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SALT Interview: Nancy Thompson

kamil_hopeware — Wed, 13 Jul 2016 21:47:50 +0000

Nancy Thompson
Volunteer Technical Director
Victory of the Lamb – Lutheran Church
Franklin, WI

1. Tell me a little bit about yourself:
“Well I guess I should say I don’t have any formal training in the technical creative arts. My degree was in physical education and I have a Masters in cardiac rehab and adult fitness. I’ve always been an active volunteer at church; early on I was mostly in kids ministry. As my kids were growing up I kind of just got involved in kids ministry.
About 10 years ago we joined Victory of the Lamb, which was a church plant. The first summer, we had a soccer camp for the kids—it was our version of VBS. I had put together a simple slideshow of some pictures we took at the camp and I guess that qualified me to be a visual worship coordinator. Our pastor just asked me, ‘So… do you want to research what presentation software we should use?’ and I said, ‘What’s presentation software?’ So, after quite a bit of research and testing out trial versions, I decided on ProPresenter—that was my first little taste of visual tech! I am proud of myself—I think I made the right choice there haha! My role in tech has grown as the church has grown; from starting in a soccer club hall, to meeting in a movie theater, to our recent move into our own ministry center—it’s been a lot of fun.”

2. Are you a volunteer or do you work full time at your church? What does your role and team look like?
“Yes to being a volunteer, and… yes to working a lot. I don’t think that combination is unusual for people who attend SALT. I think my official title would be ‘volunteer technical director.’ My major knowledge and talents are with the visual. Our ministry center seats about 350 and we’ve gone from one service at the movie theater to two services currently. We’ve had to build up all of our volunteer teams since the move. We have 15-20 volunteers on the tech team and we have about 4-5 positions to fill every Sunday. We stream, archive our services, and put together the ProPresenter slides weekly. Then, I pretty much schedule the tech team, train volunteers, and try to put together helpful resources. We’re really a volunteer-driven ministry—our church is that size where there are lots of things to do, but there’s not really the money to have a lot of paid people doing it.”

3. What have been the most challenging parts of your job?
“Well, I think moving into a new building is an immediate challenge. Everything is new: all the equipment is new, the building is new, some of the volunteers are new. It’s a challenge, but it’s fun too.
Not having a formal technical background, you’d think the technical part of the job would be the most challenging, but if you spend the time and ask enough questions, you can figure that stuff out. SALT has helped point me to resources and add people to my network for support. I think it’s more challenging to lead your team well and make sure that they feel like they aren’t volunteering to push buttons, but to help share Christ’s victory and change lives. Then, consistency is also a challenge. With new volunteers and different volunteers each week, it takes good training processes, which we’re still developing, to keep everyone on the same page from week to week.”

4. Did you come to SALT with a group or by yourself? What is that experience like?
“I have always come by myself and I think it would be really fun to come with a team, but I don’t mind coming alone. I get so much out of it because it’s personal development as well as professional development. It’s such a valuable experience that I continue to come even though I use personal funds and it’s a 10 hour drive. Hey, a long drive is the perfect time to catch up on podcasts, right? I feel that there are so many people to connect with and the community groups are a nice way for people who come without a team to make connections. It’s also a time to leverage what we learn in the breakout sessions and get different perspectives from the others in our group. This last year I really enjoyed my group. It was just a really good group and we shared our contact information and connected a few times afterwards. This is reminding me I should send out some e-mails to see how everyone is doing!”

5. What revelations did you gain from SALT Conference?
“Well, this will be my fourth conference. The beginning to the end is a whole revelation. I think of it as more of an experience at this point. In the process of, for example, being creatively unique and learning about that, we are actually experiencing uniqueness throughout the details of the conference. I remember last year was so great. Take the first day of the conference last year: before you had even stepped in the building, there was music playing, hosts greeting you, and lots of energy. Then, when you stepped inside, you’re greeted by this butler guy dressed in formal attire, holding a tray and serving you a drink. That was unique. It made me think… ‘How could we apply this same concept at our church? How can we make our guests feel this special?’ SALT actually puts into practice what they’re trying to teach you, and every detail of the conference was very intentional. That’s one of things that I want to be more of as a technical leader.”

6. Did you have a favorite memory during the conference?
“I think Brad Zimmerman’s breakout on being a one-man team was really helpful. It helped in building confidence. Also knowing that all the presenters are so generous with sharing their information and time, and they encourage you to contact them later if you have further questions, which is really helpful for someone like me.”

7. What projects are you currently working on in your church?
“I think, as far as the tech part of it goes, we’ve moved beyond the ‘Oh my gosh, I hope we can just get sound to come out of the speakers’ and we’re settling into our new ministry center. What I’m working on now is building the volunteer team, casting vision for the team, and being more consistent in our implementation.”

8. Any recommendations to other church techs about SALT Conference?
“I just tell people ‘Get it on the calendar!’ I guess every time I go, I feel like SALT was created just for me. Like the team sat around the table and said, ‘What would Nancy need in a conference? What does she need to help share Christ’s victory?’ and I always feel like they’ve done it. It’s always different and just when I think they can’t give me something more, they always do.”

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SALT Interview: Mickey Lyons

kamil_hopeware — Wed, 29 Jun 2016 01:52:24 +0000

Mickey Lyons
Technical Director
Mount Pisgah – United Methodist Church
Johns Creek, GA

1. Tell me a little bit about yourself:
“I grew up in the church and was always involved in video production ever since I was early on in high school—back when it was still VHS and Beta and all that. I basically went to school for video; I never changed majors or anything. I was always broadcast journalism and I worked at the FOX 5 affiliate in Atlanta. The whole time I was very involved in my home church, in youth ministry and starting up a video ministry there as well. One of the pastors at my church said ‘Hey, there’s this opening over at Mount Pisgah, I don’t know if you’d be interested in it or not.’ That was 2005, and I’ve been at Mount Pisgah ever since. I came in as the audio/visual technician. In 2011, I moved to technical director. I’ve always felt a call to the ministry and my mother always said, ‘Just use your talents for the Lord, and you’ll be good,’ and so that’s kind of where the rubber hit the road. I finally had this opportunity and didn’t really know what was going to happen when I took a full-time job with the church. But, it’s 11 years later and it has been a long path of obedience.”

2. What does ministry look like for you?
“My role is technical director so that’s over all audio, video, and lighting. Currently our structure includes a videographer, an event technician, a technical producer who does lighting and audio. Right now it’s a staff of four and we support all of the ministries of the church. We have around a 2500 member congregation.”

3. What have been the most difficult parts of your job?
“The biggest struggle for me personally is the balance between family, faith, and work and to be able to determine when it’s work and when it’s God. The first ministry that we’re given is our families. I’ve got two kids and a wife at home and I’m trying to make sure that I’m at baseball games, I’m able to tuck them in at night, I’m not working every single weekend. That’s the biggest struggle for me and I can imagine that would be for a lot of people. I try to look at everything with sustainability, sometimes that will get me in trouble when I’m not flexible enough, but at the same time I think you have to have some sort of boundary. Then, still trying to find a way to say yes but to also make sure that you’re not doing it at the detriment of your personal life.”

4. Do you come to SALT Conference with a group or by yourself? What’s has that experience been like?
“I brought the team and the funny thing is that it’s been a slightly different team each year that we’ve gone. I think I’ve only had one guy that’s doubled up. But, it’s been beneficial for all of us each time.
One thing that I’ve always liked that SALT did was that they try to make sure that your group gets split up into different community groups. I think it’s really beneficial for everyone on the team to meet other people and to see how other people are dealing with the same problems. We would always get dinner together at night and discuss what we all talked about. We also purchased SALT University too so we could share that with the rest of the volunteer team when we got back.

5. What revelations/innovations did you gain from SALT conference? Any success stories?
“The breakouts are always good. Sometimes you learn something that you don’t know, sometimes it’s a reinforcement of stuff that you do know, and sometimes you see things from a new perspective.
Specifically, last year, the “Makers Movement” class that Nick Rivero did was awesome. He was talking about outsourcing stuff from China and taking a bit of the mystery out of that. I put that to action actually at the SALT Conference. I went to that session and that night I was starting up e-mail conversations and was able to purchase a star curtain. I got in touch directly with a vendor from China and told them exactly what I wanted. I didn’t say, ‘Hey, do you have a product’ but, ‘Hey—this is what I need.’ It just got the ball rolling and now, we own it; we purchased an LED star curtain! We do a big Christmas show each year and have been renting a star curtain for the past eight years. It was kind of neat to say ‘Hey—I know this might look a little bit sketchy, but you can get this stuff and it will work if you take the time.’”

[Mickey told us he was spending approximately $2500 per year renting a curtain, and with this insight from the SALT Breakout, he was able to buy a much better model for about the same price, thus saving him $2500 per year!]

6. What projects are you currently working on in your church?
“I’m actually pretty excited about this one because we just pulled the trigger on it. We’ve got an LED wall coming in a few months. It will be 16 ft. by 9 ft. (roughly 30 panels) so we’ll be able to do a full 16 ft. by 9 ft. screen or we can split it up into columns or whatever shapes we want. I’m really excited about that and glad we have some time with the learning curve with playing with what kind of configurations we can use it in. I think it will be a really versatile tool for us in our staging.
I’m always looking for a way to buy it, be able to use it, and not have to rent. We’ve used that star curtain at least four times since Christmas which is awesome. Anytime we can get something and get multiple uses out of it is great and with the church you’re always trying to stretch the dollar too.

7. Any recommendations to other church techs about the SALT conference or final reflections?
“You should go to SALT because you’re going to be in community with people just like you. There’s not many places that you can get that many technical church people in one space. The benefit of knowing that there’s a community out there and that people are going through the same issues, but also have the same triumphs as you is priceless.”

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