Elevate and Amplify the Impact of Your Sanctuary Space

The role of the modern church is evolving. Places of worship are expanding their reach and amplifying their impact by serving as a gathering place outside of the traditional Sunday morning service. In fact, the new role of the church expands out of the traditional context of religion. Both as a source of income and as a channel of giving back, churches are growing to share their space with the public as a music venue, event and meeting space and theater to the community.

At Sightline Commercial Solutions, religious spaces have increasingly become a part of our business. Over the past few years, we’ve been excited to transform both the spatial and sensory elements of worship places to better serve the needs of the local congregation and community. Following are functional and cost-efficient ideas to elevate, extend and amplify your sanctuary space, while also making it physically inclusive, both for your congregation and the public.

Elevate 

Many churches offer different service types in order to best target the demographics of their community. From traditional sermons to interactive youth ministry, musical elements are a common thread across all forms of worship. Often, churches find difficulty in organizing a large choir in a smaller environment, especially during the holidays or when joined by guest choirs. In order to efficiently organize choral groups, consider elevating them with easy-setup risers, like Sightline’s custom risers, to ensure all faces are seen and voices heard. Providing flexibility and modularity for the congregation’s choir, you’ll find confidence in the structure of the risers and safety of your singers.

Extend

Stage extensions are a preferred choice for temporarily expanding the stage area, especially during the holidays. These extensions are portable stages designed to perfectly match the size and shape of the existing stage and create an appearance that looks and feels permanent. No matter the size of the venue or the size of the congregation, Sightline delivers superior staging and riser solutions to suit any worship facility. For instance, the SC90® Platform is designed to be portable, affordable, easy to use and easy to transport. Each platform is made with the finest quality, requiring no tools, making setup and tear down efficient. To create larger staging solutions, you can seamlessly interlock platforms to achieve the desired stage area. 

Amplify

Given the openness of a traditional sanctuary, sound is often not evenly distributed from the point of origin to the audience. To best distribute sound through your worship space, consider an acoustical shell, like the Aria™, Bravado™, Caprice® or Crescendo ®. Ensuring a drastic improvement in sound quality, performers and audiences alike will appreciate enhanced sound clarity and projection which is otherwise lost. Fully customizable, the shells can be finished with endless styles of paint or laminate to match the aesthetics of any space. An acoustic shell also grows your church’s opportunities to share the space with non-religious groups, as traveling choirs often require this feature in performance venues.

Include
 

While religious organizations are exempt from accessibility mandates by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), creating a worship space that is physically inclusive is important for not only accommodating the needs of a congregation but also for enhancing the utility and marketability of a church facility. At Pilgrim Chapel on the campus of Dallas Baptist University, our team supplied wheelchair accessible stage extensions to enhance accessibility and create additional square-footage for special events. The low-incline ramps blend seamlessly with the existing staging and are equipped with ADA-compliant supports and guardrails offering easy access for all members of the congregation and community.

In order to best serve both your congregation and community, it’s crucial to identify and adapt to trends in the worship and performing arts space. By taking advantage of these tips, you not only amplify the impact and reach of your church, but also create an opportunity to further immerse your sanctuary in the greater community.