots back there messing things up..." and one thing that I have learned is that some days they will sing Hosanna and other days they will advocate your crucifixion. As techies we are sometimes thought to be total jerks because we can't wave a magic wand and fix things instantly on demand.

Don't worry about what they say/think. They will eventually learn that you are the only one who is WILLING and able to help them. I usually say, "You might be mad at me today but you will need something from me tomorrow." And then tomorrow, I can say, "But you thought I was a terrible person yesterday. Are you sure that you REALLY want my help?"

And this isn't an issue of being able to say, "I told you so" or an opportunity to be egotistical but some people have to be taught that they have to be pleasant and patient if they expect your full cooperation. As far as I am concerned, people who complain get sent to the back of the line and I will give more priority to those who are patient and pleasant.

I heard someone once say that a lifeguard ultimately has the responsibility to save you from drowning but if you punch him in the face, you aren't exactly helping the situation.

[waynehoskins]

Originally Posted by tedanderson

I heard someone once say that a lifeguard ultimately has the responsibility to save you from drowning but if you punch him in the face, you aren't exactly helping the situation.

That's brilliant!

By the way, with one of our previous youth pastors we had to have a "help me help you" meeting. It turned what was becoming a bad working relationship into an actual friendship, not to mention that he got much better at, well, helping me help him.

[jksbc]

This site has been such a blessing for me. I appreciate all of this great advice. I have an update to this situation. I called the CM yesterday evening and we had a long talk. I first apologized for her having to go through the situation with the DVD not playing. She originally told me she switched it. Yesterday she told me it was playing, she stopped it to show one of her volunteers how to play it and when she tried to start it back up she got an error. There may be some incompatibility issues. I searched the threads to find some information about which media players will play in full screen mode on the projector automatically. The ones recommended have to be purchased. The laptop is a Toshiba and has a Toshiba media player built in. It was fairly user friendly and the little control interface was easy to lock onto the main monitor while the player plays in full screen mode on the second monitor or projection screen. Anyway there seems to be some issues with the Toshiba player. Do any of you know anything about that? I know that's for a different thread but I thought I would ask. To get back to my update. I used the help me by letting me help you scenario and it worked beautifully. She was very nice about it and said she felt like that was her area of responsibility and knew I was overwhelmed since I was trying to do everything myself. I told her I really appreciate her concerns and willingness but I had been placed in the position to be responsible for the equipment and I would appreciate her letting me put my team members in place and would happily provide her with operators. Joel, you are correct about the DVD player. I have thought of that many times. But, I would need to have some type of converter. I have a VGA cable running about 75' to the projector. I have a cheap cables to go converter from Tiger Direct that I got to run a satellite receiver to our main sanctuary projectors for a Super Bowl party. I need to check it out because I'm not sure it's working. When we were running the old DVD player we had a portable cart up closer to the projector and ran a composite cable.

[tedanderson]

I used the help me by letting me help you scenario and it worked beautifully. She was very nice about it and said she felt like that was her area of responsibility and knew I was overwhelmed since I was trying to do everything myself.

It is good that you are getting her involved in the process. I think that when people on opposing sides of a situation, whether church, the corporate environment, or otherwise, experience the other perspective first hand, then the problems go away very quickly. Hopefully this "help me help you" concept does not end with that meeting.

[bggowing]

One other thing that may help out is to go into the area a couple of times during when they're using the equipment just to do a "Hi, how's everything going, just checking" session so that she knows that she's not alone and that you are wanting to ensure that everything is working. I do that at my church and I understand the limitations of having a small volunteer staff but if it's all possible I highly recommend it even just for the camaraderie that it fosters with other departments.

[shayward]

Sounds like you've got an amazing heart for God, for people, and for ministry. That's 99% of your battle right there. Awesome stuff! And everyone has given some amazing advice already.

One thing I will say: Never, ever, ever underestimate the value of simplicity and stability.

My wife is the Christian Education Pastor, and her biggest focus is Children's Ministries. I'm the Tech Director. Working with kids is hard. If you lose their attention for a minute you can have an entire Sunday morning erupt with chaos. And so it's vital that the technology runs smoothly, effectively, and easily. You've also usually got a large number of infrequent volunteers on a rotation.

Simple is almost always best.

It's great that a computer can play DVDs, but A) they are prone to weird and unpredictable errors, and B) not everyone knows how to use them effectively. I would honestly see it as a big source of unnecessary stress for the children's ministers. And believe me, children's ministries is one of the hardest and most vital ministries in the church.

If you're running a full Children's Church program complete with a Children's Sanctuary, worship software, etc., etc., then you need a computer and you need a member of the tech team present for the entire Children's service.

Short of that, you need two identical DVD players (one for backup), two identical VCRs (one for backup), two identical component CD players (one for backup) capable of playing MP3 CDs, and two identical switcher boxes (one for backup) that are clearly labeled with as few words as possible to control what is getting displayed on the projector or heard through the speakers.

No computers anywhere in sight. Your CM volunteers will love you to bits!

Of course, have the VGA cable available and if they want a special presentation (eg: a PowerPoint of last-week's Easter Egg Hunt) then have a tech available to do that once in a while. Tell them 1 week notice required

Again, mate, you've got a great heart! It sounds like your whole church does. CM workers can be a bit spazzy. I'm married to one and my best friend (main tech operator) is married to another CM volunteer.

[shayward]

Oh... one other thing. You mention you're running VGA. Most projectors have more than one input. RG6 cable is dirt-cheap and easy to terminate. You can get it in beige, too, if that makes it less ugly if running it externally.

[Pastor Ryan]

Let me first commend you on being a faithful volunteer of a start-up church and further congratulate you in the Lord for being hired on, what an honor and a blessing.

These situations are always tough because the Media Ministry is seldom appreciated regardless of where you attend (seldom, there are some exceptions, but still seldom), we Media Ministers are frequently only thought of when something goes wrong with our equipment, or when somebody things we've done something wrong.

The biggest thing I can tell you is to always express how you understand how very important 'their' ministry is, and how important it is to you that their technology and equipment functions correctly.

I am not saying to lie to these people, you know whatever work they are doing in the church is important, but they don't "KNOW" that you think that way.

Biggest piece of advice I can give you is to make your heart known to those you work with, let them know your passion for what you do and in all honest serving in the Media Ministry means that you have a servant's heart. Frankly if you are in the Media Ministry and not serving you aren't doing your job right, and you are.

God Bless you in your service!

[jksbc]

Shayward and Pastor Ryan,Thank you so much for the advice and words of encouragement. CMN ROCKS!