The MxU Podcast

Most churches don't document any of their weekend process — it lives in the heads of a few key volunteers, and that's the entire reason you can't take a vacation, can't trust a backup operator, and keep getting Galatians spelled wrong on the slides at 9:58am on a Sunday. They get into why the conversation about checklists usually loses people in the first ten seconds (it sounds like "monkey work," it sounds bureaucratic, it sounds like a pilot's pre-flight that has nothing to do with worship) and why every one of those objections is actually the point. Dillan walks through the pastor who texted him after a "train wreck" weekend — no real disasters, just a stack of small, completely avoidable mistakes that no one caught because no one was checking — and uses it as the anchor for the rest of the conversation. They unpack what should actually be on a pre-service checklist beyond the technical stuff (greeting the band on stage, confirming lighting colors match the worship backgrounds, coordinating with ushers on doors), and Dillan makes the case that the leader's checklist is the one most churches skip entirely — and that leaders who can't remember to pray before rehearsal need that prompt more than they think. They get into why putting prayer on a checklist isn't unspiritual, it's honest, and why the documented version of your process is what lets you take a vacation, lets a key volunteer take a few months off when life gets hard without you treating them like a betrayal, and lets a backup operator step in without burning down the Sunday. They close with a walkthrough of the new checklists feature inside MxU — recurring checklists auto-assigned to whoever's scheduled in Planning Center, completion timestamps visible to the leader, accountability built in — and a Chernobyl reference that, depending on your tolerance for hyperbole, is either a stretch or exactly right.

Check out our FREE Team Night Guide:
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FREE RESOURCES 🆓 Take advantage of all the free resources for worship and tech teams that MxU has to offer (growing weekly):
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IMPROVE YOUR SUNDAY SERVICES 🎓 1,000+ Training Videos:
https://getmxu.com/training?utm_source=youtube&utm_campaign=checklists&utm_medium=social

🖥️ Volunteer Training Tool:
https://getmxu.com/learning-management-system?utm_source=youtube&utm_campaign=checklists&utm_medium=social

🚀 Personalized Coaching:
https://getmxu.com/coaching?utm_source=youtube&utm_campaign=checklists&utm_medium=social

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WHAT IS MxU? MxU is an online training platform for church leaders to train and equip their worship and tech volunteers:
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Spencer and Dillan spend the next thirty minutes unpacking the honest diagnosis, which is that the volunteer almost never is the problem. Dillan opens with a story he heard recently: a congregant who finally responded to the pastor's "get off the bench" sermon, said yes to joining the summer choir, and woke up Monday morning to nine Planning Center emails and zero relational follow-up. They use that as the anchor for the whole conversation. We get into the core tension every church leader has to confront — that the leader sees their team as "my volunteers" while the volunteer sees themselves as a congregant trying to serve the church, and most of the friction in worship and tech ministry traces back to that one mismatch. Dillan makes the case that the issue isn't a recruiting problem or a systems problem or a culture problem — it's a care problem, and almost every "tactical" failure (no training, no resourcing, scheduling someone too much, scheduling someone too little, quietly stopping scheduling someone you don't want to confront) is just a care problem wearing a different costume. They also draw a clear line between two very different types of leaders who get to the same bad result: the leader who doesn't actually care as much as they say they do (and is too busy to notice), and the leader who genuinely cares but lacks the systems, execution, and follow-through to set their volunteers up to win — and how being "so nice" can actually undermine the ministry when it shows up as a complete absence of structure. They land on the sentence underneath the whole conversation: when you're praying for God to send you new volunteers while neglecting the forty He already has, you're not doing ministry — you've let your ministry get in the way of ministry.
Check out our FREE Team Night Guide: https://getmxu.com/resources/team-night-guide/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=volunteers-quit

FREE RESOURCES 🆓 Take advantage of all the free resources for worship and tech teams that MxU has to offer (growing weekly): https://getmxu.com/resources/?utm_source=youtube&utm_campaign=volunteers-quit&utm_medium=social

IMPROVE YOUR SUNDAY SERVICES 🎓 1,000+ Training Videos: https://getmxu.com/training?utm_source=youtube&utm_campaign=volunteers-quit&utm_medium=social

🖥️ Volunteer Training Tool: https://getmxu.com/learning-management-system?utm_source=youtube&utm_campaign=volunteers-quit&utm_medium=social

🚀 Personalized Coaching: https://getmxu.com/coaching?utm_source=youtube&utm_campaign=volunteers-quit&utm_medium=social

JOIN THE COMMUNITY
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MxUrocks

WHAT IS MxU? MxU is an online training platform for church leaders to train and equip their worship and tech volunteers: https://getmxu.com?utm_source=youtube&utm_campaign=volunteers-quit&utm_medium=social

Spencer and Dillan open on a stat that should reframe how every worship and tech leader thinks about their team — most churches aren't one volunteer away from crumbling because they only have one volunteer, they're one third of a team away from crumbling, and that's just as fragile. They split the conversation into two completely different church realities. For the 100-200 person church where you legitimately know everyone's name and the bench really is thin, Dillan makes the harder case most pastors don't want to hear: maybe the answer isn't recruiting more people, it's scaling back the operation — running a five-person Sunday instead of a fifteen-person Sunday, and trusting that the gospel can still be preached and the Spirit can still move without three camera operators. For the 1,000-plus person church, the answer is the opposite — the people are in your congregation, you just haven't met them yet, and the issue isn't supply, it's that you're recruiting from a podium when you should be recruiting through relationship. They get into the trap of recruiting for need ("we're sinking, please get on the Titanic") versus recruiting for life change, why nobody jumps on a boat that's already going under, and why the real win of serving isn't a better show — it's the person whose life gets changed because they showed up. Spencer makes the case that the leaders who feel the volunteer shortage most acutely are usually the ones whose volunteers have no idea there's a shortage at all, and that telling people the actual need is step one. They close on three practical takeaways: pray for the volunteers you need by role, never let a single volunteer hold your weekend hostage, and build a real weekend strategy because the Sunday morning service is the biggest funnel into your church — and most churches have no plan for what to do with the people standing in it.

Check out our FREE Team Night Guide:
https://getmxu.com/resources/team-night-guide/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=one-volunteer

FREE RESOURCES 🆓 Take advantage of all the free resources for worship and tech teams that MxU has to offer (growing weekly): https://getmxu.com/resources/?utm_source=youtube&utm_campaign=one-volunteer&utm_medium=social

IMPROVE YOUR SUNDAY SERVICES 🎓 1,000+ Training Videos:
https://getmxu.com/training?utm_source=youtube&utm_campaign=one-volunteer&utm_medium=social

🖥️ Volunteer Training Tool:
https://getmxu.com/learning-management-system?utm_source=youtube&utm_campaign=one-volunteer&utm_medium=social

🚀 Personalized Coaching:
https://getmxu.com/coaching?utm_source=youtube&utm_campaign=one-volunteer&utm_medium=social

JOIN THE COMMUNITY
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/MxUrocks

WHAT IS MxU? MxU is an online training platform for church leaders to train and equip their worship and tech volunteers:
https://getmxu.com?utm_source=youtube&utm_campaign=one-volunteer&utm_medium=social

Most worship and tech teams are running on five too many apps. Planning Center, Trello, WhatsApp, group texts, email, a Facebook group, three different timer apps, an SPL meter, ProPresenter notes scattered across someone's laptop — and somehow we keep adding more. In this episode, Spencer and Dillan get into why the answer is almost never another tool, why every new app you adopt actively hurts your volunteer culture, and why the church Dillan talked to recently couldn't even name what they use for team communication. They walk through the specific gaps in Planning Center for bidirectional volunteer communication, the fragmentation between weekend tools (timers, notes, volume tracking, streaming analytics) and why nobody's actually evaluating any of it, and Dillan makes the case that the first question for any new tool shouldn't be "is this useful?" — it should be "how does this affect my volunteer culture?" Because if you lose your volunteers, none of the tools matter. 
They close with what MxU is building toward — bringing training, planning, communication, ProPresenter control, service analytics, and multi-site dashboards into one place with one login — and why "more tools" is almost always the wrong answer to a leadership problem.
Check out our FREE Team Night Guide: https://getmxu.com/resources/team-night-guide/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=too-many-apps
FREE RESOURCES 🆓 Take advantage of all the free resources for worship and tech teams that MxU has to offer (growing weekly): https://getmxu.com/resources/?utm_source=youtube&utm_campaign=too-many-apps&utm_medium=social
IMPROVE YOUR SUNDAY SERVICES 🎓 1,000+ Training Videos: https://getmxu.com/training?utm_source=youtube&utm_campaign=too-many-apps&utm_medium=social
🖥️ Volunteer Training Tool: https://getmxu.com/learning-management-system?utm_source=youtube&utm_campaign=too-many-apps&utm_medium=social
🚀 Personalized Coaching: https://getmxu.com/coaching?utm_source=youtube&utm_campaign=too-many-apps&utm_medium=social
JOIN THE COMMUNITY Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MxU.app
WHAT IS MxU? MxU is an online training platform for church leaders to train and equip their worship and tech volunteers: 
https://getmxu.com?utm_source=youtube&utm_campaign=too-many-apps&utm_medium=social

In this episode, Spencer, Dillan, and Jeff open with a line that's going to make some people close the tab — churches should stop hiring so many people. They pull that statement apart for forty minutes: why hiring is almost always the easier path instead of the better one, what gets stolen from a church when leaders pay people instead of recruiting and developing them, and the leadership disconnect that treats the tech team like janitors ("we pay people to clean toilets, we pay people to mix audio") while expecting kids ministry and guest services to run on volunteers. Jeff makes the case that serving on a production team is fulfilling a priestly role — preparing the place of God for the people of God — and that pastors who offload that role to paid contractors are robbing their people of the discipleship that comes from sacrificing time and gifts. They get honest about front-of-house mixing being a real outlier (it's a long-game skill that takes reps), and Dillan offers a middle ground: take your annual contract budget and use a chunk of it to fly in a high-level coach once a quarter to pour into your volunteers, instead of paying someone to mix every weekend. They close on the harder truth underneath all of this — the church isn't a business, the people in the seats aren't customers, and the moment a leader treats the weekend like a transactional experience instead of a body of believers stewarding their gifts, something has been stolen.

Check out our FREE Team Night Guide:
https://getmxu.com/resources/team-night-guide/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=stop-hiring

FREE RESOURCES 🆓 Take advantage of all the free resources for worship and tech teams that MxU has to offer (growing weekly):
https://getmxu.com/resources/?utm_source=youtube&utm_campaign=stop-hiring&utm_medium=social

IMPROVE YOUR SUNDAY SERVICES 🎓 1,000+ Training Videos:
https://getmxu.com/training?utm_source=youtube&utm_campaign=stop-hiring&utm_medium=social

🖥️ Volunteer Training Tool: https://getmxu.com/learning-management-system?utm_source=youtube&utm_campaign=stop-hiring&utm_medium=social

🚀 Personalized Coaching:
https://getmxu.com/coaching?utm_source=youtube&utm_campaign=stop-hiring&utm_medium=social

JOIN THE COMMUNITY
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/MxUrocks

WHAT IS MxU? MxU is an online training platform for church leaders to train and equip their worship and tech volunteers:
https://getmxu.com?utm_source=youtube&utm_campaign=stop-hiring&utm_medium=social