The Next Stage

Well it's that time again, where we take down the old stage decorations and get ready to build the new stage set. We put a lot of effort into our stages here because we believe it helps create a conducive environment for communicating and remembering the content of our weekend messages and the series they are connected to. I can look back over the past number of stages and I think there is a lot of creativity in them which I love being a part of.

We are starting a new series this coming weekend at Central which is a study through the book of Ephesians, one of the new testament letters from the Apostle Paul. I believe this is going to be a great series, simply because it is a powerful book of the bible and you can't go wrong when you study God's word.

As for the stage, we are trying to tap into some of the retro look of the route 66. As a church, we are challenging our congregation to read through the entire book of the bible, all 66 books of it, in one year. You can find a reading guide on here and here.

This last Saturday, a few of us got together to begin building a large marquee type sign that will hang above our stage, complete with chasing lights. It is going to be pretty cool. In addition, we have a member of our church who has "donated" for a while a couple of classic corvettes for the stage. I think it is going to be amazing. If you are in the area, I hope you will take a weekend and visit with us at Central.

Setseller.com

For some time now I have been actively involved in the creative development, design and construction of the different stage sets we use here at Central. We have been blessed with some very creative and innovative people, and access to quality resources. Over the last few years we have designed some pretty cool stages based on different teaching themes that we have done that have really added to the overall impact of our weekend services. It has been a lot of fun.

The downside however, is what to do when the teaching series is over. Some of what we use we can take apart and use again in a different application with minimal waste. However, the majority of what we use has a direct thematic or visual connection to a particular series and are difficult to reuse, and even if we could reuse it, we would not want to any time soon. And like most places, we simply do not have the storage space to save all these great sets for long periods of time.

I have often felt that it would be great to find other churches or presentational organizations that might be able to benefit from our work by using what we have already made. I've also thought it would be great to be able to sell some of these items to recoup some of the cost to build them, which would allow us to continue to be creative in developing new stage sets. But the more I searched, the more a realized there was not a very good tool available for that purpose. So, I decided to figure out how to make one.

I am very excited to begin sharing the vision for setseller.com, a tool for churches, schools, theaters, and other presentational organizations to list and sell their used sets and stage pieces. My hope is that these different groups will have a common location on the web to share and sell their creative work for the benefit of all. Setseller.com will feature an easy to use platform that will allow for local, state, even national searches, and the opportunity for groups to buy and sell these great resources for the benefit of all.

We are hopeful this new tool will be online and ready to use very soon. If you are interested in using this tool, or you know a church, school, local theater, or other group that could benefit from it, then go to setseller.com and sign up to receive email updates on the progress of the new site.