Transplanted Ranch

Michael Penn from Grace Walk Church in Phoenix, Arizona brings us this design inspired by Crowder’s Neon Steeple. 

This stage was designed by their Lead Pastor Joe Calloway. After seeing Crowder’s Neon Steeple he was inspired to design their stage with a similar look and feel. Most of the material and labor was donated by members of the church. They did spend about $5,300 out of pocket to replace the carpet, for the stone work on the front of the stage, decor, and miscellaneous materials.

Pastor Joe knew exactly the type of rustic/country look he wanted, and after many meetings with church volunteers on how they could achieve that type of look, he reached out to a friend who owns a ranch in Arizona. The rancher gladly donated two old ranch buildings that he was planning to tear down. It took two days and about 12 volunteers to tear down these old wood and tin buildings, one of which was a full bathroom. In fact in one of the pictures you can see the shower head behind one of the guitar players. They often get questions about how they made the tin roof look rusted and weathered. The fact is they didn’t do anything. That is the way the material came off of the buildings.

As you can see the band sets up right under the tin roof which gives the vocals plenty of room. The space under the tin roof is naturally dark so they mounted LED lights to the supportive beams to light the band.

Since they painted the walls black, they needed to do something with the empty spaces on both sides of the projector screen. So their lighting engineer built 6 wooden frames and stained them to match the rest of the wood on stage. He then stapled white vertical blinds to the back of the frames and mounted them above the tin roof. Once they were mounted he was able to adjust LED lights to hit them for some added color.

This project took about a month to complete.