What’s the point in lighting a worship service (or any event for that matter)? Yes, it is about enabling people's sense of vision. But there’s simply more to good lighting than meets the eye.
Point 1 - To See
Lighting serves several purposes. The first is the obvious one already mentioned: people need to see what’s going on. It’s about making the stage, people, and any set design bright enough to be easily visible. Generally, this means making the stage brighter than the rest of the room, but not so bright that it can be obnoxious (or even painful) to look at. A stage or platform that is dimly lit makes people strain to see the worship leader and pastor, and that is fatiguing. The more fatigued people get, the less engaged they will be.
A stage or platform that is dimly lit makes people strain to see the worship leader and pastor.... The more fatigued people get, the less engaged they will be.
Point 2 - To Focus Attention
A second purpose is to focus people’s attention. This is accomplished by the brightness levels and color of the lighting that hits the areas where the action is taking place. People’s eyes are drawn to brighter areas – if the entire stage or platform is lit at the same levels, it’s more likely that people’s eyes will wander. Now, there is an exception to this. If capturing video of your service is an important part of your ministry, then you want your stage to be lit more evenly or else you’ll have less effective video. Cameras can greatly exaggerate areas of light and dark, and therefore more even lighting is needed. In addition, if the stage is lit at the same level as the house seating area, it’s more likely that those attending will be distracted by those seated around them.
Click here to read the story: Lighting for Video: Beyond the Basics.
Point 3 - For Pure Aesthetics
A third point to lighting is to add depth and visual interest. This comes through backlighting your key subjects which causes them to “pop” out from the background by outlining them with a somewhat brighter amount of light. Other aspects to adding visual interest are to add a color wash to your stage. You can wash your back wall with colored light; you can wash the bulk of the band with color. You can illuminate architectural features of your stage and building with color. You can even wash your seating area with color now that there are LED color-changing house lighting fixtures available. Another way to add visual interest is to add a texture to the stage by projecting patterns onto objects or the stage floor through the use of “gobos” in spotlight fixtures.
... bringing beauty into our worship services is another way we can honor and please Him.
Certainly, you can have a perfectly good worship service with just basic stage front lighting. If that’s the extent of what your church is able to do, then that’s great. However, the more you can do to add these other elements to your lighting, the more engaging your environment will be, and the better able you’ll be able to capture your congregation’s attention.
I believe we serve a God who appreciates beauty—just looking around this planet shows that. I think that bringing beauty into our worship services is another way we can honor and please Him.
