BY ELISSA LINDSEY

The term “portable church” sounds pretty strange. Or does it? After all, a church isn’t just a building. A church consists of people, the body of believers in Christ. People are mobile. So what does a portable church actually mean?

Northview Church’s Carmel campus has branched out by planting a new campus in Fishers. Currently, weekend services are being held in Hamilton Southeastern Junior High School. Except for the seating and the stage, a school auditorium doesn’t usually resemble a church setting. In order to prepare the school for the church services, a lot of equipment and volunteers are needed to produce the desired result.

Katie Jensen oversees this transformative process each week. She initially attended a launch meeting to learn more about the new campus and its behind-the-scenes workings. Katie describes herself as “having pretty good organizational skills” and decided that taking charge of this volunteer operation was something she could do.

Katie described the process in detail. A company called PCI was hired to help decide on and furnish whatever specific equipment would be needed for weekly setups, as well as what would be the most efficient means of achieving the new look. The volunteers came in at 5:30 a.m. during the first Sunday in the building to begin setting up the auditorium. They soon realized that they had allotted themselves more than enough time and were done much more quickly than expected.

Setup time now begins at 6 a.m. and is completed by 7 a.m. so that the worship team can practice and complete a sound check before the services start. The teardown process begins around 12:30 p.m., after the second service is over, and is normally completed by 1:30 p.m. The team has continually improved upon the amount of time required for both of these functions.

After the setup for the auditorium and common area is finished, the volunteers move on at about 7:15 a.m. to set up the children’s area. Two classrooms have been designated for this purpose. The area is walled off with pipes and drapes, so that nothing in the classrooms is touched.

Area 56 is for the fifth- and sixth-grade children. This area is like North Beach for these kids, includes couches and some bean bag chairs and generally considered a sort of “hangout” area. All the kids meet here to have waffles before the service starts.  They then go to the sanctuary for worship and return to their specific area afterward to share their own class time.

Northview Church’s Carmel campus has created a “portable” church in Fishers. The campus needs additional volunteers, including the children’s area (photo by Denise McCool).

The equipment is packed in two sets of numbered gray carpeted cases, 1-16, which must be set up and taken down in an exact order. Every case is labeled with its specific loading order. Two trailers are packed completely full with these cases and must be repacked in the same order to make everything fit into the trailers between weeks. There are yellow or blue highlighted lists of instructions, pertinent to each case and each operation, that have been laminated and velcroed directly to the cases.  These lists tell exactly where everything goes and help maintain consistency in this process. The cases all get lined up in the hallway before being taken to their designated trailer.

Katie said there is one rule when helping with setup or teardown: once you have taken a case, you need to make sure it gets taken to its appropriate “home”.  The volunteer team is still making adjustments to this process and learning what needs to be added or taken from the cases to ensure the greatest efficiency overall.

Katie has found that the number of volunteers needed to help with setup and teardown is 45 to 50 per weekend. She stated that fewer people are needed to tear down and repack the equipment into the trailers than to set things up. Her goal is to have enough volunteers to staff two teams so that the teams can rotate service weeks every other week. The hope is to prevent volunteers from getting burned out on serving in this capacity and to have enough volunteers if people are unavailable on a particular weekend.

This is what a “portable church” is: able to be taken and used wherever it is needed. Hmm…that sounds a lot like what God has commanded us to do . . . be used by Him wherever we’re needed.

If you are interested in becoming a vessel for God and a part of this team, please contact Katie Jensen at 317.902.6245 or by email at katiejensen719@yahoo.com.