How much thought do you put into your church stage design on a regular basis? Does your church create elaborate, complicated sets for each new sermon series, or have you had the same setup for months or even years?
In this episode of the Hello Church podcast, we’re talking with Jonathan Malm of the popular ChurchStageDesignIdeas.com.
Read on to learn more about Jonathan, the church stage design best practices he recommends, and how pastors all across the globe have used his church stage design ideas to create beautiful sets without breaking the bank.
Prefer to listen? You can find the full podcast episode on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or right on our website, MinistryPass.com.
Meet Jonathan Malm, Founder of ChurchStageDesignIdeas.com
Jonathan Malm is the founder and owner of ChurchStageDesignIdeas.com, a popular resource among pastors that shares thousands of church stage design ideas perfect for small budgets, big budgets, and everything in between.
Jonathan first started designing church stages in the 1970s, when he was looking for a way to change what people thought about the church his dad was pastoring. At the time, many people were familiar with the church, but the church’s design simply didn’t reflect what the church was or what they wanted the church to become.
Since then, Jonathan began researching and sharing church stage design ideas while inviting others all around the world to share their favorite designs as well.
Jonathan says, “If I had known about this resource that I created, it would have saved us a lot of time, energy, and money. But hopefully, I can help other churches.”
Church Stage Design Best Practices
While many think of church stage design as simply decorating a stage in trendy decor that will appeal to your congregation, Jonathan shares that good design is about much more than simply making your stage look nice.
Here are three church stage design best practices Jonathan recommends.
1. Think of Stage Design as a Blank canvas.
According to Jonathan Malm, the number one goal of good church stage design is to create “an environment for your pastor or your worship team to be able to do what they’re doing.”
In other words, you want to use your visual elements strategically to help set a mood, tell a story, or draw the audience’s focus where you want it to be.
Your motivation shouldn’t be to create a rock concert experience but to help draw the people deeper into worship or to help them focus and learn from the message the pastor is sharing.
2. Simple is Better
While there’s certainly nothing wrong with creating expensive, elaborate sets if your church has the budget and you think it will help get your message across, church design does not have to be expensive.
When choosing where to focus your budget, Jonathan advises pastors to focus on the stage lighting over expensive materials.
He shares, “You can have crummy materials and really inexpensive materials. But if you have the lighting dialed in, well, it makes them look good. At the same time, you can have expensive materials, but if the lighting is not effective, it’s going to look cheap.”
3. Hint at Your Concept (Don’t Go So Literal)
While it can be tempting to build set materials that perfectly encapsulate the Bible story your pastor is currently sharing (building a boat for a sermon on Noah’s ark, for example), it’s best to keep your set designs more generic.
By creating designs that simply hint at your concept or are more abstract in nature, you can create designs you’ll be able to use again and again (and typically at a fraction of the cost).
This will save your team a lot of time, effort, and expense.
Where to Find Great Church Stage Design Ideas
Ready to create your next church stage design? Looking for easy church stage design ideas that don’t break the bank? Why try to reinvent the wheel when another church has done it before you, and they’ve given you photos, instructions, and tips? Visit ChurchStageDesignIdeas.com for thousands of affordable, easy, and creative church stage design ideas you can implement starting this week!
