Is this worship or concert lighting? Does it matter?
There probably isn't a profession where one can't look back on their career and think “I wish I knew this ten years ago….” And without question, technical production is a field where one is always learning, and time changes and shapes opinions on how things should or could be done.
Here's a few musings on what I've learned over the years about lighting for worship that I wish I had known earlier. You can feel free to agree or disagree—like many things in technical production, these are subjective and will vary by church style and demographic.
First of all, I've learned that worship services are not concerts. The goals of a worship event are different from the goals of a concert. In a concert, you're trying to put on a show in all areas of the event. You're trying to make the performers the focus of the event. You're trying to attract attention, to generate energy, to get people emotionally charged up.
Worship, however, isn't about us. It's not about the performers. It's not about artificially creating excitement or energy. It's about bringing the attention to God and trying to keep it there. It's about creating an environment that supports this.
Following this thought process, creating lighting that draws one's attention away from God and takes those attending out of a focus on God is poor lighting. Personally, I would put the use of blinders and lighting sweeps across the congregation in this category. It distracts from worship. There's nothing about shining a painfully bright light in my eyes that aids me in focusing less on my surroundings and more on God. Please stop doing this to me during worship events!
Also, lighting (or audio, or video) is more art than science. Our field attracts those who love technology because of all the shiny knobs and buttons, but it's the art that's important. Technology can be taught; artistic ability is something you're born with. Recruit artistic people and teach them the technology (or pair then with the unartistic techies).
On the more technical side, someone I interviewed a few years ago made the suggestion in the context of programming moving lights that the most efficient was to program a show is to go through and program all your cues without concern for transitions. Get each look down first, and then go back through after and create your transition cues that take you from one look to the other. This is generally much faster, and should you run out of time, you at least have a complete show programmed. If you decide you need to change an earlier look as you program the show, if you've already done your transitions, you may have both the look and the transition to edit, but if you get your whole show set first, you only have to do your transitions once. If you spend time on transitions up front and you run out of time, you have half a show programmed well, and nothing for the rest of the show.
On the safety side, I had no idea ten years ago that the use of fabrics purchased from a regular fabric store as softgoods on stage was an issue. Fabrics intended for stage use must be treated to be fire retardant. Especially with traditional tungsten lighting, there are a lot of very hot things on stage, and fabrics from your local fabric store could easily go up in flames if they were accidentally pushed against a lighting fixture. There are ways to treat regular fabrics to be fire retardant, or your can purchase fabrics from a theater supply company that are already treated correctly.
And the last thing I wish I knew about years ago is tension grids. No, this isn't for tracking your relationship with your worship team. A tension grid is a mesh of thin cable stretched out above your stage and possibly even house seating area that you can walk on. It's a (generally) lower-cost substitute for catwalks, gives you complete access over your entire stage, doesn't obstruct the beam of lighting fixtures, and are downright cool. Picture a fencing material not unlike a chicken wire fence that is stretched taut enough horizontally over your stage such that you can walk on it. It takes getting used to (if catwalks make you nervous, a tension grid will completely freak you out!) but it's awesome. And, it can be retrofitted into a pre-existing space and supported completely from the floor, so not having your roofing elements designed to support such a structure isn't a barrier to installation.
