5 Lessons Churches Can Learn from Professional Theatres
Although Sunday mornings are focused on worship and not just to entertain, there are still valuable lessons we can learn from the professional theatre world.
1. Preparation
Preparing for a production, directors, actors, and designers will spend months scrutinizing every decision that is made to maximize the impact the play will have on its audience. We have 52 Sundays a year and several large holidays. We need to make them count. How can you prepare so that you set yourself and your teams up for success?
2. Collaboration
In theatre, the creative team is clear about the artistic vision of the director. Their contributions supplement the message, motifs, and conflicts that are represented within the production. The theatre world boils down to choices. Often ideas from one department will spark ideas within another. A specific costume will influence lighting design choices which will inspire the actors to perform at their best. Are your different creative departments segmented or connected together pursuing a single artistic vision for each service?
3. Cohesion
Everything within a theatre production looks like it all belongs in the same “world” so the audience can buy into what is happening on stage and invest themselves into the storyline. We too are telling a story (whether we realize it or not) every Sunday morning.
Are your teams’ choices discussed and presented together to your artistic team for each service (music, graphic design, scenic design, message, lighting, etc)? As the creative director at my church, I am responsible to collaborate with our lead pastor and set the creative tone for each series so that everything blends seamlessly together to support the main points from the message. Who sets the creative tone for your message series? Are they in collaboration with your other team leaders? How are these principles communicated?
4. Community
A theatre company is a community of artists working together to produce an experience for an audience. They seek to reveal truths of the human experience through the medium of storytelling that will be relevant to their community. In this way, the church is EXACTLY like a theatre company. Not only is the staff at the church a community, but we should be striving to engage our congregations in a unique and meaningful way by having our hands on the pulse of our culture. In concert with the Holy Spirit, we should seek to be responsive and agile to what God wants to say to His people. We need to reveal His truths through the medium of storytelling that will be relevant to our community.
5. Post Mortem
After the production, the creative team will meet and talk about what went well, what can be done better, and lessons learned from the production of that show. For major events like Christmas and Easter, we can do the same so that we can both air problems that were encountered and brainstorm ways to prevent them from happening in the future as well as to take time to celebrate the victories that happened. This time should be as encouraging as it is practical and critical.
While we may not want to categorize our “services” as “productions”, our creative teams should be working to ensure that our preparation sets our teams up for success, that we are in collaboration to ensure that every service is cohesive across all artistic mediums, that what we present is relevant to our communities, and that our victories are celebrated (both internally and externally) and our problems are addressed to not be repeated in the future.
BRIAN TELESTAI
Artistic Director
Revive Church | Boise, ID
revivechurchboise.com
After touring internationally and recording as a professional musician in the hard-rock band, I Am Ghost, on Epitaph Records, Brian Telestai moved to Boise, ID to help plant a church where he is currently the Artistic Director at Revive Church. He and his wife, Kerith, are also the co-founders of Rising Stars Performing Arts Camps, where Brian serves as a playwright, technical director, and acting coach. He is currently studying Theatre Arts and Communication at Boise State University with emphases in dramatic writing, performance, and media production. In his free time, Brian enjoys writing, painting, and long distance running.
