With the pandemic forcing houses of worship to focus on their digital presence, many churches are finding themselves operating outside of their comfort zones. Even those who were well-versed in broadcast and streaming have had to make significant adjustments to how they deliver services with fewer (and during lockdown, sometimes no) attendees on site. But even when we achieve some level of new normalcy, the need for a meaningful online worship experience will remain. And it’s clear that churches will have to adapt their physical spaces to accommodate this.
Venue design and adaptation
Ron Crawford, Hope Church, Memphis, TN
“Those of us who have grown up in the church have gotten conditioned––either Saturday evening or Sunday we go to church, we gather together, we worship together,” says Ron Crawford, lighting director at Hope Church in Memphis, Tennessee. “I think individuals see themselves now as being able to worship collectively, but in a very intimate environment.”
Dave Milam, vice president of strategic design at Visioneering Studios, a national architectural, construction, and design/build firm headquartered in Santa Ana, California, notes that when COVID hit, in many cases, churches with little to no digital presence were forced, seemingly overnight, to invest in the necessary infrastructure and gear to make online worship happen. The problem? During the lockdown, church leaders were able to transform their sanctuaries into sound stages for broadcast. But when people––even in a limited capacity––started coming back to church, housing all of that AV equipment in a facility that wasn’t originally designed to support it became a major issue.
Milam says that some of this gear has found a new home. “We are starting to see churches take sections of their lobbies––some are even thinking about removing their cafés––and creating a glassed-in studio space,” he describes. He likens this set-up to the street-level window at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, where visitors can crowd around to watch the filming of The Today Show. “A church’s online studio is not something that’s hidden in the back closet anymore. These new digital venues are now a highly visible part of the weekend experience.”
“We are starting to see churches take sections of their lobbies––some are even thinking about removing their cafés––and creating a glassed-in studio space." Dave Milam Vice President of Strategic Design, Visioneering Studios
For some churches, the sanctuary is being transformed into a sound stage, even with a limited return to in-person worship. “We’ve been talking to churches about how their worship venue can become a sound stage that happens to have live worship, as opposed to live worship that happens to feature a video broadcast version,” Milam says. Think of this as a late-night talk show, where there is a live studio audience, along with a broadcast viewership. “Some churches are talking about creating smaller sound stage venues where the pastor can talk to up to 100 people, the room feels full, and he’s able to look directly at the camera. It’s all designed, really, for the online experience, but there happen to be live people in the room.”
The Summit Church in Durham, North Carolina has 12 campuses. Up until last fall, the church streamed sermons campus-to-campus, and would stream one service a weekend online. In October 2019, the Durham location launched as a new broadcast campus designed to deliver a better online experience. The first weekend of lockdown, Summit’s tech team recorded a regular service (without, of course, a live congregation), and decided that this approach was not well-suited for worshippers who would be watching from home.
Justin Manny, The Summit Church, Durham, NC
“Within the next week, we pivoted to pre-producing the content,” explains Justin Manny, production pastor at The Summit Church. “We said, ‘let’s record worship in a setting that makes it feel like it’s in a living room. Let’s record the sermon in a way that’s a little more conversational––not the pastor standing up on a big, empty stage in a big, empty room. Our room is 1,600 seats, and so if we tried to record in there and act like there was no difference, we felt like it was disingenuous, especially at that point in the year, with what was going on.”
“We said, ‘let’s record worship in a setting that makes it feel like it’s in a living room.'" Justin Manny, Production Pastor, The Summit Church
Over the course of the following six months, Summit’s tech crew experimented with how to deliver a great online experience. They filmed in different locations, and built out an AV broadcast system that was relatively easy to move around. When it became apparent, however, that the need for great online worship wasn’t going away, they focused their efforts on constructing a more permanent broadcast facility. As of press time, the church was converting some of its office space into a video recording studio dedicated to producing content for online worship. The facility is slated to be complete by the beginning of April.
“The goal for us was to create a great place to capture a worship service,” Manny explains. The studio will also serve to streamline video production. “We’re a fairly large church, but we don’t have a huge production team. While we weren’t having [in-person] services, it was easy for us to move things around, [but] we realized that if this was going to be sustainable, we needed to have a set space where stuff didn’t move and things were safe.”
Hope Church now offers short online worship snippets, such as 15 minutes of praise, or five minutes of worship, throughout the week in an effort to continue that engagement.
Arguably––even when the pandemic finally calms down––worshippers will take a hybrid approach to church: some weeks they’ll attend in person, but often they’ll choose to worship from home. “Now a family can stay in their pajamas, and eat breakfast, and have a moment of worship, a moment of engagement,” Crawford says. He explains that Hope Church now offers short online worship snippets, such as 15 minutes of praise, or five minutes of worship, throughout the week in an effort to continue that engagement. “It’s changing the mindset of [how we’re] giving people the hand of Christ where they are, and opening up. It’s not about these buildings anymore; it’s about the Kingdom.”
