If you have served in worship and production for any length of time, you have heard the questions. Why does it have to be so loud? Why does it have to be so bright? Why do we spend so much on tech? And you usually hear them on a Sunday morning, in the middle of seven dozen other things, with no time for the philosophical answer.
So for the closing session of Churchfront Conference 2025, our team sat down on stage at Rock Harbor Church and read some of the comments people leave on our YouTube videos. Some of them are a little ridiculous. Most come from genuine curiosity. Sean Bennett moderated, and asked everyone to answer with their pastor hat on, not their technician hat. The full panel is in the video above.
“Churches care more about lights than the gospel”
The first comment was the hardest: churches are more concerned with flashing lights and showmanship than equipping the saints. Luke Jackson could have been sarcastic. Instead he said he empathizes with whoever typed it, because it often comes from someone who hasn’t found a church where they feel loved and seen.
His answer was about vision. Every tech director has sat in a staff meeting where the lead pastor has a vision and you are the person entrusted to make it happen. When the team is aligned with the mission, sometimes that means a few extra pieces for the stage, or a new console so a bigger band can play. People outside the ministry don’t see that the console or the camera is serving a ministry goal.
Spencer Trefzger added a picture from the room itself: stained glass. Windows let in light, and they are also art. AV works the same way. It is functionally important for people to hear the Word proclaimed and to see each other clearly, and it is also one of today’s art forms for worship.
“Why is all this necessary?”
The next comment came from a viewer running a Midas M32R and a simple PA, who found the upgrades at Rock Harbor excessive. Jake Gosselin, who calls Rock Harbor his home church, agreed that you can get great results with that kind of system. Rock Harbor had one. The difference was that the church had truly maxed out what it had. Jake framed it as three S’s: the Spirit, the skill of the people, and the system. At Rock Harbor the system was holding back very talented musicians, and after the upgrade people said they could hear the band clearly for the first time.
Matt Woltjer put it in terms of tools. On one of our jobs, he watched a technician repair fiber with a splicer that cost about $50,000. It made sense because he would use it thousands of times. You can buy a cheap hammer, and it might break the third time you take it out of the shed. Higher-end gear rarely sounds twice as good, but it usually lasts much longer.
We ask every church “why?”
Luke described what happens when a church calls us. Before anything else, we ask why. Why can’t you keep what you have? If a church can’t answer that, we try to talk them out of spending anything. Often the most helpful thing we can do is show a church what is possible with the system it already owns.
The right upgrade is the one that lets your ministry say yes to the next opportunity. Nobody wants to be in the meeting where the lead pastor asks for something and the answer is, “Yes, but it will take six months.”
Worship has always cost something
Matt made the point that stayed with the room. Throughout the Bible, worship costs something. If a church is buying tech because it’s fun to play with, that is worth a heart check. If it is buying it because this is the best way to present the gospel so people come to know Jesus, it is never a waste of money. And be careful criticizing a church when you weren’t in the leadership conversations behind the decision.
Jake closed that thread with a thought about creation. God made us to create. In AV we take the raw materials of creation, sound waves and light and electricity, and create with them. There are few better uses of that than worship.
The drum debate
Every time we post about drums, the internet splits in half. So what’s the answer, e-kit or acoustic? “How much money do you have?” was the first reply, and it’s true. Jake walked through the numbers in that room: the electronic kit they used before was about an $8,000 solution. The acoustic setup, with the kit, cymbals, microphones and enclosure, runs closer to $13,000 or $14,000. It works at Rock Harbor because their tech director knows how to tune, mic and mix an acoustic kit. That isn’t true of every volunteer mix engineer, which is why the right fit for one church isn’t the right fit for another.
Bringing traditional members along
The audience asked how to modernize a service without splitting a church. Matt’s answer started with vision cast from the pulpit: do we want to be comfortable at our church, or do we want a church our grandchildren want to attend? Luke added language from Zac Hicks’s The Worship Pastor: a church has a theological diet, and a congregation needs different nourishment in different seasons. Framing it that way moves the conversation from preference to what the church needs.
See you in 2026
This panel was one hour of a two-day conference built for church worship and production teams. If you want the next one in person, registration for Churchfront Conference 2026 is open. And if you are weighing an upgrade and want someone to help you answer the “why” first, start with our consulting process.