Blog | 4 Indisputable Qualities of Church Tech Directors
4 Indisputable Qualities of Church Tech Directors
Being a church tech director is not an easy job, and everyone knows it. While they may never be in the spotlight like the pastor, worship leader, or musicians, they are always arriving earlier and leaving later than anyone else. They’re setting everything up, organizing, running the slides, planning lights, and doing everything else related to Sunday morning production. And just like the band, they are there for both the rehearsal and Sunday morning.
As you might guess, a difficult job requires a specific skill set and personality. These are 4 indisputable qualities of great church tech directors:
4 Indisputable Qualities of Church Tech Directors
If you are already a tech director, are looking to become one, or are scoping out candidates to fill the position, these are a few incredibly important qualities to have in a church tech or media director. If you are currently working in a tech director role and want to improve, these are 4 key characteristics that deserve your attention!
1) Organizational Skills
No duh. Organization is a plus for any role in a church. As a pastor, you should have your sermon series and ministry direction figured out and organized ahead of time. As a worship pastor, you need your team and song scheduling organized. But as a tech director? I’d argue organizational skills are paramount for succeeding in the role. It’s not a “bonus”, it’s a “must”.
There are so many ways that organization plays a factor in tech director roles. You need to be organized with church media like videos and worship background loops to streamline your processes for building sermon and lyric slides. You need to be organized with how the soundboard and light board are setup and organized if that’s within your job responsibilities. You need to be physically organized as well in regards to knowing the location of all cables, audio and tech units, batteries, and anything else that could be a potential Sunday-morning catastrophe or bottleneck to efficiency.
2) Communication Skills
This one is also a big “must” for quality church tech directors. If you’re looking to hire a church tech director or media director, or simply looking to improve in your current role, communication skills are incredibly important.
Aside from working on your own organization, great communication can exponentially increase your efficiency and accuracy during rehearsals and Sundays, which frees you up from correcting everything that’s wrong and allows you to instead focus on what can be improved and how everything looks – something you wouldn’t have an awful lot of time for if you’re re-ordering sermon slides, changing song forms, correcting lyrics, etc.
Communicate with your worship pastor each week. Get the setlist and make sure you are in the loop. Tell them to add you to Planning Center Online if that’s what they’re using. Ask for what songs and which versions are being played. Ask if they are playing them to form like the track, or if they are cutting, adding, or re-ordering anything.
Likewise, communicate with your pastor ahead of time. Get his sermon notes and understand how the message will flow. How should points be broken apart between slides? How fast will each section go? You need those notes early so you can be ready on Sunday morning. If you are scrambling two hours before service to get the slides ready, that’s a problem.
Set up reliable and consistent communication channels. Do you schedule a phone call at 4:30pm every Tuesday? Do you have an email chain that goes out 2-days before rehearsal every week? Find a communication channel, schedule it, and keep it consistent.
3) Leadership Skills
A tech director isn’t just someone running a computer – they’re a leader who is leading an entire section of your ministry. Your worship pastor covers the music, your lead pastor covers the congregation and Sunday message, and your tech director is literally leading everything that makes either of those pieces possible.
Leadership skills are huge. Of course, the preferred personality and leadership traits of a tech director may be quite different than that of lead pastor or worship pastor, but it is still of utmost importance that a quality church tech director be able to lead the ministry. As your church expands, you need a tech director who is responsible and disciplined with their ministry, and able to train in new volunteers or potential employees to handle the station when they’re away.
4) Tech Skills
This is perhaps the most obvious out of the entire list. Tech skills are a must for a quality tech director. However, when it comes to tech expertise, a quality tech director needs tech expertise in all areas – sound, lighting, presentation software, and occasionally graphic design (for building sermon slides).
Get a feel for what your tech director candidate knows – is he familiar with ProPresenter? Does he have graphic design experience? Does he have experience mixing a live church worship band if that’ll be in his list of responsibilities?
Having a tech director who is well rounded and can speak into and train others in a wide variety of areas is incredibly helpful.
In Summary
Obviously, finding the “ideal candidate” is going to vary from church to church. Your ministry has specific needs that only a specific personality and skill set will help fill. However, as you’re conducting your search for a new church tech director, we’d argue that the above four qualities are incredibly important.
Find a tech director that has great organization and communication skills, as that will help to keep your entire worship ministry on track. Also, remember that a role as a lead tech director at a church is a role of leadership, and thus you should look for someone with good leadership. They need to be able to run the ministry and train in new volunteers and staff, which leads to the last point. Find someone who is skilled in tech. Not just one area, but a variety of areas. If they can speak into sound, lighting, presentation software, graphic design, and other aspects of your church’s tech ministry, that will help your ministry exponentially!
About the Author
Chris Fleming is a professional musician from Minneapolis, MN who has played with artists such as TAYA, Big Daddy Weave, and Jason Gray. He is actively involved with the worship music scene and has contributed as a drummer, music director, song writer, and producer for various worship artists and churches locally and nationally. Chris is the Motion Designer at Motion Worship, helping to create motion background collections and countdowns for our subscribers.