This year we took our Christmas Eve services to another level production-wise. Both nights were amazing worship experiences. Looking back at the hours of planning and prep, as well as the services themselves, there are three things I think everyone in church production could use a reminder of going into the New Year.
1: Plan Early
We tried to get ahead on our Christmas planning this year but quickly fell behind as weekend services kept taking up time during the week. This led to a crazy December filled with long hours and a lot of worries that things wouldn’t be able to be done before Christmas. There were a few elements and videos we had to cut because we were running out of time, but I am still amazed when I look at what we were able to do in a short time. This gets me excited to see what we can pull off when we start earlier!
2: Be Ready For Changes and Adapt
This year, in addition to our two regular Christmas services, my church hosted a Quiet Christmas service. This was designed to help find the message of hope in a season of hurting. The Quiet Christmas service was planned to be fully run by church staff (meaning just me in the tech booth). Because of that, we weren’t planning on streaming this service. About half an hour before Quiet Christmas was supposed to start, a few production volunteers offered to stay and help with Quiet Christmas, meaning I was free and able to livestream the service. That was an answered prayer. Earlier in the day, we had a few Facebook comments from people asking if that service would be streamed because they weren’t able to make it. I was really glad that we were able to change plans quickly and stream this service for the people who weren’t able to be there.
3: Stay Focused on Jesus
The reason we do all of this isn’t to put on a show or have fun with lights and special effects. If we aren’t doing all of this for Jesus, we might as well not do any of it. Through all of the last-minute additions, late nights programming light cues, and everything else that goes into a Christmas service, we need to keep our focus on Jesus. To truly create a distraction-free atmosphere for worship, we need everything we do to be an act of worship. That means worshipping through those last-minute sermon slide changes or worshipping through troubleshooting noise coming through an audio channel.
If you’d like to see more of my work at Grace Collective, you can check it out on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@GraceCollective. Thank you so much for reading!