If you are part of a multi-site church model, you know creating continuity can be difficult. With different teams, programs, times and spaces, managing many campuses and staying consistent are challenges we all face.
As leader of the Central Production Team at Christ Church of the Valley (CCV) in Peoria, Ariz, my goal is to limit variables. I have found the follwoing keys to managing multiplecampuses, and keeping all things production consistent:
Creating continuity thru a central team
Start by creating and building a team of people you like being around. Talent will only get you so far, if you don't have chemistry. Church production requires long hours and can have high stress, so if you don't like your audio guy, find a new one. These are people you are working along side of every day doing ministry, chemistry is key.
Every member of our team works on every campus. That means on a given week, any of our crew can be setting a stage at one campus, then jumping to setting audio at another. We build our teams around core leaders in the key areas of audio, video and lighting. Those key positions and personal take the lead for each campus in their area and have support crew to help along the way. We don't have a giant crew, we just have enough crew in the right positions to get the job done. And deliver the vision and standard to any of our campuses.
Creating continuity thru lighting/scenic design
This is probably one of the biggest challenges we as a team run into in this central model. Based primarily on designing our lighting/stage sets for our main campus, and then translating and shrinking that down to venues that are much smaller. We achieve this by using a variety of different fixture types, materials and resources to accomplish essentially "shrunk down" versions of our main set. We aren't afraid to design big and than take aspects of that "big idea" and use less or smaller versions of that idea to accomplish the lighting/stage sets at other campuses.
Often less is more. Our goal at the end of the day is not to make exact models, but have a central vision and be able to walk on to any campus on the weekend and get the same "CCV Experience" --- from props on stage, to look and feel of lighting programming.
Creating continuity thru audio/band production
Audio and band production go hand in hand in what we do for our weekend experience. Just like any other production, our goal is to support the ministry and experience. So audio at CCV is a direct support of our music and worship. Each weekend at CCV we program our services to be identical at each campus. We work closely with our music department to plan ahead and also work week to week together on input list, stage plots, special needs etc. And have the same gear at each campus --- from audio consoles to DI’s. This allows seamless integration for programming and training of volunteers or contract audio personal on the weekend. Work with your music/worship department, not against them. We have the same goal and supporting each other in that goal will make both teams successful.
Creating continuity by ensuring communication
Like with everything else in life, we can't over communicate. There is a constant flow of communication for upcoming weekends, the current weekend experience and what’s happening when and how. However in life communication sometimes fails, so we have standards for everything we do across all campuses from gear to operations. If we do something at our main campus --- if we have a piece of gear, a process for programming, etc --- that standard is taken to all CCV campuses. Our goal is for anyone on our staff team or team of volunteers to be able to immediately and seamlessly integrate into any of our campuses. This standard operating procedure has been imperative to making this model successful. It allows us to train at one campus, and work at another. It allows us to be able to troubleshoot across all campuses and formats. And most importantly it allows us to pull off the same vision for the weekend experience across all campuses at the same time. Again, its all about limiting variables.
Like most churches, our Central Production Team is immeasurably blessed with amazing volunteers who work every weekend to help support our ministry and the production experience. But overall the greatest aspect of this model, and my biggest encouragement for other churches thinking of taking this step with their multisites, is the reward of continuing the church vision and keeping it consistent across every campus. It's a great reward when you are able to walk into any of our campuses, and feel the same vision and experience is achieved. We are just a small part of conveying the overall message and ministry our CCV, but with this model we are able to do it with excellence at every campus.
