Toby (ChurchGear’s founder) was a worship pastor at a small church in Texas back in 2008. With a sound system that was severely outdated, his dreams for a new system were bigger than his budget. With the financial crisis in full swing, he realized he’d need a creative solution to his inadequate system. In the search to solve one problem, he found another.

Having sold some of his own gear online in the past, he knew there was still value in used gear. Deciding to scour every storage space, closet, and unused Sunday school room of the church, he discovered a mountain of sound and AV equipment gathering dust. There were old wireless mic systems, amplifiers, snakes, lighting boards, moving lights, projectors, speakers, etc, etc.

He was shocked at how much equipment the church had accumulated over the years. Knowing he could sell this old gear to get funds for the new sound system, he had a completely new problem: How could he find time to sell all of this gear himself? As a full-time staff member at the church, he dedicated 100% of his time to creating stellar Sunday morning worship services. How on Earth was he going to add “selling all of this used gear” to his to-do list?

He needed an easy way to sell all of this gear. Selling everything individually and shipping all of the gear himself would consume the time he needed to focus on Sunday morning services. He called multiple stores asking if they’d like to buy the gear and everyone declined. There wasn’t a production equipment company that wanted to buy a large amount of used gear out of the church’s closet. This is when Toby knew there was a need for a company willing and ready to serve the church’s production equipment needs.

When Toby decided to step out of full-time ministry, he knew he could continue serving the church by helping fellow tech directors and worship pastors with their piles of unused production equipment. He founded ChurchGear to create an easy and painless way for churches to sell their used production equipment. A church tech director shouldn’t have to handle the hassle of selling and shipping all of the church’s used gear across the globe. There simply is not enough time in the day to handle this daunting task.

ChurchGear has now grown into an entire team of former church staff and worship band members who love working with churches all over the country. We love serving the church, providing a simple solution to a universal problem, and creating a company that can give church tech directors and worship leaders their storage space back and more money in their ministry budget.