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The Christmas staging at Prairie Lakes is consistent with Iowa farm country: rustic, outdoorsy, natural and authentic, but with a modern vibe.
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Sherwood suggests repurposing as much material as possible in church set designs. And he carries over the set's theme in other areas of the church to help set the mood.
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"We place elements of the Christmas staging design throughout the church. We want the experience to start before the experience." - Tim Sherwood, Family Experience Coordinator, Prairie Lakes Church, Cedar Falls, IA.
Tim Sherwood was thinking big. As in barn-size big. That's exactly what Sherwood and his team at Prairie Lakes Church in Cedar Falls, Iowa, built as the centerpiece of the church's Christmas set: a two-story wall frame outfitted with red, dry-brushed paneling that, in the end, looked very much like a real barn. To top it off, Sherwood designed split rail fencing (decorated with Christmas garlands, of course) and a number of other elements, such as lanterns and snow, for a down-home feel. Iowa is farm country, after all; Sherwood's goal was to celebrate Christmas, country-style. “I wanted to make it look like a Thomas Kinkade painting in our worship center,” he relays.
Sherwood, whose title is family experience coordinator at Prairie Lakes, inherited the task of Christmas set and staging design when another member of the staff left Cedar Falls to pursue a music career in Nashville, Tenn. Since then, he has embraced this role, and usually begins to gather inspiration for Christmas during the summer.
While he browses websites such as Pinterest and ChurchStageDesignIdeas.com, and checks out what other churches—such as North Point, Willow Creek, and Church on the Move—are doing, his most important resource for inspiration is other church staff members and volunteers, be they in the communications and graphics department, the office, or part of the janitorial crew. To Sherwood, everyone's input is helpful: “I get as many different viewpoints as I possibly can to see what people are going to think about [my design], because my eyes only see what I want them to see, and other people are going to see things that I don't,” he relays.
As the weeks pass, he works with the communications department to narrow down how Christmas will look, based on what Senior Pastor John Fuller will be discussing during the holiday season.
"We place elements of the Christmas staging design throughout the church. We want the experience to start before the experience."
Tim Sherwood
Family Experience Coordinator, Prairie Lakes Church, Cedar Falls, IA.
Thematic Crosscurrents
One deciding factor in how Sherwood will execute his design is based on what materials he already has on hand. “I try to repurpose as much as I possibly can, so [for example], if there's some lumber I can re-use, I'll re-use it,” he explains. Using borrowed elements, he took last year's country Christmas staging design throughout the church: the lobby featured a second set of barn doors, and he placed props such as wagons, sleds, and old license plates—all from his parents' garage—here and there. This, he recounts, helped set the mood right when people entered the church, before getting seated in the worship center. “We really wanted the experience to start before the experience.”
At The Point, in Seymour, Ind., Joel Burbrink, creative arts pastor, also carried last year's Christmas staging design throughout the facility. The theme, Christmas at The Point, married rustic qualities with a modern feel, with signage done up in chalkboard art, greenery, and other accents both inside and out (during the Christmas season, the church hosted sleigh rides, children's train rides, and other special events outdoors). Inside the worship sanctuary, Burbrink designed a set made up of recovered wooden palettes configured in an alternating horizontal/vertical pattern; strings of café lighting arranged just so created a modern take on a quilt.
Burbrink, who was schooled in interior design at the Harrington College of Design in Chicago, oversees the Christmas design concept, working in conjunction with The Point's service planning team. He says that graphics tend to drive the direction the staging design will take. “We want to have that graphic concept—even the colors—as we're developing the set,” he explains. “That becomes our inspiration, and we go from there.”
Like Sherwood, Burbrink tries to repurpose, borrow, or take unwanted materials off of people's hands (as was the case with the palettes), to minimize costs. “There are some things that you probably need to spend money on,” he says, referring to the vinyl banners he had made into chalkboard art. “I spent money on those because I didn't have a chalkboard artist that could really do what I wanted at the level I wanted. I was able to do that because the palettes were free.” He urges other Christmas set designers to keep their eyes open all year long for items they might be able to borrow and incorporate into their designs.
For a recent Christmas stage design, Ben Wysong built a set made up of wooden Christmas trees of varying heights, fashioned out of thin plywood, for LifePointe Christian Church in Elk Grove, Calif. Up center stage was an Advent calendar made out of 25 glass jars fitted into a wooden frame that was covered in burlap. The jars were filled with rock salt (which served as snow), and lit with Christmas lights. This summer, Wysong was already working on ideas and planning for the Christmas set he will create in his new role as worship and tech leader at Harbor Covenant Church in Gig Harbor, Wash.
“I like to have the Christmas stage figured out by October, because putting it together shouldn't be a last minute thing—there's so much that goes into it,” Wysong says. “I like being able to compile a list of everything that I need pretty far in advance. So much happens at Christmas—it's a crazy season in a church, and I think it's good to be prepared.”
He underlines that part of this preparation involves good communication with everyone involved in creating the Christmas theme. “Make sure that everyone who needs to be on the same page is on the same page, that you're not just doing the set without anyone else knowing what you're going to do. [You don't want them] to walk in one day and the stage is up, and no one had any idea, besides you, of what was going on.”
As someone who thought big and succeeded, Sherwood encourages other churches not to limit themselves when brainstorming on Christmas sets and staging. “Dream big and present your idea to as many people as you can, because they're going to have ideas that will help you pull it off if you really want to pull it off,” he says. “Don't give up just because it seems insurmountable.”
