PA Training For A New Generation

Behind the scenes every Sabbath, an invisible team, currently led by Patrick Shepherd, runs the PA and Media at Willesden Church.

Willesden’s PA team were one of the first of the UK Adventist churches to start streaming and the department has grown and developed significantly over the years. What started off as a small piece of audio equipment in a cupboard, that simply supplied sound to the church, has become the fully-equipped, multimedia studio that is currently run by a passionate team of volunteers.

“Back when we started streaming, we could only reach ten people at a time,” said Darren Allen, who has been part of the PA department in one way or another for over twenty-years. “More recently, our challenge has been expanding the size and skills of the team.”

Over the past year, there has been an influx of young people interested in volunteering. This led to an immersive training day, run by Darren and Serene Allen, on Sunday, 19th February.

“We took the team through an entire demonstration of what it takes to run PA every Sabbath,” explained Serene Allen, who has served the department almost as long as her brother, Darren. “From unlocking the PA room door and turning on machines, to having audio, video and projection ready and set up before the first programme even begins.”

The ten young people participating were so engaged that they stayed long after the training had finished to ask in-depth questions of the trainers; even more exciting is that they all expressed how eager they were to put their training into practise straight away!