Looking into the Lights #1
by | Posted on June 9th in Magnification, Pastors thoughtsSeries: Looking into the lights #1, Looking into the lights #2
Lights have never really been big in our thinking at HBC. I remember having a conversation with someone at UniChurch in 2002, and saying that we’re keen for music to be good at HBC, but we’d never ever have “lights”.
Looking back, I think that was a bit naive. The fact was, we did have lights… the lecture hall we were meeting in had big ugly fluro lights all over the ceiling. They lit up the speaker, and the screen, and the audience, and the blackboards, and the walls, and everything! (…and all with exactly the same amount of light mind you!)
I think the real issue was, we never really thought we’d ever be able to do anything about it.
But now that we’ve shuffled the way we organise serving at church, it is something we can think about. Those in the Magnification team are concerned about how our meetings feel, and what things make our meetings work. So they’ve got the time and the opportunity to think about using lights in our church meetings.
And so, over the past few weeks, we found out that there are some lights available for us to bring and use at UniChurch …and we realised that there were some lights already at Lambton High School that we could use. So we’ve been trying some things out.
But, why would we even consider using lights at all? Is it meant to help? Help what? I’ll blog about that soon, but I’m interested to hear your thoughts as to why or why not…
June 9th, 2009 at 10:27 pm
For what its worth, I feel that lights are a thing that was never talked about becasue they are something that should not be noticed. They should minimise distraction by illuminating the the thing that should be the centrepoint of our focus at any particular time, and nothing else. In CT theatre, the problem we had before is that everything was illuminated so that there were many distractions during the songs and talk, and people felt inappropriately self conscious when singing (becaue of the excess light on people). I feel however that at unichurch over the past few weeks, lighting has not been subtle, and think that is something that needs to be worked upon so as to achive the purpose of lights.
June 10th, 2009 at 9:01 am
It would be good if we could get one of the lights at Lambton to illuminate the person preaching, as it would help people focus. Also, I wasnt too keen on the bright red and green filters/lights used on the band last Sunday - plain white lights are fine with me
June 12th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
I think that most people don’t notice lighting when it is done really well. People will notice lighting when there isn’t enough (ie: unable to read), or when it is distracting. Potentially, members who run the lighting can fine tune their skills during music rehearsals before church, and try out any new ideas beforehand(for constructive criticism). Subtle and appropriate would be good descriptive words for how I would like lighting to be used at church.
BTW I think it is encouraging that someone is considering these minor details. When they work well, it will enhance the already smooth running of our Sunday services, and be visitor friendly.
June 13th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
I am a bit concerned about lights being used extensively. My concern is that my usual experience of darkness and lighting upfront is that it happens at concerts, where the focus is on the “stars” up front and is designed to make them look good, since that is why the event is happening. I know that this is not what people at our church think about what happens up front in our meetings, but it is hard to avoid sending the message when we adopt the means our society uses to glorify stars. True, one might feel initially awkward singing in full light, but no more than the awkwardness generally of coming into a meeting where the word of God is taught. I’m not completely opposed to the concept, but I think it is something we need to be very careful about. We can send messages by unspoken things like lights being focussed on the front, and the unspoken messages can be contrary to the ones we say.
June 14th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
We need to consider the audience for which each service is aimed. Uni church is aimed for the younger generation, gen y. So what are things that can be done do make the service something that would interest the younger people? Music that has relevant and understandable songs possibly? and then you move onto the idea of lights. Remember that the younger the age, the smaller the attention span in todays society. Lights are something that has been integral in this generation. Today, stage lighting is used for almost any kind of event of over 20 people or more. It is true that churches have adopted this in that last 10 years or so. I feel that the purpose of the lights is to bring the focus on the stage to the speaker. If we are able to put more focus on the person who is preaching the word of the lord, is that necessarily a bad thing? Should we not do everything in our power to make sure that the word is heard? I think that this enhances people ability to concentrate on what is being said as opposed to being distracted by other things, such as people walking and out, music instruments etc.
From a purely technical point of view, the lights at uni church reduce the excessive amount of wash on the projector screens. I think lights are a step in the right direction for church. It does require more effort for those involved on the tech team. It is also difficult to make lights in the lecture theater not obvious. It has more to do with trying to not put them in the way of people coming in and out. We have limited room to do so much in. Sometimes it can be hard to do the light checks before the service as the music quite often don’t finish practicing until 6:55. Trying to change lights while they are practicing can turn messy…apparently the musos need to see their music…
Anyhow, yes, light have a way to, we are working on them as much as we can, tweaking things here and there, feedback is always great so we know what people actually think. Also keep in mind that as we change things and bring in things that will move our church forward (technologically speaking), we are going to encounter resistance of all kinds. We must all remember that everything that is done is done for the sake of the magnification of our lord and for us to be able to worship meaningfully with our hearts.
We have a long road to travel on and these are just bumps. Lets move over these carefully and hopefully at the end our church will look back and say, remember the day when we didn’t have lights? Just like we now say, remember what music was like 4 years ago and how far we have come?
Sorry about the disjointed essay
June 30th, 2009 at 10:03 am
I attend the 10am service so I can only comment on that. One of the first things I noticed about the service was the lack of lights which I found fairly distracting. I think if everything has equal visual value the speaker blends in with the background. Rather than having our minds focused on God’s Word through our eyes and ears our eyes are distracting us with other things (at least mine are).
If we did use lights I think it would be for the same reasons we use a sound system and a data projector and hand outs, to help communicate the message clearly. It’s extremely unlikely anyone would confuse HBC with a sound and light show.
While it is the message that is central God has chosen to relate that message through people. Which I think means the message is more than just the words, it’s something about the person as well, which I think means we need to see the person clearly.
April 17th, 2010 at 4:37 pm
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