Every worship environment needs light. Remember, God said so in the beginning: “Let there be light.”
Why?
Because all creation was made to worship Him. Whether by day or night, God created light to beautifully brighten our world.
No matter if you’re worshipping in a megachurch, a theater-style church, a mid-sized stained-glass cathedral, a home church living room, or even at a campfire sing-along - some kind of lighting is essential.
Matthew 5:16 says, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” Within the scope of this passage, and our worship through tech, what is our light that shines before men? What are the good works that are supposed to be on display, so that the Father is glorified? The answer, is God’s presence that we ourselves bring.
Our light shines through our countenance on stage. Yes, that worldly-sounding phrase called “stage presence,” has a real and meaningful purpose. Plainly put, if your congregation can’t see the worship leader and musicians, there is a disconnect - worship is diminished. Their light is not actually allowed to “shine before men.”
Don’t get me wrong, this certainly doesn’t mean that every church needs to have 50 perfectly calibrated movers with color changing gobos and effects through thick fog!
Nevertheless - let’s shine some more light on this.
Regardless of your denomination, size of building, or worship philosophy, it’s pretty safe to say that within your venue, there has been some importance placed on lighting up the stage, the congregation and maybe even the stairway leading to the balcony, where the youth are all hiding! Ahem. It’s up to you to move forward with intentionality. And to be intentional about ministry growth, you always must be intentional about drawing in new volunteers. (Those youth could be your best initial candidates!)
Unlike the tricky area of training and developing a volunteer sound team, a volunteer lighting team can have an altogether different learning curve. As the tech director, you can breathe a few sighs of relief as you begin building your team. Why? Because with a little planning and forethought, your “basically trained” lighting team can deliver stunning results every Sunday, with much less engineering skills than their audiophile counterparts.
Here are six easy tips for starting and maintaining a church lighting team.
1. Make the most of your current system.
So, you’re a tiny church, and your system may only consist of eight wall switches and four hardware store dimmers that always seem to be hot and smell funny. (Actually, that last part you may want to have checked out - but never fear!)
Embrace the simple, by doing things the same way every time. Follow the flow of your service. Actually, use those dimmers and switches in ways that make sense for worship, the sermon and for reading the Word. Believe it or not, making the most of a simple situation actually attracts volunteers and potential donors to a much-needed cause.
2. Don’t wait for the new system to be installed to start recruiting volunteers.
Talk to people. Learn about their interests and abilities. True, they may not be a potential designer or lighting programmer. But they may also not have a fear of heights! A cable repairman on your team could be really useful when going up 30 feet to switch out lamps or planning to hang that brand-new lighting grid, right?
3. Now is the time for infrastructure.
If you’re new to the professional lighting world, it’s time to get a good understanding of DMX protocols, and distribution systems. Hire a local lighting contractor to engineer a lighting grid system, that will be able to grow with your team, and the needs of your church.
4. Choose a light console that matches your needs and the capabilities of your current volunteers.
You may be tempted to purchase a sophisticated light board that can handle anything that may come your way for the next 20 years. Take a breath for a moment.
Will this new system attract or repel prospective volunteers? Yes, purchase a system that will have growth and upgrade potential. But don’t do this at the expense of your volunteers.
Make sure the lighting system is both user friendly, easily programmable and approachable by the novice lighting operator. Once your team has some experience and natural leaders are identified, let them lead the way toward your next upgrade.
My best recommendation for a solid and professional leap into LED and some movers - the ETC Element.
5. Create a four-tier team.
At first, you may find yourself filling all these roles. In time, though, you will need to delegate these responsibilities to a growing team.
First, a lighting director is responsible for all researching, purchasing and generally casting vision for your new team and creating its policies. Next, develop a designer/programmer role that will preset all the lighting needs for your weekend service, according to some kind of written service flow.
Then, the lighting operator will fill the seat during a Sunday service to do simple transitions between sections of your service. This can be as simple as colors changing between songs, and blackouts for when a video plays during the service. Finally, a lighting crewman can be an introductory position that handles simple stage layouts, LED channel assignments and possibly lamp replacements and focusing of traditional lights. Remember, you’re creating community through your team. Many hands make “light work.”
6. Reinforce the primary purposes of stage lighting.
Besides the obvious need for light to fill a stage to make worship possible, there are other basic purposes behind controlling lighting.
While lighting for video, projections and online streaming have become big topics, let’s go even further back to the basics.
Don’t forget to use lighting the way theater has been using light since the beginning - with a little distraction! Focus on the worship team while they are playing. But please, change the lights for when announcements are being made!
Every time there is a transition, you should use the lighting to draw the congregation’s attention away from things (like moving a podium) and toward another - like the pastor’s walking path for his sermon. Use preprogrammed cues to achieve this.
Leave nothing to chance!
Taking steps toward upgrading a lighting system not only embraces technology in tangible and practical ways, it opens the door for new expressions of worship on the stage, as well as those off the stage who make it happen. And you may just hold the creative keys.
Work hard to give new volunteers the opportunity to worship through the artistic medium of light creation. And let us together bring a whole new stage presence and let our light so shine before men.
Glory to God.