not your everyday advent theme, we chose to embrace God’s unconditional, nearly un-realistic love for broken humans as our advent theme. once the theme was established i began thinking of a suitable backdrop- where christmas and this “love” theme could meet. trees, i thought, bare trees creating room for a story – the story of God – and so our stage design team went to work…and to IKEA, and to the woods, and to anthropologie and coldwater creek to check out their displays and latest techniques. long story short(er) we had a $400 roll of white canvas that had been donated by chad’s company – so madison and lori cut 16′ panels and madison free-handed the tree outlines onto them. the strong guys came in to hang these and it gave us one layer of trees. what emerged ended up being the kind of stage environment that evoked an emotional response from our congregation… “my favorite EVER!”
next,