Building a Church Every Sunday

I thought it would be helpful/interesting to do a post about how we do things at my church, The Journey UMC. As most of you know, we do run loops during some of the songs of some of our services, but we didn’t this Sunday. As a worship leader for this church plant of the Methodist conference, it’s been a huge blessing to have the kind of resources and talent available to me, in the form of musicians, space, freedom, and equipment. So, without further ado, here’s our church from when I get there (~7:30) to when we’re finished setting up and ready for soundcheck!

When I arrive in the morning, there’s usually some general cleaning/housekeeping to do. On Saturday nights, the owners of our building have a BYOB dance, complete with a live band and everything that comes with it! Consequently, I’m usually in the parking lot picking up cans and bottles, sweeping and mopping the floor, and getting rid of the smells (use your imagination…).

Once everything’s clean enough to start the setup process, the empty hall looks like this:

Notice the built-in disco ball. It’s known in our community that we’re the church “with the disco ball.” If we ever get our own space, I’m petitioning to bring it with us.

Pretty soon, the chairs start showing up, and the general layout of the “pews” takes shape (left).

Our entire church setup can fit inside a large trailer, but since we’ve purchased a portable building for our Children and Youth ministries, we’ve been able to store everything there. Everything comes in black road cases, and there’s a box for everything from the soundboard to the usher/greeter station. Here’s what the inside of my favorite two boxes look like:

The setup process takes between an hour and hour and a half, depending on the number of volunteers available each Sunday. Yesterday it went slower than normal, but smoothly (nobody was run over by a runaway box, no one was impaled by a curtain pole, etc.).

The church is around 120-140 members on a given Sunday, and we’ve been growing steadily since we started a few years ago. It’s been exciting and extremely honoring to be a part of a group of people so interested in hearing God’s word and being together in fellowship week after week. 

When we run loops, we set up a PowerBook (yeah, I know, time for an upgrade!) on a stool, and either the keyboardist or I run the loops. We pre-program the set as much as possible, since I’m

usually playing guitar and singing, and can’t actively select song sections from within Ableton. Our plan is to begin doing more on-the-fly arranging as we get more comfortable with footswitch controllers (or find someone not using both hands all the time during a song!).

I’m interested in seeing other setups and styles, especially if you’re using loops for your worship services–feel free to comment and leave a link to your individual blogs/websites with a post or some images on it!