For this Worship Space feature, we contacted Kyle Gordon of Valley View Church in Louisville, Kentucky (vvchurch.org). Their “Wood Walls” stage design is a creative and cost-effective way to transform the look & feel of the worship platform. Read on to learn about the process of putting it all together!
The wall was originally built for our young adults special easter service, titled “The Fifth Cup”. Since the whole teaching was about this wooden cup we wanted everything in the church to kind of echo the idea of wood and blood. We had seen a church do a wall kind of similar to ours on http://www.
Step one was gathering all of the materials for the build. We sought out craigslist and different warehouses to find LOTS and LOTS of wooden pallets (the more weathered the better), I think we had around 60. After finding them was the hard part of breaking down all of the pallets so we could just have the flat boards off them. These pallet flats were going to be the actual part of the walls that you could see. We framed out a support structure with 2x4s and fastened the pallet flats to the outside of the frame. To make the wall stand we used an L bracket system with cut 2x4s and fastened it to the inside edges of the walls. The whole thing was five individual walls that we stood up next to each other. Three vertical walls in the middle and two horizontal walls on the edges.
The center wall we framed out a cross in the middle with the 2x4s and stapled plain white fabric behind it to make it reflect light better. We also made tiny shelves to hold candles that we placed all over the wall in random places. After putting the wall on the stage we used a lot of backlighting behind the center piece using white can lights (we had tried colors and just liked the white the best). In order to contain the lights we hung a large black curtain behind the walls that sort of made a tent, this way you only seen the light bleeding through the cracks and cross not flooding the whole back of the stage. This allowed for us to keep the room fairly dark and intimate. We have since used the walls in a lot of services. They are fairly easy to store and move around (just a little heavy).
Worship Review // Hillsong United // Zion Acoustic Sessions
These are sick. I’m trying to co
E up with a similar design, but that would allow for tearing down and storing every week. Any suggestions?
Thanks Josh… We actually used these for a whole and had to set them up and take them down… They were super easy to store since they were five individual walls. We also made the L beams (2 beams bolted together) to be able to come off with nuts and bolts… In retrospect we should of made these fold in to cut down on set up time (which was about an hour for setup and year down). Hope this answers your questions!
Hey Josh, I was apart of the team that helped design these, we had some alternative designs that allow for more portability (all though still heavy) but we were running short on time and wasnt able to implement the ideas. Feel free to contact me if you would like some help with the design portion.
You can contact me through my website using the contact form. http://www.scottyperry.com
Hey man. I’m looking to do something like this for our church space, but we would have to tear down each week. Could I get more info on your portable designs?
Thanks for the extra info Kyle and Scotty!
Totally sweet.
Hola bendiciones.. Soy un pastor de colombia.. Tambien queremos decorar nuestra iglesia asi.. Me gustaría un poco mas de asesoria.. Se los agradeceria.. Att santiago saenz
Correo: Santiagosaenzcardenas@gmail