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Join Church Production Magazine as we delve into the world of church technology and media ministry, featuring in-depth conversations with church tech experts about the latest in lighting, audio, video, staging, streaming, and content creation, and how they wrap it all together to create meaningful worship experiences. Discover how they leverage cutting-edge technology to enhance regular services, produce impactful sermon bumpers, and create both short and feature-length films. Whether you're a seasoned tech professional or new to the field, gain valuable insights and tips to elevate your church’s production quality, help your church expand its reach, and communicate the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Joseph Cottle(00:05):
You are listening to the church production podcast. I'm your host, Joseph Cottle, and today we have a conversation with James Harding. He's the director of ministry Coordination at First Baptist Rogers, a multi-site church in Rogers, Arkansas, and he also serves as the president of the Metro Media and Communications Association. We get into the challenges of leading up and down as the middleman, a position familiar to most production leaders. Let's go ahead and dive into the conversation with James. Alright, James, again, welcome to the podcast and why don't you tell us, just to get started, tell us a little bit about your role at First Baptist Rogers.
James Harding(00:49):
Yeah, so my role was an experiment and we tried it because I have a unique experience set, I guess maybe would be the right way to say it, or skillset. Both. I work in between the ministries and production or the ministries and operations, I guess is the better way to say it. And so what I do here is I kind of manage the go-between of what the ministries need versus what operations can do and what operations needs in order to complete what it is ministry wants to happen. And I hate using that designation because then it makes it sound like I'm saying media and communications and stuff aren't ministries. They are, but we also, everybody recognizes they're also support. So they help all these ministries accomplish their ministry goals while also working on their own ministry goals. And so sometimes that just takes a little bit of assistance to go between and make sure everybody's happy and make sure everybody's getting what they need.
Joseph Cottle(01:42):
Now are you guys a multi-site church?
James Harding(01:44):
We, we currently have three, four campuses and so we definitely are our big machine.
Joseph Cottle(01:51):
At what point did the scale of what you're doing get to where you're like, okay, we actually need somebody to kind of make sure that this is all getting coordinated? Well,
James Harding(02:01):
I think the scale's been there for a long time. Just the opportunity wasn't there and so we had an opportunity to bring someone in on staff that could kind of take over what I had been doing directly in production in order to allow me to step to this different position in order to help manage all that. The scale's been there for a while and I think you don't necessarily have to be a multi-site in order for this to be something that's valuable. I think it just really depends on the workload in general for what the church is doing. I came from a church before I came here where I worked 48 weekends a year basically is how I tell it. And here we don't do that. Our church is much better about preserving the Sabbath and making sure our folks aren't being driven into the ground, but we're still busy and we still have a high quality expectation, which means the workload doesn't really reduce just because we're not working all those weekends. Those weekends were events and things like that. So they weren't generally speaking, the ongoing ministry. So the ongoing ministry here really warranted it for a while. It's just, again, we just didn't have the, and now we do
Joseph Cottle(03:01):
Now. When we had talked last, which by the way, we interviewed James for an article last year and it's really great. It's on the website, so make sure if you get on and just search his names on the website, James Harding, you'll be able to find it. And he talks a little bit more about this, but I wanted to get a little more in depth than we could in the space of the article. So when we had talked, you really struck me in a way as a professional middleman, somebody who has to lead up and lead down. And that's a really tough role and one that I don't think a lot of people talk about. There's been a few maybe one or two books about it, but they kind of flew under the radar. So I really wanted to highlight that you are in this position not only between ministries but also between levels of leadership where you're having to communicate what your senior leadership wants and communicate that down. But you're also having to give feedback from beneath you on the org chart and up. So let's start with that first. How do you lead down, and I don't want to say down as in people are lesser than you, but below you on the org chart, how are you leading down?
James Harding(04:15):
Yeah, so it's funny you say that because who wants to be the professional middleman, right? It's like everybody says, get rid of the middleman and go direct. Well, sometimes that doesn't work and lemme explain why. And I don't mean any disrespect. In fact, I'm probably talking to myself more than anyone. So one of the ways that I lead down is basically to have a different perspective. And so when I moved out of production directly, it gave me a unique perspective of what some of the bad things I was doing when I was directly in production. And I had kind of started learning this before this job changed. But then once the job change happened, it really helped me see it. And I had many of us, we're always trying to protect the team, we're always trying to protect the workload, we're always trying to protect the quality of what we do.
(04:59):
And so we typically become the guys that say, no, right, we're the ones, no, I can't do that. No, that's not possible. No, I don't have the staff, I don't have the budget, I don't have the equipment. And being in this role has helped me see a different perspective that and input from a lot of my peers too. So I can't take credit for this lesson on my own, but it helped me see that there's a different way to approach whenever people have the ask than just saying no. Right? And so one of the things I do when I'm leading down is I help encourage those people to see, okay, rather than just jumping out of the gate and saying, no, what number one can you do? Number two, if you were going to try to accomplish this, what would it take? And so one of the things we're just all guilty of in production is just that instant.
(05:47):
No. And this has given me the ability to help encourage and say, okay, before you just put the brakes on, what would it take for you to be able to do this? Would it just take some work? Would it take some additional budget, some additional equipment, maybe some additional staff? I mean, what person in production doesn't want more staff and budget and equipment? So it's helped me kind of give that encouragement to say, Hey, pause a little bit, because they don't want to be known as the no guy either. They don't want to have that reputation. I mean none of us do, but it's just one of those things that happens and it happens really for good reason. We're not trying to be jerks. We're not trying to be the guys that are just like, I want to poo your ministry idea. Right? No, we're trying to protect a team of people and I mean, let's get real.
(06:30):
Some of these churches, we're trying to just protect ourselves because we're it and we don't have a team and we're trying to protect our volunteers and whatever it is. And so that's kind of how I help lead down is just helping them understand that. And oftentimes with senior leadership, there's this little component that's missing called Why? What is it we're trying to accomplish by doing this? And that kind of works both ways, and I'll explain that here in a minute. Sure. Your next question is going to be how do you lead up? But a lot of times people in the execution role don't ever get the full picture and vision of why we're doing something. And so it's really difficult for us to step into that and do something if we don't really understand why we're doing it. We don't understand the purpose or see how it fulfills the mission of the church. And so being able to help communicate that when necessary has been hugely beneficial as well.
Joseph Cottle(07:20):
So finding the why, and I think it was in our last conversation, I think how you said it was trying to find the yes, instead of jumping to the no and being a no bot, you want to try to find the Yes. We just had a situation with that here this week with our youth ministry has camped next week, and the coordinator for that ministry wanted to have this cool black light dance party. And so she came to me and our production tech and was like, what do we have? Could we do that? And I was like, well, we don't have just black lights lying around and I don't know what they have down there, but let's have a meeting and let's talk about it. And we sincerely did. We sat down together for about a half hour, her and I and the production tech and just tried to find the yes, unfortunately that time we weren't able to mostly because of budget restrictions. But like what you said, again, I think maybe finding the why going the other direction, going up a little bit where it's like, well, we could, but it's going to cost you about $2,000. And she was like, oh, well that's not going to work. And it's like, okay, well there we go. We found a yes, but it wasn't the yes that would work.
James Harding(08:38):
Well, and see what you did was the perfect example of you had the conversation because you had the conversation. Now that youth ministry coordinator is no longer thinking you're just the bad guy saying, no, you actually had the conversation and explained this is what it will take to accomplish what you want. Do you still want to do it? And then the no still happened, right? Except you weren't the one giving it. They were not the one giving
Joseph Cottle(09:00):
It. Amazon gave us the no,
James Harding(09:05):
You shoulda have waited until prime day, man. Are you buying up any black lights right now?
Joseph Cottle(09:09):
Well, it actually, so this whole situation kind of solved itself because it turns out that our life mission kids pastor just had some, and so they're taking those and they'll have their little blacklight dance party to wrap up camp and that'll be great. So this then pivots us, I think into leading up, and maybe we touched on that a little bit, but let's talk about that. What do you do when you're having to not necessarily push back, but just dialogue with people above you in the org chart that want to do something and have this vision? We've all been in that situation with senior leadership. They're full of vision, they're full of go get itness, and sometimes we have to be, again, not no bots, but well, we have to, Hey, just a second. What about, so let's talk about that.
James Harding(10:09):
To put it candidly, they have all these great ideas, but they're completely clues to how to pull it off.
Joseph Cottle(10:14):
Very often, yes,
James Harding(10:15):
They see some of the church do something and they don't recognize that that church has an army of staff compared to your little piddly village of staff. What's interesting is sometimes when you're in that middle BA position, like where I'm I right now, you have to be the guy that says no, and that way you take the fall for it. One of the things that helps is that since I don't manage the staff, there's no thought process that I'm just trying to be defensive. If I come out and say, Hey, this is a really great idea, but this is going to take X, Y, Z, and it's easier for me to do that where I sit than it is for somebody who's directly leading that production team to do, because people tend to not want to listen to that production team. Number one, they've gotten the reputation of being the no person.
(10:56):
Number two, people always think, oh, well, they're just biased. They don't want their team to have to do it. So for me, being able to step in and say, Hey, listen, it would be great if we could accomplish this, but here's the impact that that's going to have. It also helps that I can have that conversation where I'm not busy trying to do something else. That's one of the things we just came off of a conference and one of our speakers made the comment, he had this great slideshow that said, what are you going to do? Because, and it had all these things listed out, and the very top thing was 52 weeks, right? In other words, production rules don't stop. Kids' ministry will have their lull, student ministry will have their lulls. Every ministry essentially will have its little lull time, but production doesn't Sunday's coming.
(11:40):
And that's the reality. And depending on your church, Sunday could be a huge deal as in a huge production deal, and that's okay. And the thing is it never stops. So being able to be in the slot where I don't have to worry about Sunday's coming, it gives me that freedom to be able to kind of think through some stuff. And it allows me to be able to have that candid conversation on the production side and say, what are your thoughts? And then be able to share that maybe in a bit more of a politically correct way to where senior leadership's kind of receive it. And it also helps me to talk to ship and say, okay, how is this going to accomplish what we want to do?
(12:19):
How do you see this impacting the vision, the strategy of the organization, the vision of the church? And sometimes those conversations lead to, it really doesn't. Okay, should we be doing it? Now, don't get me wrong, I think there's plenty of churches out there that get so hell, Ben on everything has to accomplish a mission. They miss the fun of being in church. They miss the fun of just connecting with your community and connecting with your church. And so I'm not anti potlucks, right? I would love throw a couple times a year and have a potluck. You just want to know who made what so you don't end up in the cat food kitchen. Oh, bro,
Joseph Cottle(12:56):
I got a story for you.
James Harding(13:00):
But yeah, so being able to do that is great because those things that are fun to do. So I'm not one of these people that says everything has to accomplish the mission, but within reason, if you're doing more things to fluff up your church than you are trying to reach the loss, there's a misbalance there that you need to work on. But just being able to have that conversation and say, okay, explain to me how and why you think this is something that we need to do. And usually it doesn't take much. It's just a brief couple of sentences that they just have to explain and boom, I'm sold, I'm hooked, and I can then become a cheerleader for what happened and becoming that cheerleader. And the thing about it is about being this middleman. I work in coordination with everybody, and especially it becomes especially important anytime we do something huge that requires these three ministries, these three support services, to all come together and do one big thing.
(13:56):
And so that's challenging because everybody has their opinion, everybody has the way they want to do things, and I can step in and be that nucleus that says, okay, this is how we're going to do it. This is what we're going to do. Then even balance the way kids' ministry wants to do their thing with the way students wants to do their thing with the way adults and make sure everybody's happy, just being able to understand what they want to do, why they want to do it, and then sometimes have that conversation of, okay, you realize this is going to overtax, you realize this is going to put a lot of burden on. And just helping them understand, okay, maybe we need to lessen what we're doing, or listen, this is a huge focus. We want to do this. Okay, great, let's run after it.
(14:35):
And just being able to understand the emphasis. A lot of times, I'll say this, a lot of times we have unrealized expectations. I'm stealing from Justin fire sheets, so I know as a church production, often seen name. So I just spent the last week with Justin. Often we have unrealized or undefined expectations. So leadership comes to us and says, Hey, we want to do this thing. And we will sometimes go, oh my gosh, we have to hurry and do this and do this the best thing ever. And they're like, it's not a big deal, just do it however you want to do it. Well, we haven't defined that. So we put unrealized, we put undue stress on ourselves trying to make this happen when leadership's like, eh, it's just a little tiny thing. Don't worry too much about it. And so being able to be in that middle role to say, Hey, they want you to do this, but don't stress over it. Just do it however the best you can. And this doesn't need to be a Christmas production level thing. This needs to be a, Hey, throw this on the hopper and get it done when you can.
Joseph Cottle(15:32):
I think that's so important of making sure you understand the priority that whatever this production is, understanding that we had a young man who worked on staff with us here for a little while, and arguably we gave him kind of a tough job. He was the main worship leader at one of our campuses and then also the youth worship leader here. And he was really doing a great job, but he just kind of stressed himself out because he wanted to do both things all the way. He wanted to be perfect at both things. And while we on our side, were really happy with everything he was doing and we thought he was doing a great job and told him as much, he just psyched himself out. And it's very, very true. Very often we do, we just psych ourselves out because we have a desire for excellence that's born in us that's good, and we want to do it really, really well. But sometimes we have to understand once we find the yes that also what is the good enough and be good with the good enough and understand that it's not always a Christmas production. It's not even always a weekend production. Sometimes it's just, Hey, you just need a mic and the lights need to be on, and that's fine.
James Harding(16:59):
Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. And the thing is, you touched on something there. You can't do everything a hundred percent. That's just not how it works. You don't have that kind of battery. And so people that are in production media communications, if we're being honest, we secretly tend to be people pleasers, which is also funny because most of us are introverts. And so those don't really go together. But if we're not, we better be really good at customer service and putting on that face, because otherwise you're going to be in a difficult situation because you're not. But because we're people pleasers, you said it, we want to do everything excellent. We want to do everything well, and doing everything excellent doesn't mean putting a full production in place every time something is asked for, doing everything excellent, and making happy just means doing what needs to be done. And we put too much stress on ourselves sometimes by trying to figure out how to make this happen.
Joseph Cottle(17:59):
We have a similar situation to what you guys have at First Baptist Rogers, three campuses, and then an online campus. And so yeah, I get asked about events all the time and Hey, we want to do this little get together at this campus, or we want to do this in the worship center. And so my first question is immediately like, okay, what do you need? What's the base level that needs to happen to pull this off? And once I'm there, and I understand that sometimes it literally is they just need the soundboard on and they need a microphone and maybe a couple slides and pro presenter, and it's like, oh, great. And so then what I've been able to do is build in all these systems and some checklists that I can hand off where I don't even have to be there. I show 'em how to turn it on, I show 'em how to use a mic, I give them an iPad with presenter remote, and I'm like, you guys have fun.
(18:51):
Knock yourselves out. Instead of like, oh, I got to schedule an audio person and I got to schedule a CG person and I got to schedule a camera person. It's like, oh, we don't actually need all that, need all that. What exactly do they want to accomplish? And how do I make that happen instead of going above and beyond all the time, not always the situation. Next question I have for you, because the truth of the matter is, is that most production leaders are actually in your role, whereas you have this specific role, and that's your title on the staff at your church, production leaders actually live in your role just sort of by default most of the time. Many of us even, we have a weird space on the org chart where we are own thing, and yeah, we kind of answer to the worship pastor, but we also kind of answer to the executive pastor and we also kind of answer to the facilities director, we're just off in our own space where we have to do a lot of this leading up and down sort of by default, even though that's not our title.
(19:58):
So I just wanted to dig into your experience for a few minutes and ask what are some of the dos and what are some of the don'ts that you've run into over the years in this role? And then just as a general production leader, having to lead up and down a lot.
James Harding(20:12):
Yeah, you're actually really spot on that because we consider lucky that I'm here to be able to do what I do to take some of that burden off of our production leaders. Now, let me just clarify. I don't have every conversation. I just make sure the conversations are being had. Sometimes I have to be the one to have the conversations, but my role is to really make sure those conversations are being had. And so I don't want to make it sound like I'm making all these decisions one way or the other. Really, I'm more of a facilitator coordinator. And so that's kind of the purpose, but I do consider it a huge blessing that we can do that here. But you were absolutely right, most of us, and before I was in this role, I did exactly what you're saying. I served in that capacity and that was hard for me to learn. So 15 plus 16 plus years in production, and I didn't start learning it until year 12 or you're 13. So that just shows you how either ignorant I am or hardheaded I am. I dunno.
(21:12):
And listen, I came from really tough church situations until I got here. So it wasn't an easy ride by any means, but that's my little caveat to give myself a little bit of an out, even though it's really not true. So you have to think through what's coming and lemme explain what I mean. I get so frustrated whenever I hear my peers say that student ministry is coming up on camp and they haven't asked for anything. Okay, did you go ask them what they need? Well, no, that's not my job. Actually, it is. Your job is to do that for them. Your job is to be that if they understood production, they wouldn't be a student pastor, they would be a media director. And so I get so frustrated whenever my peers are like, I'm just going to sit here and wait until they drop the ball and then I'm going to get really mad at 'em.
(22:05):
What good is that going to do? That is just going to frustrate you, that's going to frustrate your team. It's going to frustrate them. And how is that teamwork? How is that at all teamwork to do that? It's not. And so the rhythms of your church, you could spend a year in your church and probably have down pretty solid VBS is coming this time. Student camp's coming, this time, kids camp is coming this time. You're going to know those big boulders on your church calendar that needs your assistance in production. Don't wait for the ministries to bring stuff to you. Go after it. And I know I can hear the eye rolls now of everybody saying, well, I don't have time to do that. Okay, imagine if you just took 15, 20 minutes a week to help yourself in this way, how light that would make your load, rather than just being stressed out and constantly having to manage your frustration, their frustration, your team's frustration because you just made a little bit of effort to go the extra mile and go to them and find out what's happening.
(23:04):
So that is definitely a do is to be proactive. And that sounds so simple, and it sounds so, yeah, duh. But I'm telling you, there are so many people that just either don't understand that or just flat out refuse to do that. And it's bizarre to me. Now, that being said, I was one of them. So I get it. I get it. I was one of those people that would sit there and be like, and I would just get, that's dumb. I think at one point, just like everything else in my life that God's done with me is there's just been this moment where I just go click. Well, that was stupid. And so don't be that guy. Don't be that guy. And it's easy when you are a lone wolf without a team or you're the only full-time and all you've got is a part-time or a couple part-timers. And it's easy to just get into that mindset. And once you get into that mindset, it's hard to get out of. You literally just have to say, stop it. Just stop it and move on. And so that's definitely a do. And I cannot stress that enough, is to do another thing that's a do is don't. It kind of goes hand in hand with what I just said, but in a different angle. Don't expect them to understand what it takes to do your job.
(24:20):
So we just had a conversation with peers about this last week. So we used to have a form, yes, beloved form that said, with any event request, do you need microphones? Do you need, I mean, it was this litany of garbage and I'm literally calling it garbage. So if you have one of these, trash it, okay, I'm just telling everybody that's listening, trash it because it's stupid. And we have this form that was a litany of questions that someone putting in an event, which is usually ministry assistant. So even worse, I love ministry assistants, but they don't know Deed pastor really wants, right? They just know you pastor wants this event to happen. And really it's even less their job to understand. But it had all these things, microphones, projection, video, speaker, band, all this stuff that in my mind I was being helpful by presenting them with what it takes to do your event.
(25:12):
And there was never a motivation of, okay, I'm going to show you how hard it's to do this. No. It was literally, if I can get more information out of you on the front end, that makes both of us happy. That was my thought process. And then again, one of those light switches, click ding, Hey, idiot, they don't understand this because we tried it for a couple of years and I think we did it for at least a couple of years, and they kept coming in wrong. It was like, this isn't at all what you asked for. Well, they didn't know what they needed. And so kind of like you said, whenever you have that conversation with someone, you can actually dialogue and say, what are you doing? What is it you need? Oh, is this all you need? Great. Perfect. And sometimes you can talk to them and realize this is all you need. They're going, well, I don't know. I guess I need you to come and run sound, and I need you to do this, and I need you to do that. And then you're like, actually, if we just turn the soundboard on for you, you'll be fine. Oh, okay, great. So now our request is do you need us to support you? Yes or no?
Joseph Cottle(26:08):
Yeah.
James Harding(26:09):
And then if they say yes, we go to them and have the question
Joseph Cottle(26:13):
Exactly.
James Harding(26:14):
We go and have the conversation.
Joseph Cottle(26:15):
We have the same thing here at Life Mission. We use Espace to coordinate events and stuff. And literally for each campus, it's just like, do you want something on the screen? Do you want audio? And that's it. And then once I see that it comes through my email and I have to approve the vent, but then that allows me to go have a conversation, well, what do you actually need? Yep, that's perfect.
James Harding(26:40):
And ours is a very generic question with a little bit of a parentheses that says projection sound all. But we don't ask the Whitney of questions anymore because that's not productive. That's not helpful. What's actually helpful is for those of us that are smart enough to know what it takes to pull off what they're doing, to go have a conversation with them that says, what are you doing? Okay, this is what you need to do that. And so that has been a huge help for us is to do, and again, introverts, get out of your little box, have a conversation because you're going to be a lot better off if you do. And I promise you it is absolutely worth the time to do that. So that's a couple of the huge dos that I would say are really important.
(27:21):
So don't play ministry leaders against each other. So don't say Mom said, dad said, right. Don't play that game. And so that's never good. So in my role here, when I first started here, I reported to the worship pastor, and then I started, at some point it was switched to reporting to the executive pastor. And so that was why I was still in production. I still report to the executive pastor of operations. So still in that same chain of hierarchy, but what you can't do is go play the worship pastor against the executive pastor or the facilit pastor against the worship pastor. That's never going to be beneficial because I don't know if you know it, but those guys talk too. And so you could play this little game and get yourself in a lot of hot water by accidentally saying something. And your intentions may be good, but that's just not a wise idea. In fact, what I would do if you have situations like that, is get everybody together and have the conversation. So that's a dump that turns into a do right there, because I can't tell you how many times I've had to say, Hey, we need to get y'all in a room together and have a talk because this me trying to go between you all and negotiate does not work.
Joseph Cottle(28:27):
Oh yeah, absolutely. If you find yourself being the middleman, get out of that situation as fast as you can schedule a meeting and a 15 minute meeting is going to save you days of headaches.
James Harding(28:40):
Yeah, we don't want meetings. We don't want to clutter our schedule, but that's one of those times where the right people need to have the conversation. And you don't need to be stuck in the middle of it, especially if there's drama in the conversation, which I know drama never happens at church, but especially if there's drama in the conversation or disagreement, don't try to remedy that. Get everybody in the room together and have the conversation. And you may need to be the one that pushes the conversation to happen. Because a lot of times when people are in disagreement, they're not going to just come right out and say it. And so I can't tell you how many times I've started off a conversation in a meeting like that where I'm like, all right, so Joseph has this issue and James has this issue. You guys are not seeing eye to eye.
(29:24):
Let's figure out how we can get that to work. And so that kind of instantly disarms that, well, I'm not going to talk first. I'm not going to be the one to say it, but don't play ministry leaders against each other. The other thing I would say we've kind of touched on it is don't automatically jump to the just don't do it. Try to find the yes, win whatever it means. Now, again, great advice from people, a lot smarter than me, but I'm the one getting interviewed, so I regurgitate use these. I'm telling you, man, I've got some really great people around me that have just helped me in ministry so long. But one of the things that we can do whenever these things come up is pause and approach it from a series of questions. Just think, alright, is this a one-time thing? Is this a short-term thing?
(30:14):
Is this a long-term thing? Is this a for everything? And start having those conversations and questions and say, okay, if this is a one-time thing, we can navigate our schedules in order to pull it off. Don't worry about setting a precedent. I was the worst about saying, well, this is going to set a precedent if we do this, we have to do this every time. Now, no, make it clear that, alright, this is a one-time thing, so we can accommodate this one time and it's going to be fine. Just make sure you're clear. I also am one of those people that believes in having an email chain. That way, whenever something comes back up, boom, you have an email chain. But start with the series of questions. Is this a one-time thing? Is this a short-term thing? Long-term thing, permanent thing. Alright, so if it's a short-term thing, can you accommodate?
(30:59):
What would it take to accommodate? Do you need something to do this? Is it a long-term thing? How long-term is? Long-term? I know a lot of churches where short-term things and long-term things become permanent things and you didn't even realize it. So you have to be careful about the creep. But determine, and again, ask that same question. What would it take to accomplish this? Is this a permanent thing? Well, can we really accommodate this? This is where the question kind of focuses backwards on your own team. How much time are they actually working versus how much time are they actually wasting versus how much time are they spending doing things that probably shouldn't take that much time? And so there's a lot of guys in our line that really believe in time tracking. And that's really wise because once you start realizing how much time you do have, you realize how much more you can accomplish.
(31:50):
And your role as the director, especially if you have a team, is to monitor that and manage that. You don't want your environment to be rigid and not friendly, not fun, but you also don't want it to be just a time of everybody loosey goosey, hanging out, having a good time, and ever getting their work done. And so just start with a series of questions. So once you've answered those questions, take those answers and formulate how you can respond and say, all right, we can do this for you. This is what it's going to take for us to do it. And that answer is going to look different. And I won't go over all that because obviously there's just a lot to cover there. But that answer's going to look different based on if it's one time short-term, long-term permanent. But that's your opportunity to develop and grow your ministry.
(32:33):
These asks become things where you can actually improve upon what you're doing because someone else needs you to do something. And so over the years here, we have purchased gear, we have had resources, we've added staff because of these things we were asked to do, and we simply said, great, we can pull that off. Here's what it's going to take. Do you still want to do it? Especially when it's coming from the highest point of your leadership, from your pastor down. And if he says, we're going to do it, you just now have an opportunity to do something to advance your ministry, your department. And so just don't instantly go to the know, because you could use these as opportunities to really grow and get better. And by always going to the know you're creating this thing where everybody doesn't want to deal with you because you're just the no guy. And so that's probably the biggest don't, I would say, is don't do that. And that's the temptation, that's the risk.
Joseph Cottle(33:31):
Well, James, thank you so much. This has been such a great conversation and I think it's going to be really helpful to anybody listening, whether they've been doing this for 10 years or maybe they're just getting started out. So again, thank you so much for your time today, and we hope to talk again. Talk to you again soon.
James Harding(33:50):
Awesome.
Joseph Cottle(33:51):
Thanks again for listening to the church production podcast from church production.com. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast or email list and our YouTube channel, as well as follow us on Instagram for everything church production.