Production

3 Ways to Achieve an Effective Stage Design

A great stage design can be one of the highlights of the experience you are creating for your congregation on Sunday.

Here are three ways you can achieve an effective stage design at your church:

Be at the creative meetings for your pastoral staff.

Know the material. An effective stage design draws on many elements, the most important being content of the sermon. At our church we try as much as possible to incorporate elements of the sermon into the design to drive the point home. We want the elements to draw attention to the stage but not distract from the Pastor.

These meetings often determine the flavor of a particular series or sermon and can be very helpful when determining the overall look of the stage. We know that not every sermon is going to give us a rock solid look but in those instances, input from your pastoral staff can be extremely useful on how they want to be perceived on stage.

Communicate with the Worship Ministry

Your Worship Ministry has just as much of a claim to the stage as you do. You must take into account the musicians, choir, and Worship Leader at your church. An excellent stage design that blocks the choir or makes it difficult to position musicians on the stage affects their attitude when leading worship and could hamper the mood being set before the sermon.

We are all in our positions to help bring people to Christ. If we are hindering another ministry from being effective then we ourselves are not being effective. Communication is key!

Know your congregation

As much as we may want to have the coolest gear and the latest lighting and video elements, the fact is we are part of a whole. We are designing stages as a compliment to the service as a whole. We are there to help our congregations worship and to be receptive to the message God has for them.

At our church, we have a large range of ages and backgrounds and we need to be sensitive to all of them. You won’t please everyone but through our diversity and creativity, we can help create an environment of worship that all of our people can appreciate and worship in.

How do you create an effective stage design at your church? Leave a comment below!

AARON SPENCER
Production Director
Trinity Baptist Church | Jacksonville, FL
tbc.org

Aaron started learning A/V as a volunteer in his church the age of 15. He became interested enough to continue volunteering through college and eventually began a career in Media Production. He spent five years on staff as the Manager of A/V Services at PRI Productions in Jacksonville Florida. During his time at PRI he was also part of the Game Day Crew for the Jacksonville Jaguars NFL team. He spent his first 2 seasons as a Camera Operator and his last 3 seasons as an Instant Replay Operator. In July of 2014, Aaron begin working on staff at Trinity Baptist Church as the church’s Production Director.  Trinity is a multi-campus church located in Jacksonville, FL.