Last month we named The Funeral Problem – how funerals expose every weakness in a church AV setup. This time we drop in on two friends, Sam and Jess, as they trade stories over coffee about how to survive it in practice
About Sam & Jess
Sam and Jess aren’t from the same church, or even the same tradition. One’s used to more candles, one’s used to more guitars. But they both wrangle church tech on Sundays, and every so often they meet for coffee in town. That’s when the stories come out — the headaches, the hacks, and the lessons learned. We get to listen in when the conversation turns to tech.
Sam: “I’m really pulling my hair out, Jess. Every time someone uses the church for a funeral, it takes half of Sunday morning to put things back together again. Projector in the wrong mode, cables swapped, and our poor volunteers staring at a blank screen.”
Jess: “Classic. Families just want the slideshow to work, so they’ll plug into anything that looks available. Splitters, switchers, even straight into the projector. It’s not sabotage — they just need it to work for that one service.”
The Trouble Spots
Sam: “So what do you see as the main weak points?”
Jess: “Well, first — the signal path . If you’ve got a splitter or switcher, label it clearly and keep it in sight. Well, in sight once you’re in the tech booth, anyway. If you’ve got some sort of dock or wall-plate, same deal. Guests will find the unlabelled plug every time.”
Sam: “Our confidence monitor’s another. It gets unplugged because someone decided it wasn’t important.”
Jess: “Yep. Those screens are like insurance. The preacher doesn’t always need them, but when they do, it’s a lifesaver. Keep it live every week, so people trust it.”
Sam: “Overflow’s a headache too. We run our foyer from the livestream — fine for hymns, hopeless for tribute videos.”
Jess: “Exactly. Direct feed beats internet every time. Even a cheap HDMI splitter does better than YouTube when the video tribute is on.”
Sam: “And then someone waves an old iPhone at you and says, ‘The PowerPoint’s on here…’”
Jess: “That’s where you need your emergency parachute. Best case: load everything onto a dedicated presentation laptop. But when you can’t? Wireless screen mirroring. Not reliable enough for every week, but it’ll get you out of jail when the slides only exist on someone’s phone.”
Pick Your Level
Gold standard: Matrix or distribution amp, solid cabling, dedicated presentation PC.
Middle ground: Reliable splitter/switcher, confidence monitor always running, overflow fed direct.
Bare minimum: Replace flaky cables, tape down connections, keep a “reset to Sunday” checklist.
Emergency only: Fire up the wireless mirroring and pray the Wi-Fi holds.
The Takeaway
Sam: “So resilience isn’t really about fancy kit. It’s about being able to reset to a known good state on Sunday.”
Jess: “Exactly. The funeral director only cares about this service. You care about every Sunday. Build for that.”
👉 Next time Sam and Jess catch up, who knows where the conversation will go — rosters, OBS, maybe even website logins. But for today the question stands: would your setup survive the next funeral?
Read the Reflective Part 1 here → The Funeral Problem
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PS: d|c|t is also collecting stories for our upcoming Church+AI resource. If you’ve experimented with AI for rosters, sermons, or parish admin — or simply bumped into its challenges — we’d love to hear from you: dct.org.nz/church-ai.
