My church (First Free Church), where I am on staff as the Young Adults and Creative Arts Director, has experienced some
major growth in the past two years. Two years ago we where averaging around 900
people each week on a Sunday morning, now we are averaging closer to 1400 a
week. With this growth we were presented with a challenge; do we add another
service? We currently have two services on Sunday morning. We decided adding a
third would not work for several reasons, time of services and drain on
volunteers and leadership ranking high on the list of reasons not to. So we
looked to see what we could do. We decided to turn one of our multipurpose
rooms that was divided into 4 classrooms and make one large worship center. The
space totals around 5000 square feet, where we could fit around 300-350 seats, in contrast to our main worship center that holds 600ish. (See the picture below)
The goal was to create a worship space, video venue, which
would run simultaneously with the other worship service in our main worship
center. The video venue would have its own worship and production team but we
would send the teaching each week over live video to that space from the main
worship center.
We knew that we needed to create a feel and atmosphere that
would not feel like an overflow space where people where sent to watch
something on a screen. To goal was to create a venue with its own unique style
and feel so that it was truly another worship service with the same message,
yet was timed and synced with our main worship center services.
Not only were the room esthetics important in the creation
of the space but finding the right equipment and leaning how to create a live
video room that made you feel like you are a part of the teaching experience
happening in another space was the challenge to overcome that would make this
room a success or failure.
Over the next few blogs I will discuss the work we put into
the remodeling the space, post some pics, and give some descriptions of what we
are doing now to make this worship center flow and work simultaneously with our
main worship center on Sunday mornings. I’ll look at what equipment we use and
how we use it and even what we could have done better. I hope you find this to
be something that helps and inspires you in what you are doing in your
ministries and churches.
Some suggestions, but only that.
ReplyDeleteChange the title to something short and staccato, and change the sub-title to the active voice.
For instance
Media in Church
Media::Church
My Media My Church
Sub-Title (note the "exploring" part in particular, the active voice)
A blog exploring the use of technology, media and creative arts in church as a tool to empower and communicate the message of Christ and the glorify of God through worship.
or
Exploring the use of technology, media and creative arts in church.
Put the rest of it, the "My" parts of the title and the latter part of the sub-title in the "about" section.
Again, just a suggestion. Looking forward to seeing more posts.
Thanks for the suggestion...will see
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