I recently revisited the blog of Dave Wilcox, the technical director of my home church. He’s made some changes to the layout which make it even easier to read and benefit from.
For the past five years, Dave has consistently pursued using media in or meetings with excellence, humility, innovation, and effectiveness, all in a way that seeks to promote the gospel rather than distract from it. Hence the title of his blog, Undistract. He’ll often share review thoughts from a Sunday morning that are both comprehensive and thoughtful, and touch on everything from sound, to video, to lighting. He explains his motivation here:
One of the ways that I want to grow is by taking advantage of each weekend experience to encourage the people on the production teams who make it happen and to spread the lessons learned to the whole group. In all honesty, I have tried several times to start up regular “Sunday in Review” emails, but I just haven’t been faithful to keep doing them over time.
Regular encouragement and honest, forward-looking criticism are crucial tools for serving my team members, but I just haven’t succeeded in providing this care. I need accountability, so I’m going to begin posting them here. God-willing, and by His grace, I will begin to write weekly posts called Sunday Reverb that will help encourage and strengthen our teams.
If you’re at all involved in using or overseeing media in your church, I can’t recommend his blog highly enough.
Dave will be participating in a number of seminars at WorshipGod08, including A Gospel-Centered Approach to Creative Media, Leading and Caring for Your Tech Team, and Running an Effective Sunday Morning Rehearsal .
Dave & Bob,
I would agree. I’ve referenced Dave’s blog a few times to the leaders of our sound teams. I appreciate the way he brings biblical values into media ministry. It serves as a great example for us.
As a worship leader, I’ve got very little knowledge about all that goes on in the tech world. But I know I can’t do my job without the A/V guys. So a big thanks to Dave whose blog keeps me abreast of what’s going on in his world at Covenant Life. I often send my guys a link to his posts.
That said, let me just give a HUGE “Thank you!” to all the Sovereign Grace community. Everyone from Bob, to Bill Kittrell here in Knoxville (and the incredibly savvy techs, Brad & Joe, that are SG members, and have helped me out over the years with our church’s sound, lighting and video needs via their company), to Dave who has helped me think through some tech hiring issues, has been a great help. They’ve all been generous with their time and humble with their knowledge. I am always so delighted to be around folks from the SGM community. You can tell they’ve been with Jesus.
Thanks for posting the link to this blog — I’ve never seen anything quite like it, in its focus. I’ve added it to my Netvibes list of RSS feeds.