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Mountaintop Community Church, Birmingham, Alabama
A strategic retrofit results in an affordable solution to an aging, and rapidly failing sound system. Despite budgetary and structural limitations, by only replacing the bare essentials, the church’s high-energy weekend services are now ready to meet the expectations of those the church hopes to reach.
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With the majority of its technical systems operating just fine, the sound system was regularly being pushed into overload. The limited budget would only buy a partial solution.
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After thorough analysis of the aging and problematic sound system, integrator ESB Group recommended replacing only the loudspeakers and amplifiers. Viewed from downstage center, the backs of the new Electro-Voice EVA Series line arrays can be seen left and right of the center cluster of subwoofers mounted on the front of the catwalk.
Article updated November 3,2011
One of the primary values of Mountaintop Community Church is its outreach to and connection with the unchurched-those who either have had bad experiences in church or have never regularly been a part of a church. As a result, Birmingham, Ala.-based Mountaintop employs technology to do church in a way that folks outside the church don't expect.
Director of Music Phillip Oswald relates that the church's worship services are centered around telling the story of scripture through song, drama, video and the Sunday sermons. He says, "People are used to quality technology-from cinema to surround sound systems at home-cultural expectations are high. The church needs to be the best people experience all week; we should be on top, not behind the world." It is vital to the vision of Mountaintop that these things are done with a level of excellence that meets where people are in today's culture. "Sunday morning services are the front door to our church and the sound system is a vital part of them. Having a sound system that we trust is essential to the life of our church," Oswald says.
The music on Sundays at Mountaintop is high energy and the old audio system simply could not keep up. The original design was not built to be pushed very hard. However, by late 2009, the system was slowly decomposing and the church was finding, weekly, that yet another audio component had failed. Even when everything was working well, the system was being pushed to the limit, especially when concerts were held in the room. During one concert in particular, the system was pushed to its absolute limits and went downhill quickly. Patching happened continuously for over a year, progressively getting worse to the point that Sunday morning was a time of trepidation for the tech and music teams, as well as the leadership.
Taking Stock and Action
When the church contacted ESB Group of Springville, Ala., about the situation, a conversation about Mountaintop's values and budget ensued. The church's 1,700-seat room requires a rather large and sophisticated audio system to cover it evenly given the nature of the church's services. So the team came to the conclusion that it would be best to redesign and replace only those elements of the system that were no longer functioning and able to support the audio needs for Sunday services. This would allow for the entire $80,000 budget to be spent on the components of the system that were in need of upgrade.
While the loudspeaker system continued to degrade, the mixing console, processing and outboard gear-as well as the existing video and lighting gear-continued to reliably serve the church's needs. With the redesign focused in on the speaker system, ESB set to work with its own Andy McMillan leading as project manager. McMillan, who has since amicably left ESB Group to serve a church in Georgia as youth pastor, shared that one of ESB's values, led by Larry Bounds and Beau Blackwell, is to help churches find resources to accomplish their mission within their budget. The company is passionate about both technology and its role in furthering the church. This type of thought process led McMillan and the ESB team to specify the Electro-Voice EVA-2082S full-range, dual-element line array modules, in 120 x 6 and 120 x 20-degree dispersion patterns that fit the coverage and dynamic requirements of the project, as well as the budget.
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Rob Connelly currently serves at North Wake Church in Wake Forest, NC as director of technology and communication. He is the owner of Connelly Audio, providing technology, ministry and systems consulting to churches. Rob is also a student at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He and his wife Ashley have two young sons.
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