Staying Ahead of The Plane
My flight instructor approached me one day. “Tom,” he said. “I believe you’re ready to start going on some cross-country flights.”
“Tom,” he said. “I believe you’re ready to start going on some cross-country flights.”
Cross-country? The thought thrilled me. Finally, something more than just touch-and-goes at my local airport. As we entered the plane that day, he gave me some advice. “Stay ahead of the plane.”
Stay ahead of the plane? What did that mean? He continued by telling me that I needed to be prepared for what was coming next. If all I did was fly the plane in the present, I would be unprepared for what was coming next. The last thing you want to be doing while flying an airplane is to be scrambling to find frequencies, airport layouts, or terrain hazards at the last minute. So we took a few minutes there in the plane before we did anything else.
I looked at my chart and found the airport we were flying to. My first radio was tuned to the frequency of the airport I was taking off from. On my other radio, I tuned in the frequency of the airport was flying to. This way, when I got near the other airport, I would already be tuned to the correct frequency to hear other pilots in the area. The chart showed the runway of the destination airport ran from roughly North to South. Since I would be approaching from the South, I decided that I would take a straight on approach to the runway, rather than cross and join traffic on the downwind side.
After takeoff, my instructor kept me ahead of the plane by constantly reminding me of what was coming next. Landmarks to watch for to make sure I was on course, altitude adjustments, watching for other traffic in the air – it was not the relaxing flight I had imagined it to be. I was regularly adjusting something, checking my chart for another thing and modifying still another thing so that I would be prepared for what was coming. It wasn’t until we arrived at our destination 10 minutes later that I realized why he was insistent on “staying ahead of the plane.” When we approached our destination, I was at the correct altitude, had the radio set to the correct frequency already, and was on a straight path to the runway. Everything was in place! The landing was a breeze because I didn’t have to worry about anything except flying the plane.
As I work with churches around the country, there is a common thread that runs through most smaller churches. They don’t stay ahead of the plane. By that, I mean that they are so busy taking care of what is happening now, that they are not prepared when something else happens. I have seen dead space in the service as the media team struggled to find a video that they were supposed to show during the announcements. I have seen announcements for baptism on the screen, while the announcer was giving the announcement for a Men’s Ministry meeting. I have witnessed countless instances of a muted mic when someone got up to speak or sing. In flight terms, they were behind the plane.
How do we fix the issue of being behind the plane in our services? Better planning. Realizing that most churches are run primarily by volunteers, the issue of planning time is a real one. Where do you find the time to sit down with your team and plan the entire service? Fortunately, I have a tool that may help. I call it the Service Script. With the service script, you can plan the entire service for your sound, lighting and media teams. When you provide them the script before the service, they can easily see what’s coming up next and prepare for it. It is prepared in a Microsoft Word format, so anyone can open and modify the script. Best of all, it’s completely free! My gift to you as a way of helping you create a better service. Click here to download the script. Your email address is required as a means of verifying the download, but I promise not to fill your inbox with spam. I hope you enjoy this gift. Leave a comment and let me know how you use it and how it has improved your services!
