16 Sep Trust – High Wire – September 2016 – Finished Product!

Life App: Trust—putting your confidence in someone you can depend on.
Theme: High Wire
Date: September 2016

Trusting My Team – During Trust Month!

As noted in this post, this month’s set was completely volunteer driven. Not only did the ideas come from the volunteers, but they also owned most of the creation/craftsmanship. At first, I could not see the big picture – particularly with the high wire. One of our volunteers kept trying to get me to understand his idea, but I just couldn’t see it.

While this whole “taking my hands off the wheel” thing is somewhat new to me (I’m really not that controlling-I promise), I knew I needed to put my confidence in people I could depend on…just like the Life App says! Thankfully, I have a great team that I do TRUST very much and I knew whatever they were planning – it would be great. And it was! As each piece of the circus set came together it looked better and better and I was thrilled with the final product. Check it out in the gallery below…

Oh, and did I mention – it’s portable?

As always, our set needed to come down and be put back up each week. We share space with our Student Ministry Team and they meet each Sunday evening, so we break our environment down after our last service on Sunday mornings. Read more about how we’ve learned to share space here.

My volunteer team kept this in mind as they created this set. One option we have for our shared space is to keep our backdrop in place and pull a black curtain in front of it. Everything else that is part of our set needs to be removed and stored. Our student ministry uses every bit of our building except our nursery, so we store all of our props, extra set pieces, and backdrop attachments in that room. Here is how we kept this set portable:

• Our circus tent extends off of the backdrop, but it was created in such a way that the poles could be removed and then the tent would drop down and flatten out against the backdrop.
• This was done by attaching the string that holds the tent (plastic tablecloths) to the poles using velcro.
• When taking the set apart, the string would be un-velcroed, the poles would be removed, and the tent would drop down against the backdrop.
• The high wire and tight-rope walker only extend about 6 inches off the backdrop. Our backdrop sits about 6 inches from where the black curtain comes across, so these elements could stay in place and be hidden behind the curtain.
• The poles, lion cage, and clown are stored in our nursery.

What do your sets look like? Are they portable or permanent? Share your photos in the comment section below!