Photo of Church of the Highlands, Birmingham, Ala., courtesy of Kellen Jacob Photography.
With Christmas fast approaching, most of you are up to you necks in cables, fixtures, and scripts, with visions of lighting cues dancing through your head. Perhaps this is a good opportunity to pause for just a moment and extract yourself from the myriad of details to look again at the big picture of your event. It's really easy to get so consumed by details that we miss the mark when it comes to the event as a whole.
There are lots of different styles of churches, and one set of guidelines can't apply to all. So let's talk about some lighting and event philosophies and see if some might be food for thought for you.
If you are a church with a cutting-edge service style, Christmas may be the time to take it up a notch. This can be done a couple different ways. The more obvious one is to bring in additional equipment to augment your rig and provide more opportunities for effects and flash. Another, though, might merely be to use what you have more intentionally. A lot of church techs know how to program cool things, but often aren't good at making sure what they program actually augments the message of the music. This year, how about focusing on analyzing the different segments of the event and come up with lighting looks and moves that emphasize the theme and not just merely look cool?
To do this, you might consider using this as an opportunity to draw in some new types of volunteers into your technical ministry. Many of those who serve in church tech are attracted to the roles because of the technology and are good at learning how to use equipment. However, it's also often true that the people with the technical abilities don't have the artistic talents to know what lighting works well for a song, and what lighting is merely “cool” but has little relation to what's happening on stage. And those with the strong artistic talent are often intimidated by the gear. How about recruiting some of those artistic people to work alongside your technical people to create looks that truly augment the event?
When planning your lighting, don't feel limited to what you currently have in inventory. Investigate what options you have for rental in your area. Talk to other churches and find out where they go to augment their rig for events. It's easy to fall into the mindset that you should convince your leadership to purchase lights when you want to do a large event so that they are available later, but there are good reasons NOT to do this. Intelligent fixtures are expensive, require a significant amount of maintenance, and technology changes quickly from year to year. If you don't need those lights on a week-by-week basis to achieve your church's ministry goals, renting can be far more cost effective, and relieves you of the significant time overhead to keep those lights operating. It's like being an uncle instead of a father—you get to take the lights out for a few days, wear them out, and then return them when they are tired and getting cranky for someone else to deal with after the event is over. ☺
For other churches (and even the edgy churches), Christmas could be an opportunity to go simple. Even in rock 'n roll churches, taking a break from the same old thing and going deeply reflective and mellow can be a win. Part of deviating severely from your norm, however, does require some extra effort. Setting your audiences expectations and building anticipation for something different requires help from the church's communication team. Let people know in advance what the theme of the service will be so their expectations are met instead of dashed on the floor. And likewise, your lighting should be equally reflective to match. This doesn't necessarily mean boring, though—lighting to richly support a quiet service can actually be more challenging than going all-out for a rock concert. Flashy can be easy, but beauty in support of quieter, elegant songs can take a lot of thought and experimentation for it to work well. Lighting the architectural features of your stage, using contrast and shadows, effective use of patterns and backlighting can bring significant beauty and thoughtfulness to the event.
One thing to consider is how will visitors at Christmas who return because they loved the event react when the see your every-weekend style? Will they feel like a "bait and switch" was pulled over on them? If your services are rather plain normally, should your Christmas event be over-the-top flashy? Whatever you do, visitors returning to your church in the weeks following Christmas should not be left wondering what happened to the church that put on that event in December.
The most important aspect of lighting, though, is to do what you do for a well thought-out reason. And make sure that reason supports the ministry goals of your event.
