Creating Sacred Spaces with Modern Production

[00:00:00] Today on The Tech Arts Podcast, Toby Walters, founder of Church Gear, joins us to talk about his brand new book, Sacred Spaces, and why environments we create can transform the worship experience. Plus, exclusive sponsor segments from AC Americas, Digico, Resi, Shure, and Paragon 360 packed with practical insights for your ministry. It's all happening on The Tech Arts Podcast,

[00:00:25] which starts right now. This is The Tech Arts Podcast, where we talk about tech, leadership, and all things that concern church audio, video, and lighting. Welcome to The Tech Arts Podcast and the Resi Studios. My name is DL. So glad to have you joining us today. Today on The Tech Arts Podcast, we're joined by Toby Walters. He is the founder of Church Gear, and we're diving into his brand new

[00:00:52] book, Sacred Spaces. We'll explore why church environments matter, how technology can either support or distract from worship, and practical ideas that can transform the way people experience your church every weekend. That's coming up in just a few minutes. Hey, if you're a routine listener of The Tech Arts Podcast, be sure to like and subscribe. The more you share the podcast on your socials or like

[00:01:16] us, the more people see us and listen. Is your church looking to get your sound system retuned, or do you need to develop a plan to recruit more volunteers? Are you a tech director that is overwhelmed and needs help? If so, make sure you reach out to Digital Great Commission Ministries. We are a 501c3 nonprofit that is here to help you. To get in touch with DGCM, go to audio,

[00:01:42] video, video, lighting.com and click on the schedule a call button. We are here to help. Again, that website, audio, video, lighting.com. Go to the upper right-hand corner and click schedule a call. Once again, I want to say a special thanks to all our incredible sponsors, AC Americas, Digico, Resi, Shure, and Paragon 360 for making this episode possible. Many of these sponsors have worked

[00:02:10] hard on special segments that will keep you informed and upgrading your knowledge as a technical artist. Let's listen to those special segments right now. Our main sponsor is Digital Great Commission Ministries. Whether you need help building a team, finding the right gear, or just better understanding the church tech world, DGCM is here for you. Because they are a 501c3 donor-sponsored organization,

[00:02:38] they come to your church for free and do an assessment of your tech, visitor engagement, and online streaming. Plus, we give away free gear. Be sure to go to audio, video, lighting.com and register your email today. This will sign you up for all of the free giveaways and give you first access to everything we offer for free. If you want free resources, training,

[00:03:04] or consulting, contact Digital Great Commission Ministries today by going to audio, video, lighting.com. That's audio, video, lighting.com. The Tech Arts Podcast is proudly sponsored by Shure. For 100 years, Shure has delivered extraordinary sound and set the industry standard for quality and reliability. Take your audio to the next level. Visit Shure.com.

[00:03:39] Up next on the Tech Arts Podcast is a man who wants to save you from that scary closet full of old gear that haunts the back hallways of every church in America. He has been leading worship and selling gear for over 20 years. He is an author, a fearless leader, and the captain of the sarcastic. Please welcome to the Tech Arts Podcast, the founder of Church Gear, Toby Walters. Hey, Toby. Hey, David. I feel like I'm going to have a real hard time living up to that introduction,

[00:04:06] but I appreciate the effort. You are the man. Sure. I am a man. Last time I checked. Well, do our audience a favor. I think a lot of people know who you are and they know who Church Gear is. They've kind of heard it either in passing on social media or they've, you know, bought stuff from you or whatever. But kind of explain what Church Gear does. Sure. We buy and sell production gear to and from churches all over the country, all over the world. That's the simplest way to put it.

[00:04:35] But if you want to kind of break down the business model, like you said, there's a scary closet of gear. Often churches call it the graveyard. Stuff comes out of commission when they upgrade. They might close down a campus, whatever it may be, and they end up with all this extra gear. And so the original idea of the company was, well, what if we buy that gear and take it away and then resell it to other churches that might need it? Smaller churches, churches with more limited

[00:05:02] resources, and then quickly realized, well, lots of churches with big resources also want to buy that gear. It was just, oh, wow, there's now a used option for all this gear we have. So we have a full tech team here at Church Gear that tests through everything, make sure like quality assurance. And then we do a six month warranty to churches on our used gear. And then we've started to dabble in the new gear sales as well, because, you know, we'd have churches reach out and say, well, I need this, this, this, and this.

[00:05:32] And you guys have two of those items, but not all of it. And so we thought, well, what if we could have all of it by mixing new and used? So that's the road we're going down. But yeah, started in March of 2020. And so in six years, we've, gosh, we work with almost every major church in America. Everybody has the same problem of just what do we do with that old gear? And so you launched during COVID.

[00:05:57] Accidentally. It's not like I could see COVID coming, but yeah, March of 2020, the website went up and I said, okay, well, let's do this. Here we go. Well, I know this. I visit a lot of churches, 20 to 25 churches a year where we go in and do an assessment and kind of talk through what they need and don't need. I push you guys all the time. They're like, well, how do I get rid of this old stuff? Church gear. How do I buy stuff? I thought you did new stuff. I didn't realize you, you only did use stuff for a while. I would say,

[00:06:26] yeah, call church gear. So this is a great company. You want to check them out. It's churchgear.com, correct? Yep. But that's not why we're here today. So Toby, you wrote a book and I have it right here. And you sent me a nice signed copy, which is awesome right here. Church gear sent this to me, Sacred Spaces, Modern Production is the name of the book. But I heard through the grapevine that you were going to write a book on marriage and intimacy. What stopped you from doing that?

[00:06:55] Somebody called my wife. I told her, hey, babe, I had this great idea. Let me write a book about the thing I know about most, which is physical intimacy in marriage. And she said basically over my dead body. So yeah, I did not write that book. Yeah, it's probably wise, very wise, wise woman, by the way. So tell us a little bit about Sacred Spaces, Modern Production.

[00:07:21] Yeah. And kind of the motivation was obviously there's not much written in the church production space. As far as books, if people are readers, there's a few books like we know Todd Elliott of Philo. He's written a book. There are a few others. And so there's very limited resources. So there's just a gap of information for people that read books specifically. And so then I thought, well, I could write a book about church production, but where am I going to get the information from?

[00:07:51] And we've been able to talk to hundreds and thousands of churches across the U.S. and around the world. And we interview their production leaders on the Church Gear podcast. And so just hearing story after story after story of how they execute their Sunday mornings, how they do it. And so taking a lot of these stories, then getting to retell them in the book and also bringing together, you know, what does the Bible say about production? Does it say anything about production?

[00:08:20] So can we put together a theology of production? And then how can we actually make it applicable to any church? You know, you have the biggest churches out there, Elevation, Highlands, all the others that have big resources, big teams, big budgets. But what about 99% of churches that have very limited resources? What can they take away from this book that they can actually apply to make their Sundays better, to make their production better?

[00:08:46] Well, let's get into it a little bit. You just mentioned, you know, the theology of production. And in the book, you say, God is the master tech. And you talk about how he spoke and set the scene. So talk a little bit about that and why you declare in the book, let there be production. Yeah. I, you know, of course, misuse scripture as a good Baptist does.

[00:09:12] So, you know, in the beginning, God said, let there be light. And so very, you know, first off in the beginning of creation, you've got a lighting cue. It's right there. He turned on the lights. And then the only reason that the lights came on was because creation could hear him. So, you know, use the cue, the audio system. So just from the beginning of thinking about production in the sense

[00:09:35] that it existed before electricity was applied to sound amplification. Jesus, when he was talking to the multitudes, used his angle of, you know, voice direction off the waters of the Sea of Galilee to bounce up into this natural amphitheater so that hundreds or thousands of people could hear him

[00:09:57] that were gathered around. He understood acoustics. When God told the Gideon and his army how they were going to defeat the enemy, it was through throwing their torches on the ground. It's a lighting cue. When you march around the walls of Jericho, it was audio production. They're blasting their trumpets. And so you see all these ways in which battles were fought and battles were won. And God's word was

[00:10:24] communicated through just the amplification of audio, video, and lighting elements to the masses and how that worked. And then also just the direction he gave for the creation of the tabernacle, that all those design elements, you know, you think the way we are production people craft services and worship centers today, just same idea. It's all in there. We just need to just kind of shape our view of how that looks.

[00:10:52] You mean, God didn't, you know, Jesus didn't bring like a little JBL speaker and set it down to try to blast to the masses. You know, it doesn't mention every detail in the scripture. So it's possible that, you know, if anybody could create a JBL speaker before JBL, it would be the God of the universe. Yeah. I tell elders all the time, I'll be sitting with them and I'll say, hey, in the Bible, it says, let there be light. So God spoke first, right? Secondly, there was light.

[00:11:22] Like, I can't find video anywhere in there. And it says the root of all evil is money, right? So video costs a lot of money. So maybe video's not as spiritual as we think, you know, black magic and decimator, you know, things of that nature. So you may be onto something with this Bible and theology thing, right? That's right. All the video guys are cringing out there, but, you know, audio and lighting guys know where it's at. That's right. That's where it's all at. Well,

[00:11:50] I saw where you said felony breaking and entering. Tell us that story, man. I want to know about that. So a group of guys in our twenties, I was 23 or 24 years old when we planted this church. I was the worship pastor and the lead pastor, the founding pastor of the church plant was younger than me. So that tells you the amount of maturity that is rolling out to start this church. But Lord help

[00:12:19] us, people started showing up. And after a year and a half or so, we had about 250 people and we needed a permanent space. And so we found this warehouse that they said, we'll, we'll go ahead and rent it to you. You can renovate. You can open on Easter Sunday, but we can't give you the keys because of the lease agreement until two weeks before. So we're thinking we have two weeks to renovate a warehouse into a worship center so we can launch on Easter Sunday. Like we're 20 something

[00:12:48] dudes, but at least we're smart enough to know it's going to take longer than that. So my pastor said, no problem. We'll just break in ahead of time and just start laying the groundwork for stuff. So, you know, straight up, we just sort of broke our way in and started, you know, running cables in the ceiling and hanging lights, just hoping that we'll just start over the overhead. And then if the landlord came through that he wouldn't notice. And so, yeah, we, in the name of Jesus, we committed

[00:13:17] breaking and entering so that we could meet launch Sunday. Hey man, you got to do what you got to do. I have a funny story. It's similar. When I read that in the book, I chuckled because I was working with the church and we had Saturday and Sunday services. And on Saturday, our streaming devices went down and we figured out that the problem was at one of the satellite campuses. So we drove over to the satellite campus right next to the satellite campus. We did not realize this, but right next to the

[00:13:47] satellite campus was a Fort Worth hub police station. I mean, literally like you can throw a rock 50 feet right from this place. And so we get over there and none of our fobs are working. The building is locked down tight. We knew we had to get in to replace this gear and do some tests. So we literally broke into the building. And as we're breaking in, we hear somebody coming up behind us. Hello, excuse me.

[00:14:15] Fort Worth police department coming up behind us. And we explained who we were and they said, okay, cool. Go on in. They let us, uh, they let us, uh, break into the building and fix what we needed to fix. So if you got to do what you got to do sometimes, man, right? In the name of Jesus, you can commit crimes. Yeah. Take my word for it. Yeah. Um, we do not, uh, uh, agree with that statement. Uh, all views by our guests are, uh,

[00:14:40] not beholding of the digital great commission ministries, but no, seriously, sometimes you just got to get in there and do what you got to do. But on a, all jokes aside, what did you want to come out of this book? What did you want people to get from the book? Uh, so I was just at a, a church planning conference last week in Orlando and you got 5,000 people from churches all over the

[00:15:04] world coming and seeing production at the highest level, massive led wall, big D and B, uh, PA, all the lighting package, you know, everything. And then most of these churches are, you know, a hundred people, 200 people, whatever it is. And they're looking that and thinking, well, how am I going to do something like that at my church? Cause I'd love to experience some of this on Sunday morning, but there's just this huge gap. And then we can watch any of those churches

[00:15:31] online. We can watch Elevation online. We can watch, uh, Saddleback online and we see what they're doing. And then we think, well, how are we going to do something like this at our church? Yeah. There's like, there's, they say, there's no way I don't have all the money. I don't have all the stuff. I don't have the resources. Yeah. And so first of all, getting your context, right? Like you're not going to copy Elevation if you're a church of a hundred. So just framing it through that, but you don't have to, you can shrink the idea down into production. That's

[00:15:59] still excellent in your context, but understanding your context first. And then starting with just like simple things, Elevation might have, uh, a dozen wireless mics on stage, but you don't need any wireless mics to replicate the sound. Like you can get wired used SM 58s for 50 bucks ish. And so, you know, there is one simple cost saving solution, uh, the church that has the giant LED wall.

[00:16:27] Do you understand the cost involved in that, the infrastructure that takes to do that? And then the content you have to put on there. What if you just had a laser projector or TVs and you're getting the same concept, but within your context, just, just thinking through those things, the lens of what is going to work in your church and knowing there are affordable solutions just because, you know, Elevation spends $3 million on, you know, AVL for a new campus launch doesn't mean that you

[00:16:55] can't do something great for $10,000. Well, and I think a lot of churches, they think they, they don't understand the cool factor. And here's what I mean by that. They'll look at a worship pastor and think they have to be wireless, right? Well, yes, wireless helps you. You can move around the stage, things of that nature, but is there a need for them to be wireless? Maybe your main worship, leader needs to be wireless, but the background singers that don't move more than six inches

[00:17:22] don't. And as long as they control their mic cable, when they're done singing, nobody in the audience ever notices that there was an issue or a problem. I've launched several churches where we started a hundred percent wired everything and saved $50,000, $60,000, not having to spend, you know, 15 wireless microphones. So the electric guitar player can run around and all the different things. So I think you're,

[00:17:50] you're onto something there. There are ways to do amazing productions with simple solutions. Yeah. Agreed. Yeah. One, one word answer agreed, but, but with that said, how do you define a perfect Sunday? Obviously it's different for every church, every congregation. I liken it to, I just love the, the phrase of distraction-free or not distracting, however you want to say that.

[00:18:20] If you have moving lights and they're punching people in the face, that's distracting. If your mix is off, that's distracting. If you're doing too much, that's distracting. If you're doing too little, that's distracting. So finding in your context, what is the ideal amount of production, um, that your church needs? And it, it might not include a live stream. Um, it might not include any moving

[00:18:45] lights, uh, just finding what is the, uh, sort of minimum standard for our church of what creates a great Sunday where people can engage, but they're not like they're, they're pulled in through the production, but they're not, you know, uh, distracted through it at the same time. Yeah. I think the DNA of your church matters. And you just said something that I believe is key,

[00:19:07] uh, that people are engaged. Um, uh, we all have the story where the power went out and the worship pastor walked up and did it acapella. And it was one of the most amazing services. I see it all the time. It feels like on Facebook almost every other week. I see this power goes out, worship pastor gets up, sings with an acapella, you know, obviously you're not going to do that every week, but in this moment, everybody stayed engaged and realized the focus was worship.

[00:19:36] And to me, a perfect Sunday is not that you did it without mistakes, but that you did it in a way that people were able to engage with the word, which is more than half of the service. You know, your pastor speaking is, you know, 30, 45 minutes of your service, unless you're certain cultures, maybe it's an hour and a half of your service, but you know, I mean, you know, they heard the word clearly and they understand worship in terms of how to be saturated and led into worship. I think

[00:20:03] to me, that's a perfect Sunday engagement of the audience is, um, is where it's at, but you had a chapter here called, um, artisans of worship. Um, so explain that chapter, the new artisans of worship. What, what did you mean by that? Yeah. And I've been both a worship leader and a production guy. And, uh, I, so I started out doing production at my church. I was a teenager and grew up in it and

[00:20:29] just fell in love with it. Uh, but I was not, I definitely didn't feel like I was treated with respect. I didn't necessarily have a seat of honor at my church. It was more, I was there to, you know, turn up this channel and make sure the sound is mixed. So nobody can complain about it and then just get out of the way, shut your mouth. And then I became a worship leader and all of a sudden everything changed. Like I had a relationship with the pastor. We would dream about the service

[00:20:55] together. I would, people would come up after Sunday morning worship every week and thank me and tell me how talented I was. And so I saw both sides of it. And I, um, you know, I realized it's not that either discipline is more valuable or more gifted or more spirit filled, but one sure gets more attention. One sure gets more accolades. And so I started looking at the scriptures and the very

[00:21:21] first mention of somebody being filled with the spirit in the Bible is the artisans and creators of the tabernacle. And God said specifically, I gave my spirit, I filled them with my spirit so that they could execute the design elements of the tabernacle that God laid out in Exodus. And they were so intricate. They were so detailed with these almond shaped flowers of, um, of gold and bronze and all

[00:21:46] these different, um, you know, tapestries that the only way they could achieve it, the only way they could build it that, uh, to the specs that God gave was if God filled them with their spirit. So before the priests, before the musicians, it was the artisans, the creators, the, the visual elements, the design elements that God gave a spirit to. And so bringing that back. So the workers.

[00:22:10] Yes. So bringing that back to today's elements, like that are, that is production people. Production people are the ones creating the environment, like building the sets, doing the lighting design, the sound design, all of it. Um, and so seeing that we are production, people are spirit filled creators, spirit filled artisans. And we're not just, you know, audio janitors, which is kind of the,

[00:22:34] the old school term of people that just live behind the scenes and do the work and, and shut up and, and deal with it. Yeah. Just turn it up louder for me. Yeah. Yeah. I, I agree with you. Um, I like to call it in our instrument of worship. I like to say the audio console is our instrument, uh, just like a guitar is an instrument. I like to say the, the, the video switchers and instrument, a camera is an instrument, but that takes it to a new level, uh, in that chapter where you talk about

[00:23:03] how, you know, the people that are actually building the space are filled with the Holy spirits, putting the chairs out. You know what I mean? Like that's an important role that gets easily overlooked. Um, I did a podcast called every tech position matters. And we talk about that a lot, how, you know, excellence is, is not being seen, but it's being understood, you know, that it's, it's a different way of looking at it. And, um, and I think you're right. I think that

[00:23:32] that's a, that's a new way of looking at, uh, technicians and technical artists. So in chapter six, you talk about how recruiting volunteers is everyone's job and kind of playing off the artisans of worship. How does, how does that like explain that to me? How is it everyone's job? I hear it over and over again that, uh, people say, how can I find good people to build my production

[00:24:00] ministry with, uh, struggling to find volunteers, struggling to find people that are willing. And then they don't know necessarily any better than the just cliched ways to recruit volunteers. Let me put up a slide pre-service, see if we can announce something from stage. And so thinking of new ways to do it and saying to your entire team, whether it's just you, or you have 25 people and you need 25 more, Hey, recruiting is everybody's job. We've all got to

[00:24:27] find new volunteers. And so I lay out, you know, just several creative ways in which to recruit people to your team. And none of them are involved in, you know, putting a slide up or sending an email blast that there's lots of creative new ways to do that. Yeah. Do you enjoy volunteering here? Well, if you do go find somebody else to come volunteer here, I think that can create some other dynamics, right? You know, are people saved and not saved,

[00:24:54] you know, are they Christians, not Christians? Um, you know, what, what, what are you bringing into the ministry? Do you have leadership levels that can look over those, but those people that maybe are coming in, you know, that's 16 year old that wants to run camera. We don't, we don't know where their spiritual journey is at, but I do think there, like you said, there's a lot of creative ways to bring people into a ministry, uh, and talk to them about what you do. Cause what we do is really

[00:25:20] cool. Hey, I'm running camera. Wow. Tell me a little bit more about that. Bam. You got the hook. Well, why don't you come on Sunday and see what I do? Well, now you've not only invited them to church, but you potentially have a new volunteer. That's, uh, going to be walking into your midst. Do you agree with kind of that approach? Is that what you're talking about? Uh, that is certainly one way I think of, uh, you know, children's ministry, for example, every August you get, you know, the plea from the pastor. We need X amount more people because

[00:25:48] school is coming back. All the families are coming back. We need children's volunteers. And I'm thinking, why don't you ever bring up the two cutest kids in the whole ministry up on stage and introduce them? This is Olivia and this is Liam. These are examples of two of the beautiful children that you'd get to teach the gospel to. And everybody would melt because the kids are so cute. And just this very similar idea. Production has the coolest toys.

[00:26:13] You know, if you have a digital mixer of any, uh, you know, level, that is a fascinating piece of equipment to anybody that doesn't know production and showing your gear, showing what it can do. And just saying, you don't need to understand how this works, but you could learn this very easily, very quickly. Like use that gear to your advantage. Um, if you can just get them to tour your system and see some of the gear, man, that, that can really hook them oftentimes.

[00:26:43] Yeah. I had a pastor stand up on the platform after I had told him, Hey, we, we need some more volunteers. I think this is key to your leadership, actually listening to the texts and listening to what's going on and helping with recruitment. But he walked up onto the platform. He pointed at one of our cameras in the auditorium who happened to have a 15 year old running it. And he said, see that 15 year old right there on that camera. He's a missionary.

[00:27:08] What he's doing is taking the gospel to tons of countries in the United States without ever leaving the, the city that we were in. Recruitment went through the roof after that. Yeah. People stopped complaining about the camera that was in front of them trying to get the shot. And all of a sudden they started signing up to run the actual cameras. When you flip the focus

[00:27:32] of what a technician is doing, you know, and from a service model to a missionary model, you start to, you start to change your volunteer recruitment a little bit. The one trick that I, I learned about and I start, I'm a huge evangelist of this, but if I was a production director today, the very first recruit I would get is ideally a female extrovert. Someone that I would say, I don't need you to run any sort of tech. I just need you to meet

[00:28:01] and recruit people. And a lot of production people are introverts. They've also just got a lot of stuff to do. They've got batteries to change mid service. They've got to reset the board, whatever it is, they got to put out fires. And so if you can recruit an extrovert that loves to meet new people, to talk to them, it's not shy, that's not scared. And their whole job is to just recruit more people. That's, that's it right there. They'll do all the work for you. Yeah. A lot of churches will take their front of house sound engineer and make them the person

[00:28:30] that's going to recruit people. Yeah. I make sound the grumpy guy behind the soundboard. It's not the guy you want recruiting people. What you said is exactly right. I mean, it's, it's a concept I've used before where I called him a volunteer coordinator and like literally their entire role was to recruit, talk to people and be the forward facing piece of the, of the technical department versus the video director or the front of house audio engineer or the lighting board

[00:28:58] engineer that, you know, honestly is a little grumpy that morning because they've got a lot to do. The pastor changed things on them. And then the person walks up and says, Hey, can I be a part of your ministry? And they don't get the best first impression as opposed to what you suggested, somebody who's an extrovert that can go out there and kind of reel and pull them in and kind of help with that. But changing subjects on you a little bit on page one 15 of your book, you talk about

[00:29:23] embracing the power of what if, what do you mean by that? Yeah, I think I won't put any specific type of person in a box, but all of us can often be a bit pessimistic with what's possible. We just default to no, there's no way we can't afford that. That's not possible, whatever it is. And it just takes the one person that says, Hmm, maybe, well, what if, and to go down that road.

[00:29:52] And so, you know, I use some of my own stories on just the power of what if, what can be accomplished if you just don't automatically shut down an idea because your narrow experience says that's not possible. We can't afford that. We don't have time, whatever it is. I agree, man. I mean, it just, the personality of a technician too can sometimes be naturally negative. And if you step back and I think there's two things you can ask yourself, what if,

[00:30:19] or what if I'm wrong? You know, what, what if it, we truly can do this? We can do the candlelight, which, you know, it's, you don't have to get permitted or whatever it is. What if, what if I'm wrong? And I guarantee you, your pastor hates it when you say, no, we can't do that automatically. Yeah. Two seconds into the conversation. Pastors are visionary. They want to dream about ideas. Even if the answer is going to be no, to say like, huh, that's interesting. Well, what if we could do that? Let's,

[00:30:45] let's talk through it. What pastor, what are you willing to spend? What's the budget we're looking with? What is the timeline? Okay. Well, with that, here's, you know, here's one or two ways we can do it. And if the answer is simply, I don't know, but let me look into that and get back to you. That is so much better for a pastor to hear than no, we can't do that. We can't afford it. We don't have time that will just drive a visionary nuts. Yeah. And I think another thing you can do is ask

[00:31:13] questions and not in a sarcastic way, but to kind of find out more about their vision. And sometimes when you do that, you naturally steer the conversation towards what's reality. You know, Hey, I'm, I want to do a 200 voice choir on Easter. And you ask, well, how many choir microphones do we currently have? You know, you may know the answer, but they'll, maybe they say, I don't know. You tell me, well, I've got four. So are we willing to rent? Oh, we don't have the budget to rent.

[00:31:42] Okay. Well, what about a hundred voice choir? Well, that, that we can do because we have the mics and we have the ability. So just asking questions makes it look like you're engaged in the vision. And it also can sometimes steer the conversation. Now you can't be sarcastic and go, you know, ask the sarcastic question, you know, right, Toby, you can't just blow it up with a question. But I like sarcasm, David. You're the captain of sarcasm. Yeah, that's right.

[00:32:07] Yeah. So, I mean, that, that's kind of what I would, what I suggest and how I suggest things, you know, in terms of not shutting it down. And, and, and what you wrote in the book about that, I think is really helpful to people and to teams when it comes to that question for you. Did you really have an integrator try to buy their client a car for signing a contract, like in return to get the contract signed? Did that really happen? I saw that in the book,

[00:32:37] and I went, I got to ask him about that. So this is a secondhand story. It did not happen to me. I heard it. The person I heard it from, I trust implicitly. So I do truly believe this happened, but I, yeah, did not happen to me. So that is crazy. I mean, you used it to make an excellent point in the book, but when I read it, I went, I got to ask him about that. That's pretty much insane

[00:33:04] offline. I'll ask you who it was. We'll see. We'll get to the bottom of this. We got to protect the names here a little bit, but talk through your step-by-step. Speaking of integrators, talk through your step-by-step guide to picking an integrator, get kind of give me the 30 second version. I would think it would be a red flag. If they're trying to give you a car, I would think that'd be a major red flag, but kind of what's your opinion on, on how to pick an integrator? Yeah. And just, you know, first of all, getting the context, right. If you're doing a new building

[00:33:30] project or a major system overhaul, this is the most dollars you are ever going to spend as a production director. And one of the most dollars that your church as a whole is ever going to spend. I mean, you may be talking one to $2 million easily. And so just sit with that and knowing that, you know, picking the wrong integrator can be a huge mistake. And so just going down the checklist

[00:33:54] of checking that off. So did you ask a dozen other churches who they use? Did you get a few different names and then start seeing what the relationship is like? What the, are the integrators asking you about your ministry, about your vision, about your church, trying to understand who you are, or are they trying to sell you a solution? If they just come in with like, oh yeah, this is how we do it.

[00:34:21] We've done it at all these venues and this is what it costs. That's a red flag. But if they start with the questions of, tell me about your church, what are you trying to accomplish? Who's going to be running the system? Is it staff? Is it contractors? Is it volunteers? Do you want it to scale up over the gears? How long do you think this is going to last in your space? And they're giving you hard answers. They're saying things like, oh, I know you would love to last this 20 years, but gear usually

[00:34:48] doesn't last more than 10 years. And then just start calling references and tons and tons of references. If you got one or two integrators you like, and they can't give you a dozen churches they've worked with that you can call up, then that's not a good sign. Just do your due diligence and don't make any assumptions because you might end up in a nightmare situation. I think it's okay to do a scorecard too.

[00:35:14] I tell a lot of churches and I've got one that I've developed where essentially I put a bunch of categories up there. Did my pastor suggest them as a category? So you can let some emotion into it, but I try to take most emotion out and have like, are they in town or are they out of town? Did they have the lowest price or the highest price? And I try to just score them one to five and then kind of total that up and say, okay, this one won, this one lost in terms of the score. It

[00:35:42] doesn't mean you have to pick that one, but it does give you another data point that allows you to look at them through an unfiltered, unemotional eyeset and go, okay, well, I really liked this company, but this company scored better because they were in town. They had a better price, so on and so forth, but maybe their price was so low, they missed some things. So there's some nuances to it, but I think you offer a step-by-step guide on your website, correct?

[00:36:10] Yes. So we're trying to get a lot of resources up from the book. So it links directly to like downloadable PDFs. So churchgear.com slash resources. We have all those things that you can just go on and download them. Yeah. So you can buy gear, you can sell the gear, you can find resources to help you plus excellent support. It's a great company. But anyway, back into the book. So on page 155, I noticed something and I wanted to ask you about it. I wrote it down here.

[00:36:40] It says, whatever the future holds, the church has to balance technology with the timeless aspects of worship, authenticity, community, and personal connection. People will still be involved in the need for pastoral leadership will be essential. So I take it you don't think automation will ever replace technical artists, or are you saying even if it can, it shouldn't?

[00:37:08] So a little bit of both. I think in our current context, Gen Z, for example, doesn't like production without purpose, production without theological reasons. So I think, you know, a lot of churches that, you know, we take the Willow Creek model and production got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And all of a sudden, the next generation is saying, we don't like this anymore. We want

[00:37:32] simpler. We want, you know, theological points as to why you're shining lights in our face. What is the scripture about? We don't feel connected. Yeah. And so just because technology advances doesn't mean it ever makes the ancient elements in the scriptures irrelevant. And we have seen this through COVID that every church went online for a season and people stayed home for a season, and that was

[00:38:00] a necessary season. But I am a huge proponent of that's not church long-term. Sitting at home and watching a service is not being involved in a church community. So as much as the technology makes it more capable of experiencing church from home or experiencing church in VR or AR, all of that is going to have to be blended with real human connection in person because there's no technology

[00:38:27] that's going to make that obsolete. I think that's scriptural too, the gathering of the saints, right? It doesn't say in the Bible, stream it to your neighbor. It says, let's all get together in a room. Let's look each other in the eye and talk about our problems and figure them out. So I agree with you. I think we can't ignore the people part of this. And speaking of the people part, somebody's sitting at home, they're saying, Toby, David, this is all great. I can read the book.

[00:38:56] I can see that you're really helping people, but I just feel stuck, man. I feel I'm in a small church, medium-sized church, even a big church, and no one sees me, but I feel stuck. How do people, Toby, help people understand how they get unstuck in their role? Any talking production people specifically that maybe feel unseen? Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, I think this is something I hear all the time. I feel like I

[00:39:23] come in, I do my role, I go home, no one even knows I exist. And I want to move to the next level. I want to challenge myself, put insert whatever the adjective is. I want to do more. I want to feel connected like you just talked about. I wanted to be a part of something bigger than myself, but I just feel stuck. So I mean, how do they talk to that person? How do they feel unstuck? How do they get unstuck? I'd say step one, do you know people at other churches that do what you do? Do you have a

[00:39:52] network, a community around you of people that do your job at different churches? That's step one, just people that understand intrinsically how you feel. They've been there before. They can talk you through it. They can be a sounding board. And so do you have that community, step one? And then they'll help advise you on the next step. But it might be approaching your pastor, approaching your worship leader, whoever it is. And I wouldn't necessarily start from step one saying,

[00:40:19] how can I get seen? How can I get noticed? How can I do more? But more, tell me about your vision. What are you hoping to accomplish? How can I support you? And then asking questions. How can I level up? I would love to be growing here. What are some ways that I could grow here? Do you have some books you recommend? Do you have any leadership resources? One area I'm struggling in is X. If it's, you know, your leadership or maybe, you know, creative design elements,

[00:40:49] or you say, I want to level up on my training for audio production. Your pastoral leaders usually are going to be very receptive to those kinds of things saying, oh, you're coming to me advice for advice on how to level up. Yes, I would love to help you. That's what pastors do. And then sometimes you just might be in an environment that is not fostering that kind of growth. And then your

[00:41:13] community is going to be an invaluable resource to recommend when it's time to go, when it's time to move to a different opportunity. And they're going to be the ones to tell you where that opportunity is. One of them might say, oh, dude, I'm trying to hire someone right now. I think you'd be a perfect fit. And because you have built that community, you'd have those connections now. I think another thing you can do is look for a hole, look for a piece that's not working right

[00:41:41] and see how you can help with that. So Amazon, big, huge company, but they have some principles that I really, really grasped onto that I really like. One of them is they're not allowed to shoot down an idea unless they have one meeting and they give three good reasons why. They also encourage their employees to look for places that can help their clients and their customers. And because of those

[00:42:07] two policies, Amazon Web Services was born. Somebody brought to their boss Amazon Web Services, which had nothing to do with their product. That boss could have easily said, nope, I don't want to deal with this at all. That seems like a big issue for me and a lot of work for me. Instead, he had to have the meeting. He could not give three good reasons why it wouldn't work. And Amazon Web Services

[00:42:33] was born, which is one of their biggest moneymakers. So if you're in a church and you see a problem or a gap with something that's going on, whatever that may be, when you go to your leadership and say, hey, can I don't say, hey, you're doing this wrong, but go to your leadership and say, hey, I see that, you know, we're trying to do video announcements every week, but we don't have the time or there's a problem, there's an issue or we don't have the right camera. I have a camera.

[00:42:59] Can I fill that gap? Can I be that person to help? Can I do this for you? Now they may say no, and there may be reasons behind that. But one message you've sent there is I'm willing to help. I'm willing to go the next level for you and for the ministry. So I think that's another thing you can do is kind of look for that space that's missed in the church service that's a problem or, you know, it's how greeters, right? People come into the door and there's nobody at the door.

[00:43:28] Somebody went, hey, this is a good idea. Let's put somebody at the door to greet. That's how a lot of these ideas come about. And if you're that person looking for those, people are going to notice you and you're going to get unstuck really quick. So Toby, thanks for coming on and sharing with us about your book. How do people purchase it? Yeah, tobywalters.com. Easiest way. You just go on there and it's right there at the top. You can find it on Amazon. It will, the audio book will

[00:43:54] hopefully be out by the time this episode drops. So if you want print, Kindle or Audible, it's all of Elam on Amazon. Yeah, that's something I was going to ask you about the audio books. That's coming soon, I'm assuming, right? Yes. So if you want to get your copy of Sacred Spaces, go to tobywalters.com or you can get it, like you said, at amazon.com. And don't forget, Toby runs a great company called Church Gear. So if you need to buy gear or get rid of your old gear,

[00:44:20] make sure you go to churchgear.com and get it all handled with them. Again, to purchase the book, though, this beautiful book. I love the color and I love everything you did with this, with the colors and the yellow on the sacred spaces. If you want to get this book, go to tobywalters.com or amazon.com. Toby, thank you again for coming on the Tech Arts Podcast and being amazing. Well, that's your perspective, but you're welcome.

[00:44:48] Well, that wraps things up for today's episode. I can't wait to talk to you on the next Tech Arts Podcast. Until then, I'm David Loishner signing off by wishing you a great day and praying God blesses every moment of your week. See you soon. You have been listening to the Tech Arts Podcast, presented by Digital Great Commission Ministries. DGCM is a 501c3 nonprofit that was started to help churches with all things technical. Whether you need help building a team, finding the right gear,

[00:45:17] or just a better understanding of the church tech world, DGCM is here for you. Find out more about our free on-site visits, reports, and consulting by going to audiovideolighting.com. Digital Great Commission Ministries will help you run your church service like a pro. Find out more at audiovideolighting.com.