re:Designing Worship

40 Men & A Movie

admin — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 19:43:19 +0000

one of the best parts of my role as campus designer is to get to partner nearly all our ministry teams at one time or another. this past weekend i was blown away by the camaraderie and creativity of two teams on two huge projects. Family Flick Night with our Ginghamsburg Kids’ adult leaders and painting the Avenue gym with our Ginghamsburg Men’s Ministry. call me happy and a little bit tired:)

Fast forward 8 hours and we are almost ready for kids. Stage is set - lighting is being adjusted and a few folks are already bringing in their blankets to save their family spot.

Not too shabby. Made me wish i was a kid all over again... popcorn, a live worship band, a movie and EVERYBODY in their pjs. How fun is that? 500 movie-goers, despite the weather! Kudos to Kelly Flora and her incredible team....

Avenue gym -- before. Cement walls are 10-yr-old turquoise and peach. Thankfully in the span of 5 hours this will change.

The guys were absolutely incredible. Men from their 20s to their 60s dove in and got it done like they'd been working together all their lives. Tony Miltenberger and I "coached" the team to an early victory. Professional painter Steve Wilkey made the work seamless.

We are excited. The guys love the colors and I do too.

A view of the stage side.

A panoramic view of the basketball/gym side. We are done! Many thanks to the incredibly amazing Men's Ministry @ Ginghamsburg!

It Feels Like Home

admin — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:58:39 +0000

civil rights footage / "it feels like home"

i’ve been part of ginghamsburg for nearly 20 years- and served on the worship design team for most of that time. i can recall many great experiences and have felt God show up in our midst over and over again – but some days are just different, ya know? some days remind me why i signed up for this gig. some days i’m just darn proud to call ginghamsburg my home. some days it just feels like home.

martin luther king weekend worship has taken on different nuances over the last two decades. it’s been an opportunity to lift up one of our deepest community values – that if we aren’t demonstrating and celebrating the FULL kingdom of God it’s not really God. this past weekend we invited long-time ginghamsburg friend Dr. Frank Thomas from Mississippi Blvd. Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee to bring a word as part of our current “modernfamily” message series. Dr. Thomas did not disappoint. you’ll find a link to his message here (column on the right) by tomorrow/tuesday at noon.

so many take-aways from this message, but the song JK chose for our offering really summed up my experience and the prayer of my heart:

it feels like home (the city harmonic)
I have a dream
That you can have with me
Of a city that shines so bright at night
Where love is true
But this love He finds you
And there is a fire in His eyes
Where I can see everything’s alright

It feels like home
Sweet home
There’s no, no, no, no, no, no
No place like home

When I awake
That day of glory
Your love will light the city streets
Oh and we won’t
Need our songs of longing
We’ll be a symphony of peace
Brothers and sisters we’ll be free
Thank God Almighty we’ll be free

It feels like home
Sweet home
There’s no, no, no, no, no, no
No place like home

don’t let go of the dream
-kim

CCLI Song No. 6129750 ¬© 2011
Thankyou Music (Admin. by EMI Christian Music Publishing

pressing into the future: worship design retreats

admin — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 20:30:51 +0000

how does your team press into the future? we’ve all heard it said that if we do things the way we’ve always done we’ll get what we’ve always got. our team’s new day is dawning in the context of mini-retreats, days apart (at a coffee shop, a business center, a comfy living room, etc.) planned for the specific purpose of mapping out series, key events and holidays. we treat these sessions as if each series, each worship event, each gathering of our church family is a life-or-death matter, because… it is. our Fort McKinley team always meets with us. we’re forced to collaborate and get the very best input from both angles – the mega church and the growing community-driven church plant. fail to plan and we plan to fail.

how does your team press into the future?

(image: ginghamsburg’s worship teams @ AILERON)

modernfamily stage redesign

admin — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 03:48:18 +0000

modernfamily: the genesis of relationships

our stage design for this new year’s series began with a sketch. “nothing happens but first a dream…”

using patterns from the series font and an overhead project we traced 3’ x 4’ letters onto 2” styrofoam insulation (www.menards.com) and began cutting with our homemade “giant cheese cutter” as I like to call it.

a steady hand is a valuable tool. chad’s got it.

chad made our cutter using an electric box, pvc pipe and wires. you could do some serious damage with this tool but it’s great for large projects.

early in the month i’d put out a call for old frames we could paint. we got a great response. add a can of black paint and we were on our way.

a few of the frames were too cool to paint so we set them aside for future projects.

…aaand four huge frames from a local business made me really happy. we needed this size for scale.

meanwhile back at the letter cutting station we are making progress. “modern” and “family” are two different fonts, fyi. details matter!

next up- paint the letters. we didn’t use spray paint because it eats the foam – plus, baby, it’s cold outside! #fumesmakeyoucrazy

be sure to paint the sides too.

trying out some letters/frames to see how we’re lookin’

scheduled the ladder chores for more guys could join us

perfect

we strengthened the foam letters with slats on back, eventually securing them to the stage floor.

“family” is looking good in it’s red-trimmed-in-blackness

another feature of this design, family-friendly scriptures from the message stylized and formatted to enhance worship area walls.

extra frames offset these scripture posters

comin’ along!

black sconces with little colored lanterns add a nice touch to the side entry spaces

a view from above

and we’re live!

worship with the band. red gel tones this week… maybe blue next???

big picture

mike slaughter kicks off the series with a great message

a mighty wind: stage design

debra — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 05:33:28 +0000

two worship series have blown by ginghamsburg church without much sharing. hi. i’m debra, a scribe/reporter for kim miller and her incredible stage and event design team. they’ve been so busy creating, that documenting and communicating need to be caught up.

a series for pentecost and community

based on the book of Acts, this was to be a series on the Holy Spirit. the timeline also included our teaching pastor’s debut and he (nick cunningham) was excited to focus on community. so, it ended up being a series on how the Holy Spirit impacted the community of the early church. pretty cool…and lots to work with.

inspiration for the stage design came from dan bracken’s graphic; the lines within it were worth imitating. without feeling angular or geometric, the graphic gave us the impression of movement.

design development began by taking a look at what was in hand: lots of gauzy fabric. when pulled out of storage, the team found that there were just a few long pieces and lots of shorter ones. the gauze would need to be supplemented and enhanced with rope.

gauze fabric & rope doodles were stapled to the wall

challenged by how to hang the fabric so that it looked flowing, the team got into a rhythm of attaching it to the back wall with staple guns, knotting the ends, and creating large swoops. spaces were filled in with doodles of rope design. the final touch was the addition of the quietest, least expensive fans that lowe’s had to offer. as usual, when the l.e.d. lighting was designed, it took on a life of it’s own. adding cool teal to the color scheme enhanced the feeling of the summer season.

fans provided gentle movement of the gauze fabric

about those fans: kim advised all of the worship teams and crew that there would be a little extra stage noise…in advance.

fine artists painted more wind on pieces of canvas that covered the side walls. $20 neutral tone ikea designer rugs thrown across the stage really lighted up the space.

this 9 week series included 2 communion weekends. kim re-arranged stage candles and stands each week, to compliment musician positions. overall, this was a very accommodating design that brought freshness into the worship space.

a few more photos from the series…

led lighting gave the fabric and rope a great teal tone

a mighty wind graphic for song background

canvas covered wall panels painted by the team's fine artists

theme carried well through a baptism on the lawn event

let kim know if you can use any of these ideas…or want more information. comments are most welcome!

coming up next: the series on prayer: omg

powerless

admin — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 00:56:58 +0000

my droid woke me at 6 a.m. when colleague karen smith called to say that due to the severe storms the night before, ginghamsburg’s tipp city campus had NO power – and none predicted for at least two hours. through the years we’ve dealt with snow up to the gills, hurricane force winds, no water and temporary electrical flickers but never have we been totally without power to the tipp city campus for any length of time. decisions, decisions.

i’ve been trained at the school of never say die – so the only decision in my mind was HOW to redesign our worship – not IF. i knew that hundreds of people needed the message we had to share together that morning and we dare not miss the opportunity to remind one another of God’s forever faithfulness. as i connected with the worship team members they totally agreed – and so forward we trusted.

upon my arrival at the campus i remembered all over again how dark the worship area really is without lights. encountering the music, media and production teams talking quietly in front i realized everyone was present and anxious to serve… we all just needed our re-assignments for the morning since no cameras would be running, no amps could be turned on, no microphones needed to be sound-checked.

so the candle team grew – pulling in an arsenal of over a dozen candles for the very dark stage. i remembered we had five fuel gel cans for flaming pots left over from our angels & demons series awhile back- and placed them across the stage as well. the band pulled up close to the edge of the stage and rehearsed a powerful albeit simple version of the same tunes we’d enjoyed the night before – with acoustic guitars, minimal drum/brushes and richly blended vocals. excitement grew as we realized the power of what could happen when we used what and who we had – and trusted God to show up powerfully in our midst. in a crazy way i found myself secretly hoping the power would not come back on – so that the POWER could fully come in. and my secret hopes were granted.

why am i always blown away? we serve the God of the resourceful, the God of the great turnaround, the God of the come-back, the God who shows up despite our attempts to screw it up. in all three morning worship celebrations we experienced precious community moments. the peace of hearing one another sing like it mattered – an occasional childlike voice (cue crying baby…), a bold message of God’s provision and the sweet savor of shared communion to the tune of an old familiar hymn. “raw God” as one of my friends aptly commented. and oh my yes, God showed up.

Mother’s Day: flower sale …in the lobby?

admin — Wed, 25 May 2011 01:00:35 +0000

what to do when the rain won’t stop and the mother’s day flower sale (all proceeds go to mission in Haiti) is scheduled to be outdoors in the big white tent? you re-stage it in the main lobby! already way too small for our large mother’s day crowd – we just embraced the crowded feeling, pulled in some vintage/garden staging pieces and went to work striking up a balance between sales event and community space. free family photos were offered in the coat room and special coffee drinks in another corner. crazy, chaotic and very very cool. take a look…

Resurrection Hope: Easter stage design

admin — Tue, 24 May 2011 23:11:16 +0000

“nothing happens but first a dream…” and in our case this entire stage design came about as a result of dreaming together as a team – using

what we had (30+ white paper globes) and one of our artists insisting that we depict the full spectrum of sunrise colors. taking our inspiration from our Easter main graphic- and with sketch in hand – we replicated the circles, hung at different heights and depths (from a grid made of pvc pipe) and arranged to mimic the Easter graphic with the sun/rise colors at the upper right of the screen.

some of the makeover team came in a day early to paint the globes (thank God we did this!) and allow them to dry overnight. side walls of the worship area (not sure i got a pic) were painted, flattened globes stapled to the walls and arranged in a tasteful fashion- interposed with small round mirrors. we were excited to welcome 8,000 guests into our worship area over seven worship times saturday and sunday. a special baptism (renewal or sprinkling only) at our “sunrise” 7:30 a.m. worship helped spread out the larger numbers of guests… 45 baptisms and a 300+ attendance (not bad for that early in the morning!)

“Why Jesus?” Lenten series stage design

admin — Tue, 24 May 2011 22:52:33 +0000

if this stage design seems reminiscent of the last “Right Here, Right Now” set it’s because we basically repurposed the framework from the last series into a more serious, deeper-for-Lent kind of look. we covered the window panes with “wallpaper” we designed and printed ourselves from the main series graphic – then adhered that wallpaper to black foam board and ultimately taped it to the window panes. next we painted the corrugated metal in textured shades of gold, removed the plantlife and added candlestands. the side walls of our worship area are the prayers of our people from Ash Wednesday – decoupaged onto black foamboard as an ongoing reminder of our Lenten journey. the screen mesh remains scrunched on the back stage walls as an ambient background. series colors were gold, red and black.

Ginghamsburg hosts 2011 Tipp City Business Expo

admin — Tue, 24 May 2011 21:15:52 +0000

today from 3-7p ginghamsburg’s “avenue” building was privileged to host the area-wide business expo. we love having company and creating welcoming spaces for people to experience a taste of great community. here are a few pics of our welcome center…