040: Basic Tech For Small Churches With Darin Elquist | Worship & Tech Series Part 6

Episode 040: Basic Tech For Small Churches With Darin Elquist | Part 6 Worship & Tech Series For Small Churches

Intro 0:01
Hey, this is Laurie Graham. Welcome to The Small Church Ministry Podcast.

Laurie Graham 0:15
Hey everyone, welcome back to The Small Church Ministry Podcast! We are in the middle of a series all about worship and tech, and our goal is really to address small church struggles with solutions that actually work for small churches. We have seen time and time again, that large churches really are a different kind of ministry. What you’ll find, if you hang out with us, are people who know and love small churches and people who get smaller budgets and smaller numbers. People who love small churches, who believe that small church ministry isn’t less, but it is different. So we are excited today to have pastor Darin Elquist on the show with us, and whether you’re out walking or listening with earbuds while you’re supposed to be working, I’m so glad we get to hang out with you for a little bit. But Pastor Darin Elquist is joining us from The Bridge Church Spanish Springs in Nevada. So Darin, what can you tell us something fun about your day or where you’re at or why you’re there? Let’s just let people get to know you a little bit.

Darin Elquist  01:12
Well, to clarify, yes, we are in Nevada. Oftentimes, people think of Las Vegas, when they think of Nevada. We’re nowhere near Las Vegas! We’re 500 miles North, East of Reno, and I happen to live in a more rural area. So I, my closest neighbor is about half a mile away or so, and you know, in my spare time, I tend to find myself out, rolling around in the desert, either in my truck or on a quad or something like that, playing music, that sort of thing.

Laurie Graham  01:47
That’s awesome. I’m in Tucson. So, I live in a desert too, but I know our deserts are probably a little different. Deserts have such a different ecosystem, pretty much, in so many different places, but Darinn, tell us about your experience in small churches.

Darin Elquist  02:00
Well, I started working in ministry, completely by accident as a volunteer youth pastor back in 1997, and for two years, I was the volunteer youth pastor at a church that didn’t really want a youth pastor. So, that had its fair amount of challenges, and we left that church and I said I was never going to do that again, and like three months later, I got, got a real job offer from another small church. And so I ended up taking it, and I was there a long time. I was there, up until about 2014 with a four and a half year break when I went and worked up at a camp near Lake Tahoe.

Laurie Graham  02:45
So you were doing youth ministry? 

Darin Elquist  02:47
Yes. Yeah. 

Laurie Graham  02:50
Wow. What do you love about small churches?

Darin Elquist  02:53
Well, the relationship. I love what you said that when you said that small churches aren’t less, they’re different. And so there’s a place for a large church and I think that most large churches are doing really good things, but relationally speaking, at a large church, you’re not going to be able to sit down with the pastor and talk about anything really. You got to get on a long list, and in a small church, you know the folks. You know the people you’re speaking with on Sunday, it’s, it’s easier to come up with, you know, I know what our congregation wants and needs and where most of them are in life, and I think that having that, that, that, that faith community, a real tight one, is important. We got to have our people.

Laurie Graham  03:47
Yeah, so much. So you, I love that you said you were accidentally a volunteer youth leader, because so many people in small churches, we find ourselves accidentally leading in a lot of places and even picking up different tips and wearing multiple hats, and here you are a pastor and you are on a podcast to talk to us about basic tech for small churches, and a lot of pastors in large churches, they’re not as involved with the tech. I have found completely the opposite in small churches. I have seen tons of pastors who are very hands on, involved in the processes, the purchasing, what we’re going to do, how we’re going to do it, and even running some of it themselves! Have you seen that too in small churches, like, more of an overlap and those kinds of jobs?

Darin Elquist  04:29
Absolutely, and when, when we opened up this church, we’re a little bit less than five years old, I designed our tech in a way that one person could operate it from the pulpit if needed.

Laurie Graham  04:42
Wow! That is brilliant, and I love that you said if needed, because I know you have a heart for equipping people and helping them and building up other leaders and people in different skill areas, but it is true, in small churches, sometimes we’re just in a bind. Somebody doesn’t show up one day and as we start talking about basic tech for small churches, that’s one of the reasons I was excited to have you on because you’re a pastor involved in tech, and your church is under around 50 people maybe? 

Darin Elquist  05:10
Yeah!

Laurie Graham  05:11
Yeah, yeah. So it’s like the perfect small church that’s doing ministry God’s way, that’s looking at different things. So you described yourself as a tech nerd or something like that, when we talked earlier, when did that begin for you?

Darin Elquist  05:24
At the ripe old age of about 12. My dad used to clean the church that we attended and nobody was there. So, I would do what I wasn’t supposed to do, and I would sneak around and start playing with the soundboard. I figured out how to turn it on, how to play music, and then I got busted by the sound guy, but there was another guy there who was paying attention. And about two years later, he invited me to come work for him at of all places, a ballroom, and on Friday and Saturday nights, he would give me like 10 bucks a night to come in, and DJ ballroom dancing. And it was there, I really got to understand how audio kind of worked, you know, from the microphone, to the speaker, and everything in between, and then as time progressed, I got connected with a guy on accident. His name is Dave Swearengen. He’s out of Minda, Nevada. He operates clarity sound, and I started working with him. And he became kind of like my Jedi Master of sound for a number of years. And so working with him, I learned just a ton of stuff about audio, and then the rest is history. And if, you know, you ever had the opportunity to visit my office, or we have a third of our house is dedicated to music and stuff like that, you would see a huge nerd.

Laurie Graham  06:49
Oh, well, then you’re the perfect person to talk to us, especially if you can simplify a few things that are in my head, I know, because I am not a tech person, but from your experience, what are the biggest mistakes that small churches are making in their tech? From what you’ve seen, from what you hear, what are some of those biggest mistakes?

Darin Elquist  07:08
Oh, a lot of times it can be the people involved in tech. Now I understand that, as small churches, we’re limited, and oftentimes, the understanding is that that stuff is so complicated, only this person can do it, or that person can do it, and that’s not necessarily true. I’ve learned over the years that I would rather have somebody whose personality lined up with, you know, that servant heart, who may not be as good as the sound guy is maybe that person that’s really good sound guy, but hard to work with. And you’ll find that success with tech often revolves around the people that are overseeing it or working it. Nope, nobody likes a grouchy sound guy.

Laurie Graham  07:58
That is so true, but I have to be honest, a lot of the sound people are grouchy. They don’t like, I mean, that’s what I’m hearing from a lot of, a lot of churches. Since we started this series, I’m getting emails and a lot of responses, and I asked people what their challenges are and a lot of people say our sound person doesn’t listen to anybody. They won’t let us touch anything. They won’t let us help. They they’re, they’re not the happiest people to work with. How do you think those people get in that position? Because when I’m hearing you speak, I, you’ve got my heart right there, like, give me the right person who can be teachable, who’s humble, who can work with other people, and that’s who I want! How did all these wrong people get behind the soundboard?

Darin Elquist  08:36
I think it’s just lack of choice. You know, there’s, once again, tech is often seen as something that’s really complex, and it really isn’t, and then you’ll take who you can get and the sound guys, and you know what? There’s a lot of people in like tech ministry, buildings and grounds, right? We’ve all got these people that we’ve worked with, that get real territorial over things like lawn mowers, and microphones, and so on. And so not only do they operate the stuff, but they feel like maybe they need to be the guardian of the stuff, and that nobody else can do but them, and no young whippersnapper of a worship leader is going to change their mind. So, they just get dug in and entrenched there, and I don’t believe the answer is always getting rid of them. I, I believe that the answer is what I call my, my Michael Bolton leadership theology. Time, love, and tenderness goes a long way.

Laurie Graham  09:43
Time, love, and tenderness. I love that!

Darin Elquist  09:45
When you come up against somebody that’s harsh and abrasive, well, if you come back that way, the wall gets higher, but if you step back, you take the time to get to know somebody, figure out what it is that makes them tick, and then to work with them. Now, sometimes people just aren’t workable, that’s true, and there may be a tough decision to make, but oftentimes people are workable. And then you can end up saving a lot of time and energy, you can gain somebody who becomes a friend and an ally, and, I mean, that’s the end goal. We don’t want to go tossing people out, we want to bring them in.

Laurie Graham  10:28
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So you’ve said a couple times already, that sound and tech is not as complicated as we think it is, or that it’s a little more simple than most people make it out to be. So what are some of the basics in tech that any average, layperson could or even should understand?

Darin Elquist  10:48
Volume control. Live sound reinforcement was designed to help people hear certain things better, you know, that necessity is the mother of invention. So if we time travel back to the 40’s, and we have big bands, right? Well, now we start to see guitars enter the scene. Well, at that time, there was no guitar that could keep up with a swing band. So, they started putting these pickups in these guitars and plugging them into little speakers and amps because they needed that live sound reinforcement to get the guitar over the trumpets, trombones, and so on. Well, from there, it just kept on going, and so now when you think of your pastor speaking, he’s got his lapel mic on or probably his little countrymen headset. It’s so that the people in the back can hear him, because in most churches, the people up front cannot hear him without it. So we reinforced that sound for better communication, and it comes down to volume. People will get wrapped up in the eQueuing of channels, they’ll get wrapped up in different reverb effects and so on, trying to make it sound really cool. When at the end of the day, truth be told, if you have decent speakers and decent microphones, you could run a flat EQ, and still have a good, clean sound without feedback.

Laurie Graham  12:20
And what you’re saying by a flat EQ, if I can break it down to my language, that means all those little buttons and knobs that are all over the top of my soundboard, at least, they used to be little knobs and things, but you mean all the different things we play with and all the different channels, you’re saying you could flatten all that out and just work with the volume control? 

Darin Elquist  12:40
You could. Yes. 

Laurie Graham  12:42
And it would be decent. Now, I totally hear what you’re saying because we have, I’ve worked with some amazing sound people and I’ve actually learned to run a sound board,  and it is, there’s a real difference. It’s almost like a musical instrument. Like I can make the band sound better or worse, you know, when I do play with the EQ and the individual sound channels and all of that. So I know that you’re not saying the best thing is to do is to flatten it out, but I love to simplify it to say, “Hey, if you don’t know what you’re doing with all this stuff, maybe it’s better not to be touching on all of it until you do.” Is that kind of the gist?

Darin Elquist  13:15
Yeah! When you look at a soundboard, let’s just, the most common soundboard I see in churches is somewhere around a 24-channel soundboard, and that means it has 24 inputs. What people don’t realize is channel 1 through 24 are identical. They operate the same. So, if you break it down, you’re looking at the same thing 24 times, and then you have your master panel on the side or in the middle, depending on the brand, and, once again, that’s just your master panel and it’s the same thing just separated out into different sections. And the EQ exists so that you can make small tweaks on something, so that you can avoid feedback. So that like, you know, like we’ll take sometimes female singers can be a little harsh on the high end, so you can back that off a little bit and smooth it out. Sometimes the male singers tend to be a little mumbly if you will. So you can pull out some other mid frequencies to clean that up, and it’s just little tiny, little tiny adjustments that can help really shape the sound, and you’re going for natural. You want that, you want that worship leader who’s playing a guitar. You want that guitar to sound like the guitar that’s wrapped around his neck, not the guitar that you’ve turned it into through the speakers. Does that make sense?

Laurie Graham  14:40
It totally makes sense to me and I love the fact that even you saying this is simpler than people make it out to be, kinda takes some of the fear factor out of it. Because I know, I’ve been terrified to touch a soundboard because a sound person has made me terrified. Like, you don’t know what you’re doing, you shouldn’t touch that, you shouldn’t, and honestly, when you talked about being a 12 year old, and you know, running back and playing with the buttons, that’s how we learn, like, it’s how we learn. And I love the fact that you even help and help train people on how to simplify and how to take that fear out that, you know, this isn’t going to make it crash and burn. You’re going to hear something different, and, and just to make it feel simpler.

Darin Elquist  15:21
And in today’s day and age, with, with sound boards becoming digital and more accessible digital, it’s become even easier and, and less expensive! It’ll blow your mind what a good digital console will cost and what it can do and who can operate it.

Laurie Graham  15:43
That is awesome to hear, and you’ve mentioned equipment, and you’ve mentioned, you know, the expense of it. You said earlier, if somebody even with a flat EQ, if it’s volume control, if you’ve got a decent board and a decent mic, can we just talk a little bit about equipment and what you’ve seen? 

Darin Elquist  15:59
Sure. 

Laurie Graham  16:00
Because most churches I’ve been in have had the equipment they’ve purchased, I think is probably a lot more than we ever even used, like the capability and I think it was too much. Do you see that happen at all?

Darin Elquist  16:11
All the time. I recently worked with a church in Reno, that, they were, they were in much need of a sound system overhaul. I did the best I could to help patch them up for a couple years, but the church wasn’t set up properly to begin with. So, there wasn’t enough speaker to cover the whole building. The first two or three rows were dead spaces, and so, there was just, there was all kinds of problems. So, I did what I could to fix it until they could afford to replace it, and that’s what they did. And almost everything they got was in line except the sound console, and they spent close to 10 grand on a sound console. It’s a beautiful console. I love it, but they could have done just as well with the $1,000 version, like a Behringer or something like that, would have done them just fine, but you know.

Laurie Graham  17:11
How do those of us who aren’t techy, how do we know what equipment we need? Is there some kind of bass because I know when you talk to the people at the stores or Google online, you’re getting a lot of high end stuff, and also a lot of even verbiage for me that I don’t understand. And so how, how can we make the best decisions?

Darin Elquist  17:29
Well, that’s tough, because you do kind of have to have a little bit of knowledge to understand what your basic needs are as a church. If, there’s a big difference, if you’re running a full worship team with guitars, keyboards, bass, drums, then your needs are going to be different than a smaller or different church that might be just running a couple guitars and a couple singers. There’s, there’s, you’re going to have different needs. The, you’re going to want to know what those needs are and what your budget requirements are before you go shopping, and, and if you don’t understand, you know, this is, this is the tough part in this is that most people don’t have somebody that they can ask. I would, you know, us small churches, if we go and we call a big local church, they’re going to say yeah, you know what, get that $10,000 board, it’s great. If we go next door to another small church, they may have something different to say, but do, do as much homework as you can, but when possible, seek some outside assistance on, you know, and this is where it gets tough. I don’t think I have a great answer for you, but it helps to have somebody you know that can say yeah, great board, too much, you guys might like this.

Laurie Graham  19:06
Yeah, I think sound and tech is an art, and often, you know, just like being a doctor or whatever, we’ve all got different opinions. We’ve all got different standards. We’ve all got different styles, and when you do get into the small church world, it is different, and I have seen some really high quality sound and tech coming out of churches that spent a fraction, a fraction of what other churches have spent on things that they’re really not even using. And we’re, we are trying to bridge this gap so that people have someone to ask and somewhere to go, and I know Darin, you’re speaking at the worship and tech conference coming up. We are filling that day with more discussion panels than ever so people can come in and ask specific questions to people who’ve been there and done that and seen different things. We also have a Facebook community for small churches and I know we’ve had different discussions in there, but I do just want to encourage anyone listening, you know, what Darin has saying is so good, like, ask somebody if you don’t know, don’t just go and buy the first thing that you see, or the first thing somebody says, and truly to talk to people in small churches who have successfully done this, it’s a very different answer, because the ministry needs just aren’t the same. You know, one thing you said earlier, Darin was about the person versus the equipment. How do you know when the problem you’re having, like, let’s say you’re having feedback, or there’s crackling in speakers, or the volume is never right, or, you know, people are complaining that their hearing aid is, you know, is tweaking and things like this, how do you know when these issues come up in small churches, when the problem is the person who’s running it versus the equipment?

Darin Elquist  20:44
Years ago, I worked with a guy. Every Sunday, he had the same subtle feedback without fail, and I would say to him, “Do you, do you hear that? You know, it’s around this frequency. Can you hear these?” He says, “No, there’s no, there’s no feedback. It sounds good.” “No, it’s there. I’m telling you, it’s there.” Come to find out he lost the lower part of his hearing years ago.

Laurie Graham  21:12
And he was running the soundboard? 

Darin Elquist  21:14
He was running, he had a hearing problem, and he was running the soundboard. Okay. That’s, that’s somebody that I would try to get in another ministry at that point, because, you know, I think we would all agree that if we’re going to have somebody running sound, they should have good hearing. That was the problem there. He didn’t ever step out of that until the day he died because, once again, we talked about the territorial kind of thing, not only was this individual territorial, but he had purchased all the equipment up to that point. So he really had a stranglehold on it. Sometimes, people aren’t cut out for it like, I, let me preface it by saying I love engineers, every one of them. Engineers are very smart. They’re gifted, they’re talented, and they work off of numbers. And so in theory, if you do what we call zero-out your sound system, which means everything, is at unity gain or zero, you should have a good mix. Well, that never works out. You’ve always got to adjust something, but they’ll, I’ve worked with guys that say, well, the board looks good, and the lights are right, so there’s no problem. Well, of course, there’s a problem. It sounds terrible. And so, one of the ways that you could tell if it’s the person and not the equipment is if that person isn’t willing to learn more, if they’re not willing to take constructive criticism. That is so very important, if they’re not willing to be trained. One of the things the, the I’m affiliated with The Bridge Church in Reno, and one of the things that I love about their church and our church, is that they go out of their way to train people, to give opportunities for people to get more training. And that’s, we want to see those people wanting to learn more and to get better. When I’m teaching somebody, my goal is that in a certain amount of time, they’ll be teaching me.

Laurie Graham  23:20
Wow, I love that! When you’re teaching somebody, your goal is that in a certain amount of time, they would be teaching you. Okay, that is a quotable quote, and we will be revisiting that in the future, because that is such a mark of a leader that I would want to follow. So thank you for sharing that one. Wow. I will be thinking about that one all day. So since we kind of went in a little direction with engineers, and Darin, I did not talk to you about this ahead of time, so I’m hoping we’ll be somewhat on the same page or have a good conversation about this, but there’s two stereotypes with sound people that I’d like to, I’d kind of like to blow out of the water. And maybe I’m wrong, but this has been my experience. One is that in a lot of churches, when we see somebody who is a tech person, or they know how to use a computer, we think they’re going to be great at sound, and in my experience, I’ve actually seen musicians sometimes be better on the soundboard than the tech people because there’s something about hearing and enjoying and being part of the music and bringing out different things than just the person who loves tech or is good at tech. Have you seen that at all?

Darin Elquist  24:31
Doing, doing a good mix is an art, and when I’m behind a soundboard I don’t set it and forget it. Okay, it’s not the Ron Popeil soundboard. As you go through the event, whatever it is, whether it’s a Sunday morning or a special event, variables change throughout time. So you have to make adjustments and my job behind the soundboard is to mold this in a way that, once again, first and foremost, whatever needs to be communicated, is being communicated. And, second, it sounds so good that nobody says anything, because when it sounds good, nobody says anything. The only time people say anything to sound people is when it doesn’t sound good. So my goal is

Laurie Graham  25:22
Yeah, I love the thought of minimizing distractions, you know, like, like, part of the goal of sound people is minimizing the distractions. Go ahead, I think I cut you off there.

Darin Elquist  25:31
We should be invisible. We’re visibly invisible back there. We’re doing something critical, but at the same time, we’re way off in the back corner somewhere in a shadowy area, nobody should know we’re there, and that’s the goal.

Laurie Graham  25:47
Awesome! Okay, so one stereotype that I think you just kind of helped confirm with me is, it’s not always the tech person or the computer person that makes your best sound engineers, or people who are actually on the tech team. It sounds counterintuitive, but that’s what I’ve seen, and the other stereotype I’d like to just chat about for a second is the lingo of ‘sound guy’, because I have to be honest, I have seen women who are running sound boards and running the lyrics and the slides, who are amazing, and I just wonder why, so oftentimes, when we’re looking at recruiting sound people there is there is a pull toward “Hey, it’s a sound guy, who can we get?” And I don’t know if that’s the tech edge, but one of the, my daughter makes us sound like crazy and our best like lyric slide flippers, I know a lot of people think that’s a no nothing job, that’s a highly skilled job, like to be able to flip things at the right place. And honestly, oftentimes, I’ve seen women just excelling, like blowing out of the water, what men had been doing and so I don’t want to get into a whole sexist thing at all, but have you noticed that people kind of look to men as like the sound guys, and have you seen anything different in your experience?

Darin Elquist  27:00
Yeah, that’s, that’s just cultural America, I think, because I agree with you that I have, I have worked with and trained plenty of ladies that are excellent behind a soundboard, and when we’re talking about somebody running your lyrics, I always will go to women first, because men, men will start thinking about lunch halfway through the worship set. Next thing you know, you’re three slides behind, but ladies are always on top of that, always. Now, here at The Bridge Church in Spanish Springs, we have people that run the lyrics during the music time. When it comes time to do the sermon, I do my own slides. No, no, no matter how hard I tried, I could never get somebody working the computer to read my mind. Can’t do it. And I can give them notes. I can number of slides. I have done, I tried everything, and there was always mistakes which creates distraction, which is what we try to avoid. So once I learned about AirPlay about 10 years ago now, I never looked back. I just tap my Ipad, and now it’s even easier because if you’re using televisions or something like a television, most of the time you can, in small churches, we’re not going to have a video wall, we’re going to have a TV hanging up somewhere. Most TVs will take Apple AirPlay without an Apple TV now. So it’s a just simple changeover, off to the races.

Laurie Graham  28:36
Okay, there’s a bonus tip for anyone who’s listening. For pastors who like to run your own slides, that is a really creative solution. You know, one thing I just love about our entire community is, I think more and more, we’re just all embracing the fact that there is not one way, there’s not one right answer, there’s not one right thing, and that it’s so important to utilize your community in figuring out creative solutions that work for you, and we are so about that! So we’ve talked about a lot of stuff so far Darin, and my head is spinning a little bit, but I want to talk about what makes the best sound person in your opinion, because and in your experience, because one of the biggest challenges people say is I don’t have anybody to do this. I can’t find anybody who said, who would say yes, and a lot of times, there’s a lot of fear base behind that. People are, you know, getting involved in things they’ve never done before, but when you’re looking for a sound person or someone to run the slides or be part of the tech team, what are the top qualities that you look for that you think we should consider too?

Darin Elquist  29:36
Personality, number one. What kind of person is it? Is it somebody who is willing to learn? Is it someone who agrees with and believes in your mission and vision? Somebody who is, is willing to do the work because we know that when you sign up to be part of any worship ministry, you’re going to be practicing some weeknight, that’s just what you do. And you want to be able to work with somebody who you’re not going to be afraid to say something like, “Hey, can I get more of John in my monitor? Can I get less of this in my monitor?” You want to have somebody that you can talk to, and somebody that when you say, “Listen, it sounds muddy up here,” who is going to want to help you fix the problem and not get offended that you attacked their sound mixing capabilities. So, and that, that revolves around relationship. Everything we do, big church or little doesn’t matter, has to do with how we relate to the people in our church and the people that are working with us in ministry. And when you know people and they know you, then when you say something, they’re going to know, well, he didn’t, he’s not being offensive, we just have this thing we need to work out, we need to figure out why this is happening and fix it. So, I look for people that want to serve Jesus in their community, and I’ll tell you, one thing I’ve learned is that making the mass call during announcements isn’t the best way to gather folks. That never works. You’ve, I actually had a staff member leave a couple of years ago because we would make announcements for helps in her ministry, and nobody signed up and I kept trying to tell her listen, you gotta go talk to people. You got to, so when you one on one somebody say listen, “I have this whole, I was wondering if maybe you could help me out and, you know, man the soundboard?” “I don’t know how to do sound.” “That’s okay. That’s not a problem. That’s something I feel like I can teach you. Give it a try for a couple of weeks. If you feel good about it, we’ll keep going. If you don’t, then you don’t.” And you’ll know quickly if people are into it or not.

Laurie Graham  32:01
Yeah, and sometimes they’re not the ones you would expect. Now, you spent a lot of years in youth ministry, and a lot of people are terrified to have teenagers anywhere near that board. When you talked about sneaking in as a 12 year old, my, the sound person at my church will come in on Sunday say, “Oh, the Gremlins were in again this week.” Because invariably, somebody’s been in there, you know, in your small church during the week and done something to the soundboard. But when you work with teens, or want to train teens on it, on a soundboard, what do you think of that? Is there a place for teenagers, young adults? How young can you go? When do you think, what’s the perfect age to get them started?

Darin Elquist  32:37
Well, I don’t know if there’s a perfect age. A good example is, my, both of, I have a bunch of sons. Two of them in particular, can operate a sound console and it’s because we’ve usually had one in the house. So from young ages seven, nine, I could say, “Hey, listen, go to channel three and do this or do that,” and they could look at the console and get it done. But once again, they were raised around it. I think it depends less on age and more the kid. I had a young man who is now in his late 30’s, but when he was in middle school, maybe early high school, he had no desire to play music at all, but he wanted to be part of the worship team. So I started training him on a soundboard, old Mackie VLZ 24 and it was big. And I remember the first time he looked at it, he was, he thought I was nuts. But he was, all through adulthood, he was one of my better sound guys. He just got it. He understood what it mix should sound like. He understood what I wanted as a worship leader, and he also understood what our mission and vision was. We had a, we had a very active worship team as a youth group. We would do summer camps and things like that, for a good couple of years, during the summertime. So we, we kind of had, we had high expectations when we went places. And he was great. I’ve trained other kids that weren’t so great, but they could get it done. And I trained other kids that I knew it just wasn’t their bag, but I can say the same thing for adults too. 

Laurie Graham  34:27
So how many people do you think you’ve ever trained? Like if you had to give a number, how many people have you trained, at least initially, to utilize a soundboard? 

Darin Elquist  34:34
Oh, a couple 100, maybe?

Laurie Graham  34:36
I mean, how amazing is this? And I want to say this, this is like life. Like, why are we looking for people who, you know, we’re like qualifying people and we look at them like, oh, that person might have the aptitude, and what I hear you saying is hey get them in there and try it!

Darin Elquist  34:51
Yeah, give it, their, most sound systems are not going to be destroyed by one person pushing a fader up too fast, right? It’s, you’re not it’s just is not going to, nope. I think back to the future ruined us because we see Martin McFly turn that guitar up, and then he blows those speaker cones and himself across the room. Okay, that doesn’t happen. You can blow a speaker, yes, but it’s not easy to do. Most churches don’t have enough horsepower in the amp cabinet to do that. So the worst case scenario is you get some yucky feedback for a minute. So turn it down, try again.

Laurie Graham  35:28
I love your heart for developing people and for helping them be successful and for trying new things. I think this is so much, abig part of success of small churches, is when we’re not holding things too tightly. We’re letting people explore different areas where, you know, bursting out of the stereotypes of the tech engineer is going to be the best sound person so much we’ve talked about on this episode already. Darin, is there anything we’ve missed or anything that you want to add that you’re like, oh, I wish she had asked me that?

Darin Elquist  35:59
I think, so, earlier I said what’s important as far as your equipment goes is decent microphones and decent speakers, not a decent soundboard, and that is because it’s that same idea garbage in, garbage out. If you have a crummy microphone, but a $10,000 soundboard and 10 grand and speakers, that’s garbage going in, you’re not going to be able to fix that. It’s going to take a lot to make that mic sound natural because that’s what we’re going for, we’re going for natural. But if you have decent microphones and a decent set of speakers, what’s in the middle, you’ve got some wiggle room there. You can have maybe not so great of a, of an amp or not so great of this or that, and you would be surprised that a good microphone, you can get a good microphone for 100 bucks, and sometimes if you’re paying attention you can get like Sennheiser and Shure both will sell. They’ll do, you know, like you can get three SM 58’s for 150 bucks. That’s good. Those mics can be dropped, kicked, you could swim with them, dry them off, put them on the stand, and have Sunday morning worship. They’re great and they sound good. So you pay attention to that stuff, the stuff in the middle, make sure your cables are good. If you hear snap, crackle, and popin, you know don’t, don’t chase those sound Gremlins, change the cable. I’ve seen a lot of people working really hard when they can just change the cable because that’ll fix most things. I actually played a gig in this little podunk town called Fallon, it’s about an hour away from us, this last weekend, and the, the monitor feed for our drummer was terrible. And I loved watching the sound guy because that’s, he just without batting an eye, not stressing just came up, switched cable, everything was golden. It took him three minutes. Everybody was happy. But I’ve seen other sound guys in that same position, shut everything down to find out what was wrong with that channel.

Laurie Graham  38:17
Yeah, and so much of this is learn learn as we go in small churches, but I love the little nuggets of advice you’ve given all along the way, and thank you for going back to that because I missed that. I, I did not, I didn’t hear earlier, what you just said now, which is your microphones are really important and maybe more important than the mixer and I just that, these tips and these, just these, these pieces of wisdom that you’ve given are huge, and I hope that people all over are like taking notes, because that’s what I’m going to do. I’m gonna go back through here and write down the notes and the bits of wisdom because there was a lot in here, so much in here. If you could give one piece of advice to a sound person who’s listening right now, and this is the scenario. They don’t know what they’re doing, and there’s nobody to train them. You know, it’s good for you and your church, you know Darin, because you’re, you, you’re training all these people. What advice would you give to somebody who’s in a small church right now, they’re the sound person, they’re willing and they want to learn, how can they learn?

Darin Elquist  39:18
Google. We, we have the information superhighway at our fingertips. When, when, when I got into sound, I didn’t have Google. So, yeah, I made a lot of mistakes, and learn from every one of them, but today, if you’re at a small church, and you’ve had this thrust upon you, and you don’t know how to operate the sound console, go to Google, type in that console number. You’re going to, YouTube is going to pop up first probably, or that manufacturer with how-to videos. I, for our Church here in Spanish Springs, the one thing I wanted to avoid was a big cable run to the back of the room. And, you know, to connect the soundboard to everything. Well, go digital, no more cable run. So your soundboard is now a flat piece of equipment with two or three knobs on it only. You interface with it with an iPad, iPhone, any tablet or computer, whatever. Then you have that, and you save yourself a lot of headache. Anyhow, the people who make the sound console that we have here at our church, and I have one similar at my house, you could go onto their website, and they will have video tutorials starting at how to unbox it to how to have a good mix, and the videos are good. They’re simple. They’re done in layman’s terms. So you’re not getting all these big words thrown at you, but you say okay, well, the, you know the fader, number three fader goes up when you want it. They’re brilliant, and these digital sound boards, in particular, are not expensive, not like people think.

Laurie Graham  41:13
Yeah, so if you’re willing to learn, there’s more info out there, and if we get in our heads that it’s simpler than we think, and we really can learn, I think that’s what holds us back sometimes is we’re terrified, or we just think it’s going to be overwhelming. And what I’ve heard from so many people I’ve been talking to lately, who are running sound and tech successfully in small churches, they’ve said the same thing. Google it, YouTube it, there’s so much easy to understand information out there that can just make such a difference, if you’re willing to learn. So. Well, Darin, before we run out of time, are you up for a couple rapid fire questions just for fun? 

Darin Elquist  41:46
Sure. 

Laurie Graham  41:47
Okay, if you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be and why?

Darin Elquist  41:51
Oh, someplace tropical and quiet. That never got cold. I wear shorts all year long, and I don’t like the cold days very much.

Laurie Graham  42:01
Me too. I’m totally agreement with that. All right. How about this one? Whenever you find yourself stressed or struggling or even out of focus, what brings you back to Jesus?

Darin Elquist  42:10
Quiet. I go out to the desert, because I live in the middle of it. I like to take the guns out and get some target shooting in, and just kind of spend a little bit of time. I don’t need all day, just give me an hour or two to kind of get refocused and settled, and there’s something about the concentration involved with target shooting that I help, think helps kind of bring me down and refocused because my mind is always all over the place. It’s, I’ve always been that way. So that helps. Quiet is good. Sometimes conversation with the right person is good.

Laurie Graham  42:50
Yeah, that’s key, isn’t it? It’s gotta be the right person. Love it. All right. How about this? What’s one of your current favorite worship songs and why?

Darin Elquist  42:58
Well, here’s the thing is, current? I don’t know, I’m kind of old school and I don’t have a lot of time to sit around and listen to some of the new stuff coming out. So I tend to default back to the old school stuff when I was leading. So Lead Me to the Cross is one of my favorites. Who remembers I’m Trading My Sorrows, right? Remember that was, that was back in the early 2000’s. You know, some of the newer stuff. I like that song, I think it’s called The Champion, not the Carmen version, but the one that’s a little bit newer. Do you remember that? Are you old enough to remember the Carmen version?

Laurie Graham  43:38
I am. I’m laughing because you are so in my era. I’m 52, I totally remember Carmen. I actually saw him in concert at Creation Music Festival out in Pennsylvania when I was a kid.

Darin Elquist  43:50
Wow. Yeah, he was the, he was the what would they say today? The shizzle, right? back then, he didn’t really sing did he? He had this dramatic poetry, and, but we loved it! He was great. It was good stuff. 

Laurie Graham  44:05
Yeah, I love old school. I need to rephrase that question. So, it doesn’t say your current favorite worship song, but currently, what’s your favorite worship song? Because I tend to go old school too and find that different worship songs speak to me in different seasons in so many different ways. So, I’m actually going to look up that other one, one you mentioned I, I’m not familiar with so, so fun for giving us that too. And then how about this last question? After you leave this planet, what is one thing you really hope somebody says about you?

Darin Elquist  44:33
Oh, that I was kind.

Laurie Graham  44:36
Sweet. Sweet. That I was kind, I love it. All right. Well, that’s our show for today. Thanks for being with us. Pastor Darin, I’m so happy you took the time to be here and just to be part of the solution for tech issues that so many people are facing in small churches today. If you do want to connect more with Darin, join us at The Worship and Tech Conference, which is coming up soon, the link to get on the list to grab your your free ticket is in the show notes, and you can always find out what events are coming up next and connect with us at smallchurchministry.com. That’s our main website. Again, the link will be in the show notes and have a great week. Until we talk again, go and be a light!