38: Get to Know HOPE! Frank Appello on Music, Technology, and Learning Something New

Welcome to the Meet Hope podcast, where we have conversations about faith and hope.

Hope is one church made of people living out their faith through two expressions in person and online.

We believe a hybrid faith experience can lead to a growing influence in our community and our world for the sake of others.

Welcome to Hope.

Hey everyone, welcome to the Meet Hope podcast.

My name is Ashley Black and it is so great to be here with you today.

I'm excited to do an interview that we've been doing off and on with some of our Hope staff members, and so joining me today is Frank Apello.

Hey Frank, Hi Ashley, how are you doing?

I'm good.

How are you Excellent?

Thank you, Frank.

Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Well, I grew up in North Jersey.

I moved down here to go to college at Glassboro State, which eventually turned into Rowan.

I graduated there and I got a teaching job in Washington Township.

I'm a music teacher.

I've been there 28 years and September starts my 29th year.

That's exciting and you work here on staff also.

I do.

I'm the tech director here, which means I set up all the cables, make sure the sound board is right, train anybody who comes in to do audio, whether it's front of house or broadcast, and then I kind of supervise, if needed, any of the other stuff that goes on, whether it's cameras or lights or the computer.

But those are really their own branch of the tech booth so they have people who are kind of in charge of them.

But I sort of oversee that if necessary.

But they're really great at doing their job so I never have to do anything except for great job, thanks.

That's always nice when that's your job.

Definitely.

That's really interesting to me.

I was wondering why you were talking.

So you said that you're a music teacher.

Do you teach all types of music?

Pretty much I've taught for 28 years.

Like I said, my first 15, I did elementary classroom music and then after about six years I switched to elementary band From that.

Then I was moved to the high school to teach essentially audio engineering.

It was called music tech at the high school, which is kind of how I came to serve at Hope.

That was going to be my question is so how does someone wind up from music and tech?

They go hand in hand, right Like we need tech to hear music.

But I was going to ask how did you wind up finding a passion for tech?

Technical ministry.

Well, the truth is I was going to a different church.

I was not here at Hope.

My daughter, charlotte, who's 18 now, came here for preschool.

My wife came one time because the kids were singing during the service and she stayed and she loved it.

She said she would like to come here and again.

I always quote these are my famous last words Well, I'm not going there because I was happy where I was.

But the truth is I probably wasn't happy where I was.

So, as my job changes to music technology, which I had never taught before in my whole life, had no idea, like I knew this was a microphone and those were cables, but that was it, and then I had to teach that.

So I started learning all through that summer before I went to the high school to start teaching that.

I taught September and October of that year, which I believe is 2010, and at some point the kids from preschool were singing here at Hope.

Again, my wife said why don't you come after your service at the other church?

Why don't you come and watch the kids sing and then stay?

I said okay, so I did, and there were two things that kept me here.

One, jeff got up and did like announcements and whatnot.

And then they were doing the offering and he said if you're new here or you've never been here, please don't feel any obligation to give.

And my issue with my previous church was it became much more about money than about Jesus.

And then Rick preached and by the end of the service it was like I was the only guy in the room and he was just preaching to me, even though the room was full.

And I never left.

That's really cool.

Do you remember what he talked about that made you feel that way?

No idea, that's okay, just know it completely and utterly applied to what I was living in my life.

That's awesome.

So eventually I meet Jack Shaw, who was the tech director at that time and you know we had a little conversation, he had gone to Glassboro, we had a couple of things in common, and then he goes well, what do you do?

And I said well, currently I'm teaching music technology.

I don't really know anything much about it, but I'm trying to figure it out.

He goes what?

What you didn't know is Jack's going.

Oh awesome.

Well, that's it.

He's like I give it till January.

Then I need you on the board.

I went.

Well, I don't know anything about it, he goes, we'll train you and from there you know, I started to work one Sunday a month running, sound with Nona Ostrow and we kind of worked together.

And as we move forward I started volunteering in other ways as well.

Okay, so you volunteered with me in youth ministry for a while.

I did I did youth group for a lot of years.

I serve on the worship team, which I know seems like it's part of my job, but it gets to be my service because that's not part of the tech job you know, to go play on a Sunday.

You sing or things like that.

I do still serve in broadcast room or front of house as a regular thing on Sunday mornings.

That's awesome that it's possible, though, that because you have a volunteer team and we have other people that do stuff alongside you, that you can still use another one of your passions, which is playing music on stage.

I know often you're playing.

Are you playing guitar or bass?

on stage.

Often I'm playing bass but, I, actually started on saxophone.

That's what I was going to bring up is.

I know you play saxophone for us sometimes, yeah that's actually my real instrument, saxophone and I guess I've been singing longer than that.

But I started playing saxophone when I was nine, back in elementary school, and it's always been my passion.

Back when I first started coming here, there had been another sax player and eventually asked Steve Hoadley, who is the pastor of worship at the time.

I'd asked him like do you need another sax player?

I'd love to serve.

I know that's not a common instrument for worship, especially coming from a church that was much less contemporary, Like.

I remember the first time coming here and there were electric guitars on the stage and electric bass and drum set and I thought to myself what's this MTV church?

And I loved it, you know, and that's one of the styles of music I'd like to listen to and play.

Yeah, so that really connected for you For sure.

So Steve was like, yeah, you'd come play on a Sunday morning and that sort of sparked.

You know, I would serve on the platform, I would serve in the tech booth.

Then eventually I noticed we didn't have a lot of bass players.

So I thought, let me give that a shot.

I can read music, so I should be able to learn this.

So I started learning to play bass and I started to do that.

So you learned bass to play in the band here at Hope?

Yes, that's amazing.

Yeah, I really.

You know how you have those God moments.

Yeah, one morning I was watching somebody play up there who was brand new and I hear in the back of my head kind of like maybe you should do that.

I thought, okay, I guess I could try it, and then that's awesome and I did.

And then eventually we were going on a mission trip and you needed somebody to play guitar for worship.

Yes.

I was serving there.

So I thought, well, I played a little bit in high school, let me see if I could figure this out.

And I played guitar for that mission trip.

We were very grateful to it.

I'm very grateful for your attitude of yeah, I could learn that.

That's awesome.

So I want to ask you a bunch of other questions, but the one on my mind right now, before we do that, is because you're a musician and an artist.

We've been having some other conversations like that the second half of this year with some other people.

What is it for you about music that makes it something that you connect with, that like drives you?

What is it about music that it makes it a passion for you?

Music in general.

It just speaks to me.

It's how I express myself.

Lots of times I'm not really great with words, so it's so much easier to play something or sing some lyrics that someone else wrote that get to express how I feel.

When I was younger, it was the thing I did to help myself feel better.

You know, if I had a rough day at school as a little kid, I would go practice my saxophone and come up and I'd be happy as a clam because it just it helped me get through difficult times.

Even now, you know, with singing a lot of contemporary Christian music, the lyrics just really speak to me.

They helped me understand how I'm supposed to serve, but also what God is really about.

I've come to learn that as wonderfully huge and amazing as God is, he is so intimate and personal, and that comes to me through the music we sing here and the music I listen to through Caleb.

That's really beautiful.

Thanks for sharing that with us.

I know that wasn't one of my original questions.

It's okay.

I'm just gonna give you a quick answer and then we'll get to you.

Okay so, but this is a staff interview, so we are talking about your ministry role, right, as well as your personal passions.

So what is it that you love most about what you do here at Hope?

about your ministry life.

I love working with the volunteers.

I mean, it's so much fun getting to know them, getting to worship with them, helping to teach them, and then lots of times they get to teach me stuff too about the sound board.

We have some people who did this professionally that come and serve on Sunday mornings that I'm like.

All right, tell me more.

Let me out.

So it really is working with the volunteers.

That's awesome, and are you looking for volunteers?

We are always looking for volunteers.

So if you think you're interested or you're like what are all those buttons and knobs and faders like, come on in, we will train you.

Those lights look really pretty.

I wanna push a button, exactly.

Yeah, and that's the neat thing Like people will come in as adults and not be worried about like, could I mess up?

Yeah, sure, but that's okay because you know you're just learning.

We'll train you how to do it and now you've learned a skill that you can help others learn.

You know we just had that in the summer when we did summer drama camp.

Scott Cruz came in who runs cameras, and he helped one of our students learn how to run the cameras who wasn't sure if they knew how to or not.

So, scott, came in one morning.

He actually was on the podcast.

He talked about that.

I just listened to that yeah.

So yeah, it's good stuff where you can have people who are volunteering.

I'm training new volunteers.

Yeah, that's great.

I love that.

You said like you can come in and not be afraid to make a mistake and no one's going to yell at you or I mean that's what I hear when I try to encourage people to give something new a try.

is, you know, there's this um nervousness about well, I I don't know how to do that or I'm interested in it, but um, but I don't want to mess up and it's like no, it's okay that we all, like you, know relationships matter more than perfection always you know, and so this is a great place to do that and serve with people and, like you mentioned earlier, like you're not just learning how to use all the different buttons and sliders, but you're also talking to people about you know how they're going in their faith, or that tough thing they're going through that turns out you're also going through and you just you would have never known, and so yeah, that's often a question I ask you know, how can I pray for you this week, or is there anything going on that I could pray for you for?

So, that's.

it's really neat we have we use Slack as a worship team and there is a prayer channel.

So if anybody needs prayers or praises, you know we have a place where all your volunteers can share that together.

That's awesome, that's really awesome.

Well, thanks for for sharing that part of yourself with us, so something we do as part of these staff interviews.

It's just a little bit fun because we think it's fun to also find out random facts about people that we may not, you know, your volunteers may not get to ask you, like you know, random questions like this.

So we do them on the podcast.

So we call it a rapid fire.

Sometimes it goes quickly, sometimes we get excited and like wind up talking about something for five minutes, and that's okay too, but we'll, we'll see how we do so are you?

ready.

Yes.

Okay.

So what is your favorite pizza?

Topping, sausage, okay, and I know you're big, like you cook a lot.

You're having an Italian background, so I'm also going to ask, like, do you have specific requirements for your pizza or just do you have you made your own or like you?

know, when I make my own pizza, I often will buy the dough, Sometimes I'll make it, and then I like fresh mozzarella and just a San Marzano tomatoes, garlic and fresh basil if we have it in the garden.

If not, then you know, dry to reganote, like most pizzas.

Okay, and sausage.

The sausages are favorite.

topping Sausage is my favorite topping, but I don't put it on my homemade ones just because it's easier to make for.

Do you have a favorite place to get pizza from?

No, I'm of the philosophy even bad pizza is still good.

Yeah, I kind of live in that Just about everywhere.

Nice, are you a morning person or an evening person?

Depends on the time of year.

Because you're a teacher.

I am Okay.

So during the school year I'm pretty much a morning person, but in the summer, like I could stay up till two in the morning and then just wake up at you know whenever.

All right, and you can flip-flop between both.

Yeah, All right, that's pretty easy for me.

And just fall asleep in the middle of the day sometimes because you know I may not have to work that day.

Yeah, yeah, that's awesome.

This next question I also know is a passion of yours, so your coffee order.

What is your coffee order?

Double espresso Okay, unless it's been a really long day, then it's a quad, so Good quad espresso, a lot of espresso, and I could fall right to sleep after.

Do you have an espresso machine at home?

I do.

Yeah, I have a friend, Andrew Barber helped me out with that he had told me about, like a fully automatic espresso machine.

I'm like, ooh, that sounds great.

So I have one of those and it takes less than a minute for it to heat up and I have my coffee, you know.

Everyone else listening should know that, as a staff member myself, I often encounter Andrew and Frank talking about espresso or bringing each other espresso that they just made at their homes for each other, so I try to get on that when I can.

Do you have a show or a movie that you watched recently that you really liked?

So a couple of them that we just watched.

We're in the middle of watching the show High Jack, which I believe is on Apple TV.

We watched Jack Reacher, the the series but also the movie, which I thought was pretty fun.

And then I just started something called Treadstone on Hulu, which is kind of based on the born movies.

OK, so you like kind of like action drama or medical dramas, OK cool.

Would you have any books that you have read that you liked?

I just started something it's called Taste by.

Stanley Tucci.

Oh, I love him.

So it's kind of based on his searching for Italy.

Yeah, he did like a TV show.

He did a series on.

I believe it was CNN.

Yeah.

So I've only read the first chapter, but it made me hungry sounds right up your lane.

Yeah, that's awesome.

And so, because of that food, do you have a local place that you love to eat at that you would recommend to someone?

Yeah, Fianis.

Restaurant it's on.

Burnt Mill Road in Voorhees.

The food is great.

The people there are even better.

They treat you like family, yeah, and my wife and I have been going there for a lot of years and they always remember us.

They always know, they remember your order, they remember what you like to eat and also what you like for dessert, like it's just, they're the best people.

You are not the first person to recommend Fianis to me, and we my husband and I have been there.

The atmosphere is really wonderful.

So, before we're done today, you have we're going to say you have about you know 30 seconds or so.

How would you describe yourself?

So what would be like your elevator speech to someone to tell them about who you are?

Oh, I'm just a guy who loves God and loves people and do my best to sort of sort of sort that out and love them the best way possible, and I'm very passionate about food and music and you know.

And my family, which I didn't quite mention a lot here, but I do have two daughters, charlotte and Abby.

I'm married to Christina Pello and it's it's wonderful to get to do things with them, especially in the summer, because you know, that's when I have off.

So all teachers do all things in the summer.

That's really beautiful.

Thanks, frank.

Um, so this is a meet hope podcast, and sometimes we ask a question related to hope.

So is there anything specific that's bringing you hope today?

The volunteers here.

No matter what ministry they're in, they are always doing something to serve someone else and without expectation, which I find inspiring, yeah Cool.

Well, Frank, thank you for being on the podcast with us and letting us pick your brain a little bit more.

Sure thing.

Um, if anybody wanted to get involved in tech ministry at hope, is there a way they could contact you?

Sure, they could contact me, Frank at meet hopeorg.

Okay, or they could contact Andrew Barber, Andrew at meet hopeorg.

Either one of us can get a.

You know, get them started in ministry or worship arts or that's great.

Yeah, so we'll put all that in our show notes so that people can find your email there.

It's also on our website.

There's a whole worship arts page on our website that they could check out if they wanted to read more about what we do.

But, um, yeah, so we're we're out of time, but thank you again for for being here with us and listeners.

Thank you for listening.

Uh, we will be back again next week, but until then, we hope that you have a really great week.

Thanks for being a part of the hope community as we continue our conversations about faith and hope.

If you don't already, please join us for worship on Sundays or on demand.

You can learn more at meet hopeorg or find us on socials at meet hope church.