life as a mobile church...

Since I have been dealing with the very same elements for about 3 months now, it's been tougher to simply design and make them look interesting from my POV.

The posters have to go really high, so the logo's show, it gets to be a struggle.

Then add to that, the middle school we met in has been doing their spring musical production of “Annie”. So we have been contending with stage sets, extra flats, props (large props), furniture...

Honestly I wasn't really “feeling” it.

But I woke up really early (thank you God) today, ready to roll out and do the stage.

It was really tight on stage with the band moved forward. We lost about four feet of the rear of the stage. But, hey...we made it work.

stepping back into winter…

I got sidetracked with blogging stage designs earlier this year. So much going on, but now it’s time to back track and fill in the gaps.
The series was entitled “The Kingdom”. As the story goes: the Israelites wanted God to give them an earthly king. God said “O.k.” Always remember to be careful what you ask/pray for.
The story ambles through the prophet Samuel, King Saul, King David & Absalom and more.
First two weeks of 1st & 2nd Samuel, 1st & 2nd Kings, 1st & 2nd Chronicles stage design are captured here.
Now, the last two weeks.



Within a mini-series, I will often use the same materials. But, particularly since we are a mobile church and load in and out completely each week: I tend to tweak the stage design each week within a series.


The third week’s design focused on remembering to praise God. King David was a man of many faults. But one of the things that defined David as a great leader was he accepted responsibility and remembered to praise God.
For this week, the stage design was a continuation of the crown. We added in a interactive element, where we encouraged people to re-focus on praising God. It was simple. A large piece of foam-core, with sticky notes for people to write on. We also created a space for creative people to draw or write on a large piece of paper taped to the floor. The speaking pastor also used props during his message. I always enjoy that.

Fourth week: the destruction off the Kingdom. The nation of Israel was destroyed, divided.
There seemed to be no choice but the take the crown and literally cut it up into pieces and hung it up again. This set of designs was fun for me creatively. To be able to capture the rise and fall of the nation of Israel through coroplast & cloth was exciting.

Side note: I highly recommend reading “Tale of Three Kings”, A study on brokenness (Gene Edwards). It is an amazing book on brokenness. If you have ever been hurt, broken, shattered by church, you will learn a lot from reading this book.

creativity is easy, implementation is hard work...

A lot of creative elements is work and some is just thinking & vapor…
Sometimes I imagine that some people think a stage design just shows up in my car and we put it together. Not so… Sadly it is hard to explain what the creative thinking entails. Looks so simple, when I look at the photos. And sadly I didn’t get pictures of the laver and brazen altar fire. Oh well…


Here goes: This is How to Create the Temple Elements in 60 Easy Steps:
1. Meeting one: by txt. Can we do temple set-up again. Think. Pray. O.k. Will need extra people.
2. Research previous temple set-up. What do I still have, what do I need. How am I going to do it?
3. Shopping at two different Walmarts and Michaels.
4. Draw out ideas and set-up
5. Meeting:
6. In between shopping at Ikea.
7. Think. Pray.
8. Type up general directions for set-up team and meeting. Posted on basecamp.
9. Search pictures on-line for team.
10. Think.
11. Found laver. And items for brazen altar.
12. Oh yes, in between all of this I read 2 Chronicles.
13. Took notes.
14. Painted laver gold. Wrong color. Ugh!
15. Research the Temple set-up. Think.
16. Looked at all the cloth in car. Need to find all the shiny cloth (bronze, gold and silver) and chiffon (at least 4-6 pieces)
17. Type up general directions for set-up team and meeting. Posted on basecamp.
18. Meeting. Work on details. Prep team. Explain how it will work.
19. Think: Decided not to do brazen altar.
20. E-mail reminder for 6:30 a.m. call at school for set-up.
21. Think about setting up crown and think about the nebulas idea of the “glory of the LORD”.
22. Went to CVS for power strip
23. Get bread mix.
24. Clean two folding tables.
25. Pulled out plug-ins. Get urn.
26. Make bread.
27. Take bronze plate down from wall (it hangs in my living room), get legs out of attic.
28. Study temple set up again (location of the elements in the temple) online and confirm various materials (gold vs. bronze, etc) each element was made of.
29. Make a list.
30. Type more detailed instructions for team. Printed out.
31. Never found incense bowl used before. Came up with alternative. An old salad bowl.
32. Painting incense bowl bronze.
33. Load half the things in my car.
34. Located and gathered safety pins.
35. Go to office. Found bronze cloth and 3 pieces of chiffon. And candelabras, left two because they did not fit in my car.
36. Ran some cloth thought the dryer to get wrinkles out. Rolled up.
37. Rolled up yet more cloth.
38. Txt to find other cloth.
39. Finish list. Bed.
40. Wake up at 5:00
41. Finish loading car.
42. Camera, coffee, Bible, bag, cleaning material..
43. Pray. Drive to school for 6:30 call.
44. Decided not to use crown.
45. Unload car and haul it in.
46. Bronze piece for laver didn’t dry. Ugh! Bronze paint everywhere.
47. Txt’s. Some people are running late.
48. Did the showbread set-up while waiting. Organized various pieces.
49. Lampstand done by producer.
50. Deploy team with instructions. One team on laver, one team on cloth on stage, one team on incense.
51. Will need ladder.
52. Set-up plug-ins for incense smell. Had to work with person.
53. Future note: need to label the various scents.
54. Need to raise level of certain pieces. Think. Move rolling cabinets all the way around to raise one piece. Cover in cloth.
55. O.k. I am going to do it. Create on the fly the “glory of the LORD”. It worked. Yippee!
56. Asked to raise a second element higher. Hmmm…get conductors platform from back stage and wrap in golden cloth.
57. Asked to add in fire (brazen altar) after all. Think.
58. Pastor happy. Go team! Said some thank you to people.
59. Break all of it down. Seems like that takes longer than setting up.
60. Help load trailer; then got help to load all the temple stuff back into my car.
Now all of it is still sitting in my car…

Since we do a lot of Old Testament Study, I can see the value and am seriously looking at taking the time and just making a nice set of temple elements to use in the future & box it up.

God in a box...

The series is entitled "Intentionally Left Blank".
This first Sunday was "God in a Box".

I love making people stop and think.
The stage was "intentionally" left black, with the band set up in he auditorium this week. We actually had a visitor that said "oh, no this church doesn't have music" when she walked into the auditorium. LOL

Hanging in the middle of the stage was a cardboard box. We drilled holes in it and painted it black.
Inside was a camping lantern suspended by fishing line.
Turned on the lamp and taped up the box.



It hit the mark of "confuzzling" people. Starting with several band members on Saturday and carrying through Sunday-up until the pastor started speaking. All they had to look at was the box in the middle of the stage.
Funny, how dirty the floor looked when nothing was on stage. I brought my Swiffer and cleaned up the stage on Sunday morning. oh, the things we do...

Stay tuned, next week we start suspending a crossword puzzle on stage.
Man, I LOVE what I do...

creative fuZionlab //33// tweeking the design...

A major disadvantage of being a mobile church it that each week on Saturday we have to load everything in and put it all up, then on Sunday, break it all down and load it out...

But this "disadvantage" often is an advantage. Because we have to reset every week, it also gives us the opportunity to re-evaluate the stage design each week and "tweek" it.

We tend to take a lot of photos. I find that it is easier for me to "see" the stage in a photograph. It gives a different perspective.

We are in week three of our series "imperfect church". So I thought I'd show you how we utilize this process to "tweek" a stage design.

This is week one...After reviewing the photos we decided that everything (the windows and photos) were flown too low on the stage. So for week two, we flew everything higher. After reviewing week two photos...

We thought we should spend more time on spacing things vertically across the stage. Not necessarily to be perfectly spaced out, but to even it out some. So, for week three...

and we did just that.

Also we like to add "progression of thought" in a multi-week series stage design. Adding, subtracting, changing the design subtly to invoke a feeling or thought. A tiny experiential element. For the last few weeks of this series we are wanting to add a few "signs of life" into our stage image of the imperfect church. We added some candles to the front stage left and a few candles by the window in the rear. We have more thoughts for the next two weeks.

The really cool thing about this is, there are people who actually "catch" the vision of what we are doing. People who notice the small changes each week. They "get it", they "feel" it. Which for me, is just an added bonus.

creative fuZion lab //26// designing with a basketball hoop...

Seriously. I never in a million years would have though that I would be doing a stage design on a basketball hoop. Well, this week that is exactly what I did.
This was a baptism Sunday and since we are a mobile church we rented space from a retreat facility nearby. The venue was an outdoor pavilion/basketball court. The baptisms were done in the pool.
I hadn't seen the venue until I arrived Sunday morning. When we arrived for set-up, people were pitching in getting everything ready. I kept seeing the basketball hoop and thinking "ugh!".
Luckily, thankfully, sadly...I had several bolts of cloth in my vehicle. So we just started throwing the cloth on the basketball hoop and moving it around with the percussionist's rain stick until it looked decent. For a basketball hoop... Didn't use one safety pin. LOL!
We worshiped, did the baptism and had a super great cook-out wih games and activities for everyone. Over a dozen people of all ages were baptised this week. What a great week!

pool noodles, a hula hoop and a chipmunk...

That's right pool noodles and a hula hoop...

It's hard to describe how my mind works. Before I started working on our fuZe (creative) team nine months ago, I had zero experience in creating stage/set designs.

These pool noodles and the hula hoop were actually purchased for another design several months ago (a giant faux mirror), but not used. So I carried the noodles and hula hoop in the back seat of my Thunderbird for months. It's kind of my traveling storage unit.

Anyway when we came up with this "heart" element for this week, I instantly thought of my pool noodles and hula hoop. We created two halves of a heart. They were perfect. We cut the hula hoop in half and inserted each half into a pool noodle. Then duct-taped the remaining noodles into a heart sharp and covered the frame with red cloth attached with safety pins. We duct taped fishing line to bow the rest of the shape. It was about 6 feet tall.

We attached each half of the heart to each side of the back stage curtain (with safety pins).
The service started with the curtains closed and during the second worship set, the curtains were slowly opened to reveal "the reality behind the scene", which was white chiffon, hung with gaffer clips in the shape of a cross. Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture after we completed the lighting.

We used to photographer's lights. One positioned at the bottom of of the cross shooting up, and one positioned on the right crossbeam shooting to the left. The effect was awesome.


It was one of "those" weekend, with tons of technical difficulties, from our truck getting trapped in the compound where we store it - to our Media-Shout program crashing - to a chipmunk that got in the auditorium and was running amuck around the media team's table...(the reality behind the scene).

Oh, along with some of the nice comments we got from people - we had a couple people say it reminded them of the opening for the old "I Love Lucy" show. LOL. Our creative team never even thought about that.

I love God's sense of humor!

This is part of the insanity of Creative Chaos//29 on Ragemuffin Soul. I look forward to this all week...

staging area set-up for XC...

Specific suggestions on future staging for unloading and loading the truck for Cross Current Minstires.