Would you like to make a few thousand new friends today!?! If you find that your specific needs are not addressed in one of our articles, we are certain that you'll find help through new friends online in our ChurchSoundcheck Discussion Group. This group has been established to encourage and allow the free exchange of ideas and questions between peers, an objective which underscores our mission statement of "communicating technical excellence to the church."

The ChurchSoundcheck Discussion Group has grown to thousands of members worldwide since its beginning in September 1997. The group includes church technical support ministry teams who volunteer weekly in the areas of church sound, video, lighting, and staging, plus technical staff and exceptionally brave music pastors. It also includes consultants, contractors and system integrators who specialize in the design and installation of performance systems and acoustics for churches. Several manufacturers have technical support representatives online with us who can offer their unique perspective. Many of our members are also graduates of one or more of our ChurchSoundcheck church production workshops. The diverse background of our members makes for a well-rounded, balanced dialog.

How to Join

Membership in this discussion group is offered to you free of charge. You can Join the ChurchSoundcheck Discussion Group simply by clicking here. Just follow the directions on your screen. Shortly after you sign up you'll receive a confirmation by email. Once you receive that confirmation you're ready to start sending and receiving email to and from the group.

Once you join, you will receive messages from other list members daily, and you can respond to any messages you like, or post a question of your own. Include your name and email address as a "signature" with all posts and replies. To reply to a message, simply select "Reply to" in your email software.

All CSC members are automatically included on our CSC Announce List. We've created this special announcement list to help us seamlessly communicate directly with our ChurchSoundcheck Discussion Group members. The Announce List ensures that you won't miss any late-breaking news or housekeeping notes from your hosts, Curt & Jeanna Taipale, and that you'll be the first to learn of any new developments in our efforts to communicate technical excellence to the church.

Standard versus Digest

Email from this discussion group can be received in two different versions -- the "digest" version and the "standard" version. For those who haven't experienced this before, here's how it works. With the "standard" version, you'll be receiving individual messages each time one of us sends an email to the group. By comparison, the digests are a compilation of all the email traffic received throughout the day and are generated once each day at midnight. The group generates an average of 60 to 100 emails each day, and that's fairly easy to manage. But some of our members receive their email at their work, so signing up for the digest version is often better for them.

If you're already flooded with email and looking for a way to organize all of your ChurchSoundcheck discussion group mail into one large email every day, then the "digest" version is for you. The option is yours. You can subscribe to the "standard" version, or the "digest" version, or if you prefer you can be on both. Here's something else to consider. If your email service allows you to have multiple email addresses, just choose a name specifically to route email to and from this group. It's a great way to keep things together in one file.

What topics are covered in the ChurchSoundcheck discussion group?

This discussion group offers you an unprecedented sharing of ideas between church technical team peers. Any topic of concern that relates to the technical support ministries in churches is appropriate. That might include opinions on the best way to mic a choir or a piano, how to structure a technical support ministry, user reports on new equipment, cool lighting effects for your next drama, how to use video effectively in a worship service, where's the best place to put your mixing console, how to avoid RF dropouts with your wireless lapel mic, how to deal with relationships and burnout in the ministry, and so on.

Most consultants in this group welcome simple questions regarding tips, for example, on how to get the best performance from your choir mics. However, please remember that the consultants and contractors who share that information in this discussion list make their living from their knowledge. They have fought long and hard and at great expense to gain that knowledge. So, for more complex questions like "where should I hang my speakers," you should really hire a consultant to help you. Hopefully you'll hire one of the consultants or sound contractors who is gracious enough to offer their advice through this discussion group.

Examples of some acceptable messages:

"Is it okay to "Y" the outputs of my console together?"

"Can someone help me understand the difference between an LCD projector, a digital video projector, and a light valve projector!?!"

"I'm thinking of buying a console from XYZ company. Has anyone in this group used that console or heard of any problems with it at all? I'd appreciate all comments."

"My sound system at church has a real problem with feedback. Can someone please help me figure out what's causing it?"

"I'm looking for some cool lighting effects for our next big pageant. Does anyone in the group have some ideas?"

We welcome input from manufacturers. Most equipment manufacturers employ technical support staff who can be a tremendous source of advice regarding specific applications with their products. We also hope this dialog proves to be a good way for manufacturers to learn what features church technical staff and volunteers want in their equipment, and we hope the church techs and music pastors learn from the manufactuers. When someone posts a question like "I'm looking for an eight input, stereo output mixer to use in a portable system", it's okay for a manufacturer to offer up their website address, or to invite that person to contact the manufacturer directly through email. However, we discourage hard selling tactics. There is a lot of high quality equipment available from many manufacturers, so please remember to use professional courtesy in all correspondence with members of the ChurchSoundcheck Discussion Group.

Finally, we have an open invitation to any church with "used" sound, video or lighting equipment that they would like to sell or seed into another ministry. We also have an open invitation to anyone who wants to tell others about an upcoming technical workshop or seminar. Just email your request to post that information.

By the way, all personally identifiable information collected when you subscribe to the CSC Discussion Group is used solely by ChurchSoundcheck, a ministry of Taipale Media Systems, Inc. Personal information will not be provided to third parties without prior written consent.

General Guidelines

Click here to read a complete list of Tips and Guidelines for Victory that will help you make the most of your membership in the group.

So what are you waiting for!?! Join the ChurchSoundcheck Discussion Group today and see what everyone's talking about. Six months from now you'll be wondering how you ever got along without the friendships, support and advice you'll find daily in this group.