By Tim Adams
I know that you have heard me talk about stewardship a fair amount over the last few years, but it continues to be a recurring issue in modern churches.
My wife and I recently had a call to come help with a brand-new sound and live streaming system that was having issues. Little did we know what we were in for.
First, some background: the church is a blend of two different cultural groups that decided to come together and form a church to combine resources, talents, etc. One of the groups has a leader who functions as their pastor, though the church itself was pastor-less due to COVID until the middle of last year.
The interim “pastor” had requested for us to come in and provide a bid to update the display, audio, and live streaming systems, which we did. While I was creating this bid, the church finally was able to hire a pastor. I submitted my bid and waited to hear back.
Soon, the bid was before the church board and was about to be voted on when the pastor made an executive decision to use “his guy” and reject my bid. That was the last I heard of the project, other than some rumblings from family connections inside the church about how the upgrade was going and how it was not anything like what they expected.
That is the background and context for this article. When we arrived on-site, there was a funeral taking place and I had limited ability to make major changes, but what I was able to finally surmise from using the audio system and live streaming system is the following:
- The church spent $50,000 on the upgrade.
- The audio mixer utilizes Dante digital audio networking to send sound to a live streaming laptop and receive sound from the presentation laptop, both of which are less than 15 feet away from the mixer (waste of $300 for the Dante card when analog cables could work).
- The PTZ cameras installed for the live streaming system are purchased from Amazon and fully utilize either NDI or IP streams into OBS, bogging down the network.
- The AV booth was placed into what used to be the mothers room and put behind a window that looks into the sanctuary. There is only a small sliding window to hear the audio through.
- A tablet to mix audio from the sanctuary was available as an optional extra but was not included.
- New ceiling speakers downstairs and in the other rooms are non-functional.
- No power conditioners or power sequencers were included.
- No basic setup, including gain staging, was done on the audio mixer or amplifier(s), which leads to over-modulated audio from the mics and through to the speakers.
- The mixer wasn’t setup at all (no EQ, no aux sends, etc.)
The list goes on, but the basic premise to understand is that the installer did not complete the upgrade and is now demanding more money to finish it, even though what I’m being told is that they don’t know how to get everything working. The installer is now ignoring calls from the pastor, as well, which is never a good sign.
Regardless of the size church you are, $50,000 is a lot of money; even you megachurches would agree that spending this kind of money to end up with a system that barely functions would garner questions from your leadership.
Unfortunately, I hear stories like this all the time. From botched installs and churches being sold a bill of goods that don’t perform, they often end up being left high and dry. Then they have to go and find someone else to fix everything and get it working, often to completely re-do the installation with the correct equipment.
This raises the importance of a leader being humble and allowing the church to vote its mind and heart rather than coming in and bulldozing a process that has been underway for months. I’m not upset that I wasn’t the winning bid; the Father above knows I lose my fair share of projects to other bidders. I’m upset at the shocking waste of money.
A strong and effective leader displays a commanding understanding of the environment they are in, the resources they have available, the obstacles to be overcome, and the realities of the pros and cons of each option that is front of them.
Try as I might, I cannot find a place where $50k disappeared to; I’m certainly not seeing it in the equipment and while they did have to build a fairly tall wall to separate the mothers room to create the AV booth, that should not have cost $20k. I honestly cannot understand how the project could have been sold for that much. I regularly have churches question my proposals because of the costs involved, but it seems there was absolute faith in this guy from the pastor, with very little questioning or pushback.
Either way, the pastor is now having to eat humble pie and the church is going to pay for us to come in and get everything working and let me finish the project with the pieces I see that are missing.
This could have all been avoided if the pastor had simply followed Proverbs 12:15, “Fools think their own way is right, but the wise listen to others.” It’s important to “know what you don’t know.” Sure, that sounds like a contradiction, but if you think about it, it makes sense. Know your weak areas and your strong areas, then surround yourself with people whose strengths fill in your weaknesses – people that are not afraid to call you out on your bad decisions and provide guidance.
I don’t know all the variables and discussions involved to get the church to where they are now; I’m sure the idea of walling off the AV booth behind a window would (or should) have rubbed some the wrong way! You can’t mix if you can’t hear!
I don’t know the installer who won the bid and how he thinks, what his process is, what difficulties and compromises he had to make along the way so it’s unfair for me to criticize him too harshly. However, I can use this situation to talk about the importance of spending money wisely.
There’s nothing wrong with questioning a proposal or plan in order to fully understand what is involved, what is included, and how it will be accomplished. I don’t think you have to get individual line-item pricing in order to be a good steward; however, you can pursue another bid to see if the one you have is in-line with pricing or is significantly lower or higher, and then ask questions to understand why there might be discrepancies.
Educating yourself is never a bad idea but steamrolling your church board because you want to help out a friend of yours is hardly a wise idea, at least without doing a fair comparison between what your friend and another professional can realistically offer.
If we look at strong and effective leaders, they usually display a commanding understanding of the environment they are in, the resources they have available, the obstacles to be overcome and the realities of the pros and cons of each option that is front of them and make decisions based on this knowledge and their own experience.
Too often I have found churches and pastors making purchase decisions without understanding everything that is involved and just relying on the contractor to make the tough decisions. While I appreciate the trust this places on the contractor, it’s also not the contractor who has to live with those decisions and this is why I try to involve key stakeholders in the big decisions as much as possible. They have a unique perspective on what it’s like to be in the church, the people involved, the thought processes, the complaints, the personalities, and what it’s like week in and week out. This is invaluable information and can mean the difference between selecting one piece of equipment over another.
Please make sure you are thorough in your evaluation process when choosing contractors, ask for references, ask for detailed information on why they chose a specific system or equipment solution and what benefits that will deliver over another solution. While we integrators may be slightly irritated at being questioned, a good one will patiently answer those questions because at the end of the day, we should want our clients to be educated, involved, and engaged in the process. If they aren’t willing to answer your questions, you might consider looking elsewhere as that could very realistically lead to more issues down the road once the project is underway or completed.
Tim Adams spent over 20 years volunteering in church technical ministry and now focuses on helping small churches achieve technical excellence through equipment upgrades, training, sharing best practices and teaching leadership how to cast God-sized vision.
