Good Help: Training and Trusting Media Production Volunteers
By Stephen Heywood
I’m a professional broadcast engineer and a minister. In addition to my weekday job at PTZOptics, I’m responsible for all media and audio/visual ministries at my church, Shiloh Ministries. We have a multicamera setup used for recording and live streaming, with all the productions effects you’d expect from a modern-day broadcast. We have the ability to track shots, introduce lower thirds, and even show social media comments. I’m also responsible for visual content used during the service, including video and slides. It’s far from a one-man operation, but I’ve been able to find plenty of good help by cultivating interest among congregants, creating a virtuous cycle of training and cross-training to ensure reasonable boundaries on my volunteers’ responsibilities. Over time, I’ve grown a team of volunteers I can trust to run a full-scale service broadcast without my help.
A Job for Anyone
When I need to expand the team’s capabilities, I issue a general call to the congregation to see if anyone wants to join the media team. Whatever they choose is fine. I pride myself in having a well-rounded corps of volunteers, so adding capacity anywhere helps us everywhere. I also make a point of appealing directly to the church’s youth. Over the years, the majority of our team has joined when they’re part of the youth congregation.
The important idea to hold onto is that anyone - anyone – can substantively contribute to the media production of a service if they have the interest and the will to learn. The age range of my current team is 9 to 76, but I have photo evidence of kindergarten-age kids running Pro Presenter and TriCaster during services. Children love to push buttons and making them part of the media team is about teaching them to push the right ones.
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