Buying tech gear for your church can be overwhelming, and with the new year upon us, you might have some hard decisions to make if you’re on a tight budget. Take heart, because any pastor worth their salt has been where you are.
Since I have had to work with tech budgets large and small for over a decade now, let me offer some suggestions if you’re new to this process. Here are three simple guidelines to help you pick up the right gear at the right time.
1. Think Long Term and User-Friendly.
Sometimes it’s easy just to buy the affordable option on Amazon, but anything you select for your tech team needs to have a good shelf life. That’s why you need to make sure the cheaper option isn’t hard to use, with a clunky user interface and slow processing speed.
While you can’t get around a tight budget, audio, video and lighting (AVL) equipment has become much more affordable with quality, user-friendly options for just about any church.
If the person making the decisions doesn’t have a working knowledge of tech gear lingo, that’s all right. Professionals at large suppliers like Sweetwater work with pastors all the time. They specialize in helping your church get the right gear that fits your budget.
And don’t forget about the local music shop down the road. The owner or a staff member will be able to help you find equipment that will last and fit your team’s skill level. Just be honest about your budget and lean into the pros.
2. Excellence Is Relative.
Many pastors watch the high-powered production on a megachurch’s livestream and feel less-than, but you need to remember that excellence is doing what you do well, not trying to be something you’re not. A quiet country church with a well-tuned piano is just as excellent as a metropolitan big-name church with lights, a huge sound system, and a big LED wall.
Don’t hold yourself and your church to a standard no one else has set for you. If you feel called to prepare your church for future numerical growth, great. But don’t despise the day of small things. God has you where you are now for a reason, and is calling you to be faithful while trusting the growth to him.
If you feel called to something less growth-driven, that is no less legitimate. Your mission determines your goals, which drive your budget decisions. That means you need to make the right purchase for your context, so the rule here is the same for a church that might be shooting for a higher growth pace—there’s no magic to an AVL budget; just buy what you can for what you need right now.
3. The Goal Is the Gospel.
Regardless of your size or growth goals, a great church tech team’s goal shouldn’t be to impress people for the purpose of growing attendance; the goal of a great church tech team is to connect people to the gospel.
All the tech gear we use at our churches has only been around since the 1930s or so. Before then, the church grew on little more than good homiletics and reasonable acoustics. Jesus himself famously found a natural amphitheater along the shore of Galilee where he could be heard by the thousands that had followed him there. He used what he had available to him, and that’s all we can do, too.
Keeping the gospel central is what keeps a church healthy and growing, not extravagant AVL productions. Church tech supports the gospel, not the other way around, so simply buy the right equipment with the intent to spread the gospel better. That will de-stress the whole process.