I'm curious to hear from each of you what your preferences are regarding the band layout, and how the band is positioned in a church sanctuary. I'm sure that among all of us we've seen some optimal layouts (from a musician standpoint, of course) and some simply horrific layouts.
I've seen a lot of interesting band positioning in churches, and some of those configurations combined with the sanctuary build/layout can make for an acoustics and/or band communications nightmare. For example... I once played in a place that had the drummer WAAAAAAAY no the other side of the pulpit where you couldn't even get any sort of visual communication going (it wasn't a small sanctuary), organ on the other side which you could barely hear from either location because it was going though some weird PA setup with no sort of monitor, and I'm on the same side as the organ with my cab, no DI or anything. It was awful for everyone... makes me think that church isn't very music oriented with a layout like that.
I've also seen another where the band has a pit in front of the choir, sort of sammiched between them and the pulpit. I've never played in one like that, and I imagine it might be easy to see the director and communicate with each other... but I dunno. Maybe it's just the musician in me, but I like to see the band and watch them work. Perhaps non-musicians don't care so much. Of course, that church had their stuff tight with the PA's, so everything sounded good from the congregation standpoint and I'm sure they had proper monitoring in the pit.
At my church I'm kinda in a get-in-where-you-fit-in type of situation until we get our new building. As it is now we are lined up along the side, and going from the pulpit toward the back there is the organ, the drums, then me. While it's really easy for me to lock in with the drummer this way, it's tough for me to hear the organ sometimes because the leslie is on the other side of the organ, up on the far side of the pulpit, and vice versa since my cab is next to me. Also, there's a bit of an L on the side where I am, so when I'm trying not to blow away the folks in front of me, there others on the other side or toward the back that tell me they don't hear me all that well.
As a temporary fix, I'm moving closer to the pulpit area (it's off to the side so it's out of the way). I'm going to put my 4x10 cab on top of the leslie, so I can project out to the entire congregation without having to use so much volume. I'll lose some bottom with it being so high up of the floor, but it should be ok since the rig is a bit bottom heavy anyway. We'll still be in close proximity but we'll be in a better position to communicate with each other this way. We'll see how it works next Sunday.
So lets hear your good bad and ugly situations, as well as what do you think would be optimal for you and your instrument... where do you want to be positions in relation to the rest of the band, and where do you think the band fits best in the layout of the sanctuary based on it's layout?