We're having a Maunday Thursday service this year at Centerpoint.  As we talked in our Creative Worship meeting, we realized that we were going to need to really rethink our worship area to accomplish the concept that we had.  As a reference... here's a picture from a "normal" Sunday:

We decided to try church "in the round" for Thursday's service... a great idea, but one that required entirely different staging, sound, and lighting from what we normally have.  A lot of people have put a lot of work in the last couple of days to make this happen, and I'm couldn't be happier with what we've come up with.

We ended up building two platforms.  One is a 12'x12' square in the middle of the room with the communion table on it.  Dave will be preaching from this platform.  The other is a 12'x8' set directly in front of our regular stage.  The band will be set up there (our band for this service is small - only four people, so that's plenty of space).  You can see a little bit more of what I'm talking about below...

Chairs are set on three sides of the center platform, with the band stage completing the circle.  This presented some interesting challenges in sound and lighting.  The goal was always to use minimal lighting, but we had to cover two distinct areas, and have separate control over both.  We also had to have sound covering three directions.  We wanted everything to be low profile, so that there wouldn't be any visual distractions for folks... in the end, we decided not to use our ordinary sound and lights at all.  We used four small par cans on each platform, each on their own switch.  For sound, we surrounded the center platform with several floor wedges.  We only had to cover three sides, since the band is using in-ear monitors.  I'm actually really pleasantly surprised with the clarity we're getting with that setup.

The end result is really nice - I think we were definitely able to create the atmosphere we wanted to.  It was great to try it all out tonight at rehearsal, and I'm looking forward to using this setup on Thursday!  To close, here's a close up of the band stage:

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