Off to Atlanta for WFX 2010

I'm in the Kansas City airport awaiting a flight to Atlanta for the 2010 WFX (Worship Facilities) Conference and Expo. My church has graciously sent me on this trip to gather information in preparation for future renovations and improvements to our worship center, and I'm looking forward to it.

This will be my first WFX, though I've known about the conference for a few years--I'm a subscriber to Worship Facilities and Church Production magazines, which are trade journals of the WFX organization. My hope is that I will come away with a better understanding of how our church might need to update, adapt, and improve the worship experience for our attenders and for future generations of people we serve.

I'm not under any illusion that merely having lots of slick "bells and whistles" (so to speak) in a worship space will actually grow our church--but I do believe that if we are to keep moving forward, we can't ignore the setting in which we worship. Our facility was built in 1990, but it frankly isn't much different from facilities built twenty years earlier. Our lighting for the stage (and I know some people hate the word "stage" in reference to the main platform in a worship space) is dismal. We've considered theater-style seating to replace our traditional pews, but while that is definitely the trend for new worship spaces, I suspect that it will be some time before our congregation is ready to consider that seriously.

In any case, I'm going to Atlanta to see what's happening, to take pictures, to talk to vendors, to experience workshops and sessions led by people who are supposed to know and understand how to do this stuff well.

More to come...