The stage itself is a 20-foot by 20-foot deck only six inches high, just to give enough vertical separation from the congregation, but not too much that detracts from the targeted feeling of intimacy.
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Like just about every other church in America, southern California’s Saddleback Church was forced to make major adjustments to its weekly service flow during the coronavirus pandemic. But while the church was unable to meet in its main auditorium due to local restrictions, it was able to use that time to complete much-needed and long-overdue renovations to that space.
For much of 2021, the church was able to do outdoor services on the property of its main campus in Lake Forest, California, just south of Anaheim. In addition to regular weekend services, the church also began holding a bi-monthly “Worship in the Park” night of worship.
“When we opened things back up, we really felt a need to have an experience during the week for those that wanted more focused time in worship and prayer.”
—Dennis Choy, Director of Production, Saddleback Church, Lake Forest, CA
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When the church’s renovations were completed in November of 2021 and the congregation was able to return to meeting indoors, the night of worship was one event that the staff knew they needed to keep on the schedule.
With the church going through a transitional season of installing a new senior pastor, as well as yearning to pursue a season of revival for their region, they knew they needed to be intentional about creating the right type of experience that would cater to a heightened sense of spiritual intimacy.
“When we opened things back up, we really felt a need to have an experience during the week for those that wanted more focused time in worship and prayer,” says Dennis Choy, the megachurch’s director of production. “We wanted to create a more intimate atmosphere and something different than the normal weekend experience.”
Making it all come together
The question became how exactly to pull that off, given the existing event schedule and the fact that being back indoors presented its own set of logistical challenges for Saddleback.
The answer was to continue with the worship service every other month, but for the March service they would begin do it “in the round” to help create a more dynamic and engaging atmosphere.
“This was something [Global Worship Pastor] John [Cassetto] invited us to try earlier this year as a way to tear down barriers between the platform and the people during these nights where we were worshipping with our church family,” explains Brittany Crimmel, Saddleback’s production manager, who has also been part of the extensive planning process for each service.
By creating a more immersive experience that allowed the audience to better engage with each other and the worship team. “We just saw so much engagement from our people—students felt free to come closer to the stage, people could see others worshipping across from them, and the [production] team was able to capture it in such a beautiful way,” Crimmel continues.
Getting creative—in the round
Doing an event in the round in an existing 3,000-seat auditorium would inherently present its own set of challenges. The existing theatrical lighting isn’t aimed towards the middle of the room, extra mics in front of the PA would lend themselves to creating feedback, and sightlines to IMAG screens could be obstructed, making it difficult for the audience to see song lyrics.
However, with this event gaining a high priority among the church’s leadership team, budgets were made available to accommodate equipment rentals that would help ensure the event could happen at a high-quality, distraction-free level, since it would be nearly impossible to reconfigure the auditorium’s existing equipment between Sundays to facilitate a high-production event like this.
By partnering with a local rental house, the church brought in a d&b PA to dead-hang in a center cluster above the stage, just like an arena show.
By partnering with a local rental house, the church brought in a d&b PA to dead-hang in a center cluster above the stage, just like an arena show. They also added a lighting package of 48 Martin VDO Atomic Bold LED PARs to ring the stage for the necessary wash and flew 20 PixelFlex 2.9mm LED panels (which the church already owned) in a ribbon configuration on two sides of the stage for song lyrics, ensuring that congregants on every side of the room would have an unobstructed opportunity to see the words if they couldn’t view the existing LED IMAG screens.
The stage itself is a 20-foot by 20-foot deck only six inches high, just to give enough vertical separation from the congregation, but not too much that detracts from the targeted feeling of intimacy. This also makes it easier for the audience to press forward during worship and heighten the sense of engagement between the stage and the room.
The in-house LED screens are used for worship IMAG and for speaker shots during teaching or communion moments, and two existing center-line cameras are supplemented with up to four handheld cameras, a dolly, and a rented jib as needed.
Sixteen in-house wireless mics and 20 wireless in-ear packs are all put to use for band and vocalists, and additional mics have been rented at times if the number of talent increases. This helps eliminate the confusion of handing off mics to different people and running the risk of something getting overlooked or lost during stage transitions.
Injecting talent, heart, and flexibility
The amount of talent on stage became a necessary side effect of how the event itself would be structured. Scheduled for roughly two-and-a-half hours, the service could easily contain up to 15 songs, with potential service elements like communion, baptisms, prayer, and brief teaching moments.
That all combines to create a lot of time for musicians and vocalists to be standing and playing, so planning a rotation of how roughly a dozen band members and another dozen vocalists could cycle on and off and developing a plan for those transitions was critical.
And for the event itself, while the Saddleback team wants the services to feel organic and spontaneous, there still is a necessary element of preparation that has to be involved.
“It’s a helpful plan for events like these to remind ourselves that we can deviate from a plan, but we can’t deviate from nothing,” Crimmel points out. “So we plan everything to the best of our ability, seeking God in prayer to see what He would have us do.
But if a worship leader feels called to take a song in a different direction or a producer wants to change an element because of something that’s happening in the room, we are open-handed to make those changes on the fly. It’s a whole lot of trust between all our teams,” she adds.
That level of trust develops through days of communication and planning leading up to the event, beginning with planning meetings to set the vision and programming expectations, which then frees each different church team (Creative, Worship, Production, etc.) to do their own team-specific planning.
Crimmel built a team of six volunteer stagehands (all of whom are on intercom and able to interact with other crew members) to coordinate each of the four sides of the stage and ensure that elements and transitions are handled smoothly.
Once the event is loaded in, roughly a week before the night of worship itself, a rehearsal schedule is established for the three days preceding the service.
“We plan a handful of rehearsals for this event, each with their own purpose,” says Crimmel.
“The first is a music rehearsal that our music and vocal director will own. They are able to go through each song [and address] various parts with different people and make sure everything lands the way it should.
“The second is a production rehearsal that I typically help run with our producers,” she outlines. “We go through staging, camera shots, the movement of people—really all the production elements.
“The third is our full run-through,” she continues. “Everyone is in their right spots and we run it just like we have on paper. The run-through is usually where we see if there’s a moment that we want to expand or change. Being really prepared leading up to this moment means we’re able to make changes if needed because we know our content. Again, this is a lot of trust that everyone has the same goal—to help people engage with Jesus.”
Showtime with a higher calling
With so many moving parts, whether in on-stage talent, crews, or service elements, in-the-moment coordination is vital. Crimmel built a team of six volunteer stagehands (all of whom are on intercom and able to interact with other crew members) to coordinate each of the four sides of the stage and ensure that elements and transitions are handled smoothly.
Like many churches, Saddleback tends to lean heavily on volunteer teams to execute production roles for services each week at its broadcast and offsite campuses. However, for an event like the Worship Night, the extra moving parts and added rehearsal schedule mean that they may have to change their staffing models.
The load-in is mainly handled by church staff and contract labor, but some volunteers have been available to help when they can. But the sheer number (and length) of the rehearsals also has added a wrinkle that tends to be more conducive to having staff in most roles, as opposed to a majority of volunteers.
When trying to decide how to navigate the balance of using staff and volunteers for events like this, Choy, a long-time advocate of building and investing in volunteer production teams, notes, “There is always a quality and consistency question, but also an availability question. So when things get more complicated and you want more rehearsals to run through things, people’s availability to be there can become a challenge” that may force a decision into how events are staffed.
“It is the best seat in the house to see what God is doing.”
—Brittany Crimmel, Production Manager, Saddleback Church, Lake Forest, CA
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The church hopes that the worship service is able to continue fulfilling its vision and become part of its longer-term event planning process, which may lead to some dedicated investment, like purchasing specific gear so it doesn’t become a perpetual rental or installing chain motors in the ceiling to better facilitate the rigging of lighting and speakers.
But the goal is not to have just one more event on the calendar, it’s to figure out what’s the best way to achieve a specific vision for this particular season.
The Saddleback leadership team had a targeted goal and decided they needed to step outside of their normal event flow to achieve it, but that may not necessarily be the model ideally suited for every church.
“I think you shouldn’t change just for change’s sake,” cautions Choy. “I think you should think through what environment you are trying to create first, then see what the possibilities are.”
It’s been an invaluable addition to the worship community at Saddleback and has already created a lasting impact, not just with its congregants, but also with its staff.
“It is the best seat in the house to see what God is doing,” Crimmel exclaims. “It never gets old!”
