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May 2012

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A Conference Center with Muscle: Green Acres Baptist Church, Tyler, Texas

With the goal of building a “fellowship hall on steroids,” this east-Texas church built a venue it could share with the community. Hosting concerts, banquets, seminars and contemporary worship services, technical flexibility is paramount.

by Cathy Hutchison

When Green Acres Baptist Church (GABC) started to examine the next steps in developing its master plan, the phase included a fellowship hall-a place where people could bond over food and conversation. Since the church is known for its sense of community, it made sense, but the leadership team began to ask themselves if they couldn't create a space that would be able to meet more needs than simply dining and fellowship. As the idea began to take shape, they started talking about a "fellowship hall on steroids."

The church, located in Tyler, Texas, is a regional church pulling membership from lots of towns in East Texas. "We wanted to create something that we could share with our community. There was especially a need in the not-for-profit sector for an event center that could fully support large gatherings," explains Ken Warren, GABC's senior associate pastor. "Once word got out about the plans for the space, we began to get phone calls-even a year before we opened. We went into this to create a facility that didn't exist in East Texas and make no apology that we want people who come through the doors to return when they are having problems in their life."

The church connected with Steve Fitzpatrick of Fitzpatrick Architects in Tyler to develop the design for the space. "We had a very involved architect," Warren notes. "Steve Fitzpatrick understood what we were looking for and created a seminal design." Acoustic Dimensions of Dallas was brought on board to provide theatrical consulting for the space, along with acoustics, A/V and lighting design.

The main design directive for the space was flexibility. The church knew that it would be used for everything from banquets, to concerts, to Christian school gatherings, to seminars. They also planned to begin a new Crosswalk worship service in the space-which is ultimately how the conference center got its name.

"We don't have traditional and contemporary services as most people might define them," says Warren. "Celebration worship is indigenous ... praise team, full choir, band and orchestra providing celebratory worship with a lot of variety. The Crosswalk service is strictly band-driven-primarily rock music with lighting and video providing the visual experience."

Life-sized Video
For the Crosswalk service, video became a key element. "We felt the virtual pastor set up was important," says Tibby Wright, the church's director of broadcast ministries. "With the middle screen set with the head-to-toe shot and the flanking screens carrying the IMAG feed, we've had many people tell us that they didn't realize our pastor wasn't actually in the room."

A central screen of 32 feet by 18 feet was installed by Mission Service Supply Inc. of West Monroe, La., together with two lateral screens of 22 feet by 12 feet each. Three Christie video projectors were used, one HD18K for the central screen, and two HD12Ks for left and right screens.

"We have the worship in Crosswalk go on a bit longer to give us a window of a six or seven minute delay," Wright explains. The church uses a Newtek 3-Play unit for video recording and delayed playback. "The 3-Play from Newtek allows us to capture the HD feeds live from the main sanctuary." he says. The signal is routed through two Analog Way OPS300 multi-layer, hi-definition mixer seamless switchers. The OPS300 also has three scalers for working with different video sources. And he adds, "We use a very simple system with presentation switchers from Analog Way [OPS300] which works well. It has done everything they claimed and their tech support gave us help when we had a glitch in the beginning."

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Cathy Hutchison is the Director of Connection for Acoustic Dimensions. She can be reached at chutchison@acousticdimensions.com.   .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)