Left-brained or right-brained? Mathematical or creative? Practical or sentimental? Logical or emotional?  Most people have qualities from both sides of the spectrum but often have the tendency to be stronger on one side.  You can give the same task to two different types of people and they will approach it in different ways, often times resulting in different outcomes that are no more right than the other.  Take the branding of a company into a logo for example.  Someone who is more creative and in touch with the emotions that the company wants to evoke will make a totally different logo than the mathematical person who wants to be practical above anything else.  Depending on what the company’s purpose is, either one of the logos could be the right match.

I’ve been doing technical production work with volunteers at my church for a long time and over the years I have seen a lot of different people come through our ministry.  I’ve had volunteers that would be on time, understanding all the ins and outs of the equipment they were operating, and some of them even had the troubleshooting skills to fix any issues without help.  I’ve also worked with volunteers that may have never shown up on time, but their creative minds were able to select looping videos and create lighting looks that made a bigger impact on the service then what I had originally envisioned.  Both types of people are necessary in this kind of ministry.  Although it’s sometimes difficult for them to connect to each other, they have a common bond in their mission.  Each of them is there to serve their Savior and engage in our mission as a church to “Free people to follow Jesus.”

If you were to look at our paid production staff, you would notice a trend of people who have close to an even balance between creative and technical mindsets.  This is an important aspect of leadership in this ministry that was lacking in years past.  Without this balance, it is difficult to develop relationships and train a strong team of volunteers.  Over the past year or two, we have started to see the balance emerge in our volunteers as well.  What we call “high capacity volunteers” have grown into roles where they are leading the other volunteers in both a creative and technical manner.

While I feel like we have the strongest team of staff and volunteers that we have ever had, there still seems to be something missing.  We all work great together and can accomplish awesome things as a team, but I feel like our relationships could be deeper.  Many of the team members are in small groups, and when they are not serving I often see them in the congregation, so I know that they are being fed (to a degree) spiritually.  I just think we could grow more as a team (in numbers and strength) if we could figure out how to better cultivate the relational aspect of our ministry.

While it’s great that we are able to create environments where people are more able to connect with the worship music and the sermon, it’s hard sometimes to realize the impact of what we are doing without that direct relational connection to the life-change that is happening.  Here’s an example:  We had a volunteer that was a self-proclaimed atheist.  He came to serve with us under the suggestion of his mother because he enjoys working with technology.  After months of praying for him as he served with us, we found out that he was being baptized.  It’s an incredible story of life-change, but we had no idea it was happening because the relationship with him was not cultivated.  We found out about him being baptized the day that it was happening.  Call me a pessimist, finding the speck of dirt on freshly washed linen, but I think that shows a disconnect somewhere.  As I continue to serve with this team, I hope and pray that God will lead me to ways to better relate with the team and develop our relationships.  Hopefully through that we can grow into an even stronger team as we expand to more campuses and continue to serve together.