With fall around the corner and a large number of our church members enjoying the rhythm of spending Sundays watching online, your backdrop at church needs to appeal to both in-person and church online viewers. Many church stage design ideas work well as backdrops for a church online broadcast or work well with the lights for in-person, but the church stage designs that are standing out are the ones that do both well. More than just broadcast a service, churches that want to create an experience will love these creative church stage design ideas.

Here are 5 Church Stage Designs that work well for both online and in-person backdrops:

Idea 1) Match a fabric backdrop banner with your on-screen images.

Your images don't have to be identical between your fabric backdrop banner and your projector screens, but if you create a graphic or logo for your sermon series, have just the background of that graphic on the side screens. This will allow you the flexibility to post scriptures or quotes over top of the background image, creating consistency and "expanding" the look of your fabric backdrop to no just be isolated to center stage but expanded to be part of peripheral view also.

If your screens usually show a camera shot of the speaker, you could frame that camera shot matching your backdrop style or using lower 3rd caption backgrounds that match the theme together.

Idea 2) Use a physical element on your church stage to tie into your backdrop.

While your broadcast camera may mostly show the speaker and your portable backdrop, the people sitting in the seats don't want to feel like they could have just stayed home, so tie in a physical element to support the design of your backdrop to make your church's stage design expand beyond your backdrop.

Here are some ideas:

• Use a string light graphic in your backdrop, and decorate your stage with string lights to match.
• Use a "living room" style backdrop, add a lamp, an end table, and a couch for your speakers to sit in. Again, this can be done on a slim budget since you already have these items around your home to bring in for a worship service.
• If your art is an outdoor theme, then add in some plants around the stage or the floor around the stage to tie it all together.
• If your church has a culture of using theatrical lighting, then have the lights in your space match the same color scheme or patterns to set the atmosphere.
• If you have an abstract design on your backdrop banner, print some other matching items to hang around the stage. Many churches have found creative tools like paint, yarn, pins, wood, or coroplast and used colored lighting to add color and decorations throughout a DIY church stage design.
• If your series is about a specific word, display that on your backdrop, and spell that word out in large box letters around the room, or mounted on the wall behind the backdrop, or on the floor in front of your stage.

Idea 3) Change your church stage's back wall.

Switch out the current curtains for a painted wall. Hang curtains where you usually only have a painted wall. Angle your side projectors to shoot across the stage with abstract images instead of at the screens where they usually land and have a different way to show lyrics for worship. Hang custom banners with the 3 words that match your Pastor's 3 points of the message, or banners with pictures of the people your mission's giving has impacted this last year, or the logo of your new initiative to reach your city.

People will respond to and notice when something is different. A new church stage design doesn't need to blow the budget but create something different, create something new, or re-arrange your stage to draw attention.

BONUS IDEA: Use Banners and design elements outside of your auditorium that match your creative church stage design.

Matching feather flag designs in the parking lot, a graphic on the screens in the foyer, as the background of your bulletin, and as a backdrop banner photo booth are great ways to give a recurring theme or elegant style to your entire church experience.

If it's Christmas Trees for your Christmas theme, or reclaimed wood paneling that might be used throughout the year, or simply your church logo that is your go-to standard between sermon series, then take that theme throughout your whole building, from the moment people drive into your parking lot (with feather flags and sidewalk A-frame signs) to walking int your building (with your bulletin, stage design, and worship screen art you've created) to the moment they're leaving (when you hand them a tool to invite their friends to your next event, or a promotion for next week's sermon series).

Photo by Joshua Hanson on Unsplash

Photo by William White on Unsplash