Moving to a new address

I have been working towards a new look for my blog, and experimenting with wordpress.  I think I could wait forever before thinking it is good enough to publish, so instead I’m just doing it.

Check out www.toddelliott.net.  That’s where I’ll be.

 

Product vs. Process

As a technical person, the process matters to me a lot. How we go about achieving a desired outcome is just as important as the outcome. So much of our jobs as technical artists involves planning and executing someone’s creative idea. However, I can be so focused on the process that I can shoot down most of the ideas that people have. Because I am the person responsible for pulling off some crazy idea, how it gets done matters a bunch to me.

I have been kicked out of so many creative brainstorming meetings that I have lost count.

Over time I had become known as that person who cared less about having a great service and more about having the perfect process. Every “i” dotted and every “t” crossed mattered more to me than whatever the final outcome was. Eventually, I learned two things: most brainstormed ideas never happen; and most people in the brainstorming weren’t designed to think about the process required to pull off their idea, that’s me.

So my job is to care deeply about the process because that’s the way God designed me and the way He needs me fulfill my role in the body of Christ. I also need to be good with people who care deeply about the product, because that’s the way God designed them and the way He needs them to fulfill their role in the body of Christ. God needs us to work together to do both: a great product and a great process.

Be a champion for the part that matters to you. Let others champion the part that matters to them. We must have both.

 

What is technical excellence anyway? part 2

Here’s another thought about defining technical excellence:  excellence is being better today than yesterday.  I love this idea because there is an element of striving, of trying new things, and possibly making mistakes along the way.  Being better today than yesterday puts excellence into which ever context we find ourselves in.   What is excellent for me, isn’t necessarily excellence for you and vice versa.

You could argue that there is a baseline for excellence, a level of acceptability.  I probably wouldn’t argue with you too much on that point.  But I would argue that there needs to be some flexibility on where this line is, based on each of our abilities and our experiences.  I would also say that if my ability and my experience create feedback at every event I am apart of, there is a problem.

Being better today than yesterday requires mistakes to be made and risks to be taken.  However, if we make the same mistakes over and over again, how can we say that we are achieving excellence?  But if we make mistakes and make adjustments for them not to happen again, now we are moving the line of excellence.

I was once training someone in the role of technical director, and he kept making the same mistake several times in a row, and each time, in the moment, I’d step in to talk about how to improve.  Then, during a break, he asked me how he was doing and I said “I’m ready for us to make a new mistake.”

In order to achieve excellence, we need to be ready to make mistakes.  When mistakes happen, we need to let the mistakes make us better today than we were yesterday.

Are you open to mistakes happening?  Are you getting better as a result of them?

Be excellent.

 

What is technical excellence anyway? (probably part 1)

When it comes to doing production in our churches, what is technical excellence really?  Is it the best gear?  The best volunteers?  As close to perfection as possible?

After thinking about my post, “A Clean Stage is a Happy Stage“, I came across another Marty O’Connor classic: Excellence is doing the best with what you have.  This doesn’t say anything about perfection, but simply using what you have currently, and doing your best with it.  This is something we can all do, regardless of what church we are a part of, regardless of the conditions we work under, or the kind of equipment we have.

When I was at Kensington (groan from Willow people, cheer from Kensington people, indifference from everyone else),  I used to look at Willow Creek and think “Sure they can do excellent production.  Look at all the gear they have!”  After coming away from a Willow conference depressed, I started to realize that I could take the equipment I did have and do the best possible job with it.  I could get the most out of it every Sunday.  I could wrap it in duct tape one more week to keep it going until we could afford to replace it.  As a result of this change in perspective, I was able to appreciate that things weren’t perfect, but that we were, in fact, achieving technical excellence on a weekly basis.

Some of us need to release the idea of perfection.  Having a flawless service or event is a honorable goal, but very rarely achievable.  Always trying to be better.  Always learning from mistakes.  Always stretching ourselves to try new ways.  Using what I already have to its fullest potential.  This is the kind of technical excellence I want to shoot for.

 

Rain Down

I was reading in the book of Hebrews today and wanted to tweet the verse I was reading, but it was too many characters…so here’s Hebrews 6:7:

Land that drinks in the rain often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed receives the blessing of God.

The thing that struck me the most about this verse is that the crops that are produced are for “those for whom it is farmed”.  The rain doesn’t fall to grow crops for the benefit of the land, but for the benefit of the people for whom the crops are grown.  Thinking about receiving from God and drinking in all that He has for me, I assumed that it was all for my own benefit.

The idea here is that I can drink in God’s goodness all day long, but the growth, the result of all that drinking in, is for the benefit someone besides me.  This is my family, my co-workers, the people in my sphere of influence.  Ultimately, the blessing of God comes, but it isn’t the goal.  I drink in the rain so that God can use me to change the world.

How am I going to live differently today because I have soaked in God’s rain this morning?  What will you do with God’s generous rain today?

A little longer than a tweet 🙂

 

A Clean Stage is a Happy Stage

This is a phrase I have been hearing since almost the first moment I started doing production. My friend and personal hero, Marty O’Connor used to say this all the time. In fact, I would imagine he still says it.  The basic premise is that taking time to make the stage clean matters.  Running cables straight, finishing a job correctly, cleaning up trash, and resetting the stage to an agreed upon “normal”, are just a few examples of what this phrase means to me.

I have heard it so many times, it feels like something everybody knows and everybody values.  We have had a few conversations about this part of our ministry lately and it is interesting how easy it is to lose sight of or to get comfortable with how things look.

At my house, when something needs to make its way back upstairs, my wife likes to put piles at the bottom of the steps to remind the kids to grab what belongs to them and take it to their rooms.  It is amazing to me how easily that pile becomes invisible.  We all just end up walking right by it, like it isn’t even there, and as a result the pile keeps getting bigger and bigger until we cant take it any more…or we have guests coming over.

When was the last time you took a good look at your stage area?  Your booth?  Backstage?  Has the pile at the bottom of your steps become invisible to you?  If you had guests coming over, would you be embarrassed by all the piles?

Keeping the stage clean is a simple yet foundational element to everything else we do.  Take a walk around with eyes open, and take your piles up to your room.

 

Collaboration

I realized yet again, that I love to collaborate. As a Technical Director, I don’t necessarily “do” anything, other than try to set other people to do what they do. If I can get out of the way or get other things out of the way so people can bring their best, then I have succeeded.  This doesn’t happen without lots of collaboration.

For people to bring their best, means they need to be allowed to make choices that I wouldn’t necessarily make.  For them to succeed, I need to learn the difference between my way being right (and theirs wrong) and my way just being different.  On some level, it would be so much easier to not collaborate and just tell everyone how I want everything to be.  The problem is that most people can’t function very long just being told what to do at every turn.  Eventually, they turn off their brains and just become robots…but at least things are done the exact certain way.

I will wrestle and struggle my way to collaborate as a first choice every time.  I know that collectively, the group as way better ideas than me alone.  If I restricted our team to just what I know and what I think, it would be a very stale and dull environment.

There is definitely a baseline of how things should be.  That should be defined and everyone should know what those things are.  Above the baseline, I want to release people to bring their best so that what we do can have the maximum impact.

If you lead production folks, how can you release people to bring their best?  How can you change your process to allow for more collaboration?

 

Help Me Understand…

I have been struck again this week by the fact that the world of church production is a mystery to non-production people.  This isn’t a bad thing, or something to try to solve.  Andy Stanley would say “it is a tension to be managed” (he would actually say it twice for emphasis, but I’ll just write it once).  I agree that it is something that is ongoing, but the word managed sounds too much like the word tolerated or even giving up on it being any better, almost resignation.

As I have been talking to the various production people I work with, and then speaking to the producers of the ministry they support, I am amazed at how easy it is to misunderstand each other, to assume something that isn’t true, to make conclusions about people without knowing them or asking for more information.

As I write this, I am realizing that there are tons of dynamics going on here, and that I could write all day about ways to improve things or how things should be different, but I am going to focus on one.

For crying out loud production people, start communicating with your counterparts that don’t get your world!  You do so much behind the scenes that nobody sees or even understands, and instead of giving you a pat on the back for all your hard work, they end up wondering what you do with all your time.  All they know is that they don’t see you around.  The other thing they know is that you say “no” to all their great ideas without any kind of alternatives or options.  When someone is wondering what you do all day, and then you tell them they can’t do something, no wonder there is a gulf between the booth and the stage!

For years, I would wait for the stage people to come to me to understand my world.  I’m an introvert.  It’s OK if I just hang back here by the booth and everyone will come to me and get to know me and ask me how I’m doing and marvel at all the gear I re-racked this week.  It sounds like the beginning to a bad joke.

Get out of your cube, your office, the booth and engage with the people on stage on stage or whoever you need to, in order to bridge the chasm of understanding the exists.  Make the move to help the non-production people you work with understand your world…in language they can understand.  Create opportunities to connect outside of the tension of services and rehearsals.

Is there tension?  Yes.  Will it go away?  Probably not.  Do we need to live with it?  No.  Should it be managed?  I think we must get beyond managed and figure out ways to leverage the tension for the benefit of our churches.  How can we take our differences and celebrate them and push each other to create the best services for our congregations possible?  One thing is for sure, it won’t happen without tons of communication.  That starts with you.

 

Production is Art

Have you ever noticed that the stereotype for production at events involves a microphone not being on, followed feed back. I always get annoyed when I am watching a movie or a TV show where this scene is acted out. It is so cliche and predictable, and so true so much of the time.

I was at an event a while ago, and I saw all this play itself out.  The technical botches went beyond mics not being on, but included poor lighting and less than wonderful graphic work.  People are so used to going to events where this happens, that it is accepted as normal.  So normal, that it is part of pop culture.

As a technical artist, I put a lot of effort into changing this generalization by making any production I am a part of invisible, seamless with what is happening on stage.  It’s not always wiz bang or the most cutting edge technology, but it is always using technology to advance the event/service to a higher place. This includes having mics on when they should be, lighting something up that should be lit, or pointing a camera where the focus needs to be, but it also means something much more.

To take this one step further, if production is only about hitting every cue right, pointing lights in the right spot or having a mic on a the right moment, we are missing so much of what production can be about.  I have been thinking about U2’s current tour and how breathtaking the production is.  Now if the same set and same lights and same everything were applied to a high school  battle of the bands, we would all say the production distracted from the content of the event (or maybe vice versa).  For U2, the production supports, nay, enhances the content that U2 is bringing to the party.  Does this happen because there are some gear happy tech people in a dark room deciding what the production should look and feel like?  Definitely not.  What’s happening here is U2 is partnering with some amazing production artists to create an entire experience for thousands of people.

Now, I would wait in line to hear U2 play at the Penny Road Pub down the street without much production, and it would be amazing.  But with the combined efforts of the members of U2 and their production team, they can create an experience like none other for thousands of people at once.

Let’s take this one step even further.  What if we used the technical arts, not for the sake of using cool gear, or trying to be the U2 360 Tour, but for the sake of enhancing the message of Christ.  Not changing the message.  Not creating our own message.  Not enhancing it into something totally distracting.  But working closely with the people creating content to craft a life changing experience for people, together.

Production without content is like battle of the bands using U2’s stage:  a huge waste.  And content without production is like seeing U2 at the Penny Road Pub:  good, but not all it could be.  But content, enhanced by the artistic use of production is a powerful combination.

 

Funnel Vision

I had a vision the other day.  I’m not really a vision kind of a person, but I am still thinking about it a week later, so I figured it was worth writing down.

My vision had a big funnel in it.  Like the kind my dad used when we put gas in the tractor.  Stainless steel, pretty big, maybe the only difference is my vision funnel didn’t smell like gas.

In my non-gas smelling vision, God had opened up heaven and the funnel was there to catch God’s power, blessing and whatever God was pouring down.  The funnel was used to catch and focus His blessing and favor onto His people.  God doesn’t need the funnel, but for whatever reason He decides to use it as a way to communicate His love to this world.

The top of the funnel changes from larger to smaller allowing more or less of God in.  The bottom of the funnel is larger or small allowing more or less of God out.

I am the funnel.

The top of the funnel is how much I am willing to open myself up to what God would have for me;  how much I receive what God is throwing my way.  The bottom of the funnel is what I do with it.

Top of the Funnel: Am I opening myself up to God and allowing Him to speak into my life?  Am I trusting Him to do all He said He would do?  Am I filling up myself with God’s word on a regular basis and having it affect my daily life?

Bottom of the Funnel: Am I restricting what God wants to do in this world or am I freely giving away what He has given to me?  Am I comfortable?  Am I keeping all the knowledge, experience and perspective to myself or am I ready to give it all away to help someone else on their journey?   Are the choices I make affecting people around me positively?  Am I acting on what I feel God is calling me to be about?

Could the top of my funnel be bigger?  Without question.  But the top of the funnel is between me and God.  The top of the funnel involves me making time for Him; it involves filling my mind with His word; it involves me receiving from God.

My trouble is the bottom of the funnel.  In my vision, I was keeping the bottom of the funnel very narrow.  Because of my own insecurities and my own hang ups, I was choosing to limit what God wanted to do with my life and in the lives of the people around me.

If the world needs more of God than less, why would I allow my own issues get in the way?  Why wouldn’t I want the bottom of my funnel as wide as the top?  To not restrict God’s power, love and blessing flowing through me?

The people around me need me to stop being a narrow funnel.  My work place needs me to stop being a narrow funnel.  My church, my ministry, the world all need me to stop being a narrow funnel.

This is questionable theology, but it has me thinking differently about how to let the love of God flow through me without restrictions.

If you have made it this far, I’d love to know your thoughts.