Christmas in September? Yep, it’s almost too late.

By: John Pierce, AVG Director of Operations

Having spent over ten years working in ministry at one of the largest non-denominational churches in our area, I learned over and over the hard lessons about not preparing for Christmas early enough. Here are a few pointers (learned over many years of not doing them) that will help make your gear ‘Tis the Season’ ready.

  1. If you need to upgrade a piece of technology, it needs to be done now!

    If you’re thinking about upgrading a piece of equipment or part of your system, whether it’s a projector, speaker system, or wireless system, it needs to happen quickly. The holidays are always a busy time of year. Pre-planning new installations as early as possible before the holiday season helps to ensure things get installed properly, timely, and effectively so that your team has some time to break in the new system before Christmas Eve.

  2. Schedule a training refresher for your team with industry professionals.

    Training is always good thing. Most likely, your pastor or worship team is going to want to try something creative or new this season. Be prepared and equipped to execute that creative new idea, because it may never happen without the proper knowledge or equipment. Learn from the experience of those who have already been there, done that to ensure you can avoid their mistakes and not lose the time pre-holiday.

  3. Make sure that general preventative maintenance (PM) is done on all equipment around Thanksgiving.

    Your equipment needs to be serviced, plain and simple. Most A/V gear is a lot like a car—if you don’t check or change the oil, it’s not going to last forever. Schedule a service call or ask about our System Preservation Program. We’ve seen preventative measures literally save Christmas weekends because issues were caught just before something bad happened. While we can’t control everything from breaking, making sure your equipment is maintained will go a long way to bring peace of mind.

  4. If you’re looking to rent equipment, or you know you want this year to be better than ever and aren’t sure what to rent, schedule a walk-through with us!

    Rentals are a great way to enhance the quality of your service. For most churches, the holidays bring more people through the door than any other time of year. Add some creative lighting to enhance the experience or increase you video capability with LED screens. Sometimes just calling and talking to us may help plant ideas about what you can do to take your services to the next level. Plus, it never hurts to talk about it!

  5. Do things the right way the first time.

    I spent a lot of time putting Band-Aids on systems. That causes more pain in the long run, because ultimately you’ll spend more time and money trying to repair or fix the Band-Aid than just doing it right the first time. Plus, the night before Christmas isn’t the time to be pulling out the spare projector from the student ministry room. The next week, you’ll forget to put it back and then you’ll be in trouble with your youth pastor!

We’d love to help you prepare for the holiday season. Don’t let A/V be a distraction from getting your message out. After all, the biggest distraction in most worship services is the technology. Let us help you avoid that mistake.

John Pierce is the director of operations at Audio-Video Group. With over ten years of experience working in ministry, he has seen his fair share of church A/V gone wrong. Let AVG help prepare your equipment for the Christmas service so you can spend your time remembering the true reason for the season.

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