Back in my days running the sound board for my church, I quickly learned that invisibility is the key attribute of a sound tech. Everybody in the house should hear everybody on stage effortlessly, and everybody on stage should hear themselves and each other effortlessly, just as if there were no electronic amplification involved at all. For a young man both interested in technical things and possessed of a young man’s ego and hunger for recognition, it was a perfect lab for character formation: if I did the job well, nobody gave me a second thought.
The only time anybody looks back at the sound booth is when something goes wrong: they can’t hear a soloist or a speaker, there’s a sudden screech of feedback, or some such. Those mistakes are obvious enough; everybody knows they’re happening. But there’s another, more subtle type of mistake.
When the mix is off just a bit—one voice a little too high, another instrument a little too low, too much reverb here, just a touch too little mids there, that sort of thing—nobody looks back at the booth. But there’s an unease in the room. They can’t consciously name what’s going on; half of them are not consciously aware that anything’s going on. But there’s a wrongness you can feel, a restlessness in the crowd.
I learned to pick up on that restlessness as a newbie. The problem was, as a newbie, I was barely half a step ahead of the crowd. I know something was wrong, because I could see them reacting to it. But I often had no idea what was wrong, or how to fix it. The one thing I had going for me was blind instinct. I’d just get my hands on the knobs and start adjusting—a little too far this way; a little too far that way; back until it felt right, then stop. Move on to the next control. I couldn’t tell you, much of the time, what the needed adjustment was. I couldn’t consciously hear it, and after dancing all over the sound board, I usually couldn’t tell you which adjustment made the difference. But I’d get done making adjustments, and it just felt right to me. I could see the difference in the room, too: people would settle back in their seats, quit fiddling with their bulletins, just sing along with the music.
My fellow sound techs, including the guys who trained me, noticed. I remember more than one of them asking me “What did you do? That sounded good!”
I would just shrug. “I adjusted it until it felt right.”
In those days, we were blessed to have members of the music group Glad as part of the church, and sometimes Ed Nalle would sing on a special occasion. I vividly remember Heidi, Ed’s wife, coming back to the sound booth on multiple occasions. “Can’t you hear that?” she would ask. No, I couldn’t. Then she’d grab a chair, turn it around backwards, and half-sit on the chair back in front of the board. She’d reach up and make a couple of adjustments. It would sound better.
Unlike me, Heidi knew exactly what she was hearing, and knew exactly what to adjust. She ought to; she’d been running sound for decades. She had words for things I wasn’t even sure I heard, and as far as I could tell, she was never wrong. Looking back, I probably could have learned a lot more from her, but it honestly never occurred to me to ask her to stick around after service and show me what she’d adjusted and why. I don’t know that I’d have had the nerve; she was a seasoned, working pro, and I was a barely-trained amateur. So I just stood at her elbow and watched. I tried (failing, half the time) to hear exactly what difference each adjustment made. But sometimes I could hear the difference, and those times made me a better sound tech, just by watching Heidi’s example.
Why am I telling you this?
Because we rub shoulders every day with people who are the moral equivalent of barely-trained me, back in the day. The world these days makes them uneasy, and they’re not sure why. They don’t quite have words for it. Of course, there’s little they can do outside their own lives to influence the mix, but even in their own lives, most of the time, they have no idea what they’re doing. A little of this…oops, that was too much; dial it back. A little of that….
Catechized by a culture that’s abandoned special revelation and at war with natural revelation, they don’t even suspect the existence of instructions that could help them. The culture has worked very hard to make them deaf. But the image of God is still within them, and a sinful, broken world hurts them even though they don’t know why they hurt.
As Christians, we hear what they don’t. Sometimes, we can explain; other times, they’re so deaf they can’t hear us anyway. What we can always do is what Heidi did for me: be an example. Half the time, they won’t be able to tell why we’re doing what we’re doing, just like half of what Heidi did was completely opaque to me. But the other half the time, they’ll be able to tell the difference. Maybe not anything they quite have words for, but it just feels better somehow. So even if you don’t know how to explain yourself, even if you know they wouldn’t get it even if you could explain well, just be an example they don’t understand. Your very existence shows them that a better way is possible.
Of course, you’re only an example if they can see you. Let the unbelievers around you into your life. In a culture that often hates us, we’re tempted to just hide. Don’t. Let them see you. “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.”
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