What do you do when your audio system is acting up during worship? Like all technology, there are minor technical issues that can come up during operation. Dealing with those is part of the responsibility of the technical ministry team.

The first consideration is what I will call “gravity.” Is this problem severe enough to interrupt the flow of the service? If the answer is “No,” then the best thing is to just put up with it until the service is over. You can then handle it in Followup time, while you’re putting gear away. Many times the issue is small enough that it only takes a couple of minutes to deal with.However, if you walk up to the pulpit to handle it, then the congregation will be paying more attention to you than the preacher! This is inappropriate, and should be avoided if at all possible. Worship is an encounter with the Divine, and doesn’t need to be subverted by technical issues.

A great example of a low gravity event is the failure of a wireless mike do to a battery going dead. The preacher should just switch to another mike and go on with the service. However, if you only have one mike and are recording the service, then this would become a high gravity event. You should then walk onto the stage and do the mike replacement. I have done this during sermons when it was high gravity. You don’t need to say anything. The preacher knows that the mike went dead, and hopefully is going on with the sermon. You just need to quietly and without much fuss swap out the battery and hand the now active mike back to the preacher so they can carry on. You can potentially edit the audio track for the sermon to handle the skipped part. Worship goes on.

A second consideration is the “impact” of the problem event. If the impact is small – I.e. it doesn’t really have much of an impact on the community – then it can be ignored. Usually, this is the best course. However, if it has a high impact – e.g. people won’t be able to listen to the sermon – then you have to deal with it immediately. The best way to gauge the impact is to consider what percentage of the community will notice the problem. if only a small percentage would even notice the audio issue, then it can be ignored. If everyone in the community is going to feel the impact, then it demands immediate action. This is particularly relevant while streaming worship. You need to get the sound audible again!

Hopefully, you are doing mike checks before the service to make sure all mikes are in good working order. If in doubt about a battery (e.g. have we used that one twice already? ) then just replace it. Batteries are fairly inexpensive, and you probably have a whole box in the closet. Supporting the Worship Service is the priority, so that everyone can worship!