Welcome back to the [inaudible] podcast. Here’s your host, steven on the primary designer and monsoons, and I’m thrilled to talk to you today specifically about church stage backdrops. Uh, it’s something I’m super passionate about is serving the local church with creating great backdrops. And so I just want to tell you a little bit about my heart and, uh, in doing that, uh, so we’re a church stage design company. We’ve been, we’re a company who served churches, we’ve been in business a little over three years in addition to our service within the church world. We also serve special events, special events, concerts, weddings, a fundraisers event. Gala is a, you name it, we’ve, uh, we’ve probably done seen it for it product launches, a corporate meetings, corporate parties, or prevents, uh, so yeah, so obviously we do a lot of different things, um, but our, our focus and our goal is to serve the church well. So that’s why we started the company. That’s why we continue to company.
and it’s really our biggest church stage design passion is serving the turf. Uh, so, uh, I’ve, uh, I’ve worked in churches for about 10 years. Me and my wife Sarah, we started off, I was a lighting designer at house of Blues in Orlando. Uh, so I was working there doing, doing lighting design, which is another one of my great passions is lighting design. So we’re doing, like I was doing lighting design, house of Blues and started working a little bit on, like a part time basis for a church in North Orlando called northland, a really great church at the time. It was led by a pastor Joel Hunter, who is one of the greatest men of God I’ve ever met. A really, really great guy. But I got this. I got to start serving under him and under the Youth Ministry youth ministry down at Northland. Um, and through that service there really got a, a, a taste of working in the church. And um, I’ve been a Christian since, since high school and always wanted to do something to get back to the church and really God called me to, uh, to be fully bought in to doing a serving his church through lighting, through scenic design, through creating great atmosphere for worship. So, um, so a little bit about that, like we’ve, uh, me and my wife have served in churches for about 10 years now.
You know, shortly after taking the part time role at northland, I ended up taking a full time role there, uh, as a lighting director, scenic designer. I’m the more and more I did, the more I really love is scenic design. I’m a lighting guy at heart, but any good scenic designer will tell you it’s only as good as the lighting. So that’s one of my big things is I want, I want my life to look better. So I, uh, make that scene. And so with, uh, with that great scenic, with that gray scenic, uh, you know, I, I did a lot of, uh, a lot of experimenting and making new things and uh, really, uh, honing my chops on a, on a design side in the youth ministries and worked into the main auditorium, uh, and started doing design for the, you know, some of the main stuff for Christmas, Easter, large events. Um, to give you just an idea of the scope of, uh, of north links. It’s a, it’s a lot different than a lot of church stage design churches.
Oh God, my last Christmas or yeah, my last Christmas there we had 20,000 people in attendance, uh, between all the campuses and online. Um, I think there’s about 12 or $14,000 at the main campus. So that’s where I was stationed in Longwood, Florida. Um, so yeah, crazy, crazy place to start for sure. I’m a short bit later. I went to a journey church in Norman, Oklahoma and started serving there. Uh, again, a really been honing my skills even more and even more than my design skills. I learned a lot more leadership skills there. Uh, uh, served under pastor, Pastor Park Mitchell and a lot of other great people that were involved there. Um, but in my time there, you know, I really learned how to lead people well, which is something that it’s really hard to do honestly. Um, and it’s, uh, uh, it’s been a great thing to learn and to, to have now as an asset and serving people is to be able to lead, to lead and help find that, uh, that correct, um, solution, you know, for a church stage design. So, um, so let me, let me dive in a little bit. Enough about my background. Let me dive in a little bit.
Um, we’ll hear a little bit more background just a little bit, I promise. Um, so with that, you know, I worked at the church at journey for awhile. I did a freelance gig where I did a large modular design, uh, to fulfill the corporate clients need and worked really well and I started thinking, you know, we could probably benefit with church and it was a season where we were going through some staff changes on the, at the church. And so it was me and one other person pretty much during that entire time. Uh, so it went from like four staff to, to uh, and being a church that workload didn’t change a law, which was okay, we are happy to, happy to do it certain church. Um, but with that we needed to find new, innovative ways to be able to handle the workload and one of those was to do modular scenic. It’s significantly cut down the time and took us to build a stage set, uh, the, you know, the material acquisition, everything wants. Once we had developed a system, it was easily repeatable, a repeatable across multiple campuses. Uh, so we, once we hit a kind of refine that a little bit, we decided, you know, this is too good to keep within, you know, just us within Germany and within my church stage design. So I want them to spread it and give it to others people.
Uh, so it could serve them a. and realistically, when we first started the company, I’ve never, I never thought that it was going to be. I’m never, like, I never made a specific plan that it would be a larger. There is a, the company has been blessed to grow. Uh, and a big part of that is because we really care about churches, um, we care about churches and we do our best to serve them regardless of the circumstances. So, uh, let’s get into that a little bit. So my heart is to serve churches. As I mentioned, one of the things that I, I really honestly believe is that churches today are, are the hope of the world. Um, you know, God has gifted a lot of people in this generation to be able to impact his kingdom, to bring other people who’ve been far away from Christ even even to a historically their, you know, their full families, full generations have been away from the church, uh, and now they have the opportunity to be back in the church, uh, through new and creative ways of serving a being served even.
Um, so, but one of the things that I think is a huge communicator in the church is what we do visually, uh, in the church. There are lots and lots of opportunities where visually we can support the message of Christ by creating an atmosphere for worship, for example. So when you create an atmosphere for worship, people feel comfortable to open themselves up, to be, to be willing to listen to God, to be willing to be in community with others and open themselves up to, to, to, uh, to honest worship to God. Uh, and uh, I’m just thrilled to be able to, to be part of that, to be able to create stage backdrops, uh, in church stage designs that worked perfectly for that. Um, so yeah, it’s incredible. It’s an incredible thing and we get to do that. I get to do with my team and monsoons and it really. My passion for that, you know, is because I want to see people. I know where I was when I was in high school. I want to see people reached for Christ regardless of where they are and their story, whether it be they’re, you know, they’re new to the church thing or they’ve never been to church or there’d been a million times and they’re done with it. I want to see honesty. People grow into a relationship with Christ and by creating a visual, a visual in the church that has, that is, you know, it’s a visual representation of God’s glory there. That’s part of it. And another, the most, the bigger part is that it is in our world, people are much, much more visual, uh, the advent of the smart phones and have a TV and digital media. There’s so much visual, uh, there’s so much visual input that people get on a daily basis. Um, you know, I don’t have the stats, but I know it’s in the high hundreds of number of ads people see on a daily basis. It’s incredible. Um, but of that, you know, like what are we doing as the church to be a, to be in a place where we’re competing is not the right word, but we’re a displaying our message in a god honoring way, uh, that’s worthy of people’s attention because right now there are millions of things vying for people’s attention. Uh, and there’s no reason the church shouldn’t be one of the, one of the things that comes to the top of their mind.
Um, so yeah, so I love being able to help churches do that. I love sitting, sitting and chatting with church stage design about their needs and their goals about, you know, we want to create an atmosphere that feels intimate and feels loving. How can we do that with stage scenic and lighting? Um, I really love to just chat through that and serve people in that way. Uh, it’s, it’s really one of my greatest passions. So, uh, and you can, you can really tell that by, um, I do, uh, do some read some articles for a couple of different church publications and I think you can tell that through my, through my consistent, a consistent, um, how do you say it, words my consistent words know, through, uh, through my consistent writing about, about doing that, about serving the church. I mean, I’ve been writing since I believe 2013, uh, might even be 2012 about serving the church in different ways. Uh, specifically about, uh, you know, serving, creating great stage backdrops, creating great scenic, uh, using lighting and technology to pave the way for visuals that encourage people to come to the church, to be part of the church. Um, so yeah, so I think it’s a really a really awesome thing and, and I’m really excited to be able. I know we haven’t gotten super deep into creating church stage designs or, or even the specifics of backdrop, uh, but I think that there’s a, the heart behind what we do behind creating great, great designs and great stage backdrops and projection dropped and everything. I think it’s really important. So as part of why I wanted to share it today. So, uh, I hope this is helpful, a podcast to you. I hope it communicates our heart serving you and I would look forward to chatting with you and seeing how I can, you know, create a great stage backdrop for you, how I can help you create a visual that serves your church really well, um, and uh, helps you to connect with your congregation. So shoot me an email. My email is Stephen Dot com and I’d be thrilled chat with you. Thanks again, and I’ll catch you on the next podcast.
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