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May 2012

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Relevance Redefined: Eagle Brook Church

Historic Minnesota church outpaces the times with technology upgrades and open minds.

by Dawn Allcot

It's early Sunday morning and the band members and technical staff of Eagle Brook Church, a multi-site, non-denominational church in Minnesota, are sitting in the sanctuary listening to a recording of yesterday's service. "Sometimes in our roles with the church, we get heads-down focused into the tasks we do," says Audio Director Adam Bufis. "It's nice to sit back and experience what the congregation has been experiencing. For me, its a good opportunity to walk around the room and see how my mix is translating in different areas. Our broadcast campus at Lino Lakes has a 2,300-seat auditorium and, unfortunately, not every seat sounds the same."

The playback opportunity is not without drawbacks, so expectations and ground rules were clearly set at the start. "When you're playing 90 dB music to an empty room it's obviously going to sound much different than when every seat is filled," Bufis says. "We have to keep that in mind. While we review each individual's performance and how the whole experience translates, it's not a critique-fest."

The feedback-especially since the church's switch to a 96k optical network through a new Digico SD10B broadcast mixing console, as well as a new M-48 monitor system from Roland-is typically more than favorable. "Usually playback is just a re-affirmation that we're doing a great job," Bufis says.

Rapid growth across five campuses ... and still growing
Eagle Brook Church was planted in 1948 as First Baptist Church in White Bear Lake. When Pastor Bob Merritt took over in 1991, incidentally, the year the term World Wide Web was coined, the church had 300 members. In 1997, the church changed its name to Eagle Brook. "We focus on how Biblical principles can be applied to life today," Bufis says. "That's [contributed] to the growth of the church over the past 10 years."

Since Merritt joined the church in 1991, the church has expanded from 300 worshippers in one building to 18,000 worshippers across five campuses each weekend, with approximately double those numbers for Christmas and Easter services. The church broadcasts live on a five-minute delay from the Lino Lake campus to four other locations-White Bear Lake, Spring Lake Park, Blane, and Woodbury-during two Saturday services and two Sunday services. Each location has its own worship team and praise band, video, and IMAG, but, when the time comes for one of the five pastors to deliver the message, a six-foot screen drops down and every worshipper gets an experience very similar to the 2,300 people sitting in the Lino Lakes auditorium.

Lino Lakes streams high-definition video to each campus via a point-to-point microwave signal using a Haivision Mako streaming media device. The signal is encoded into a Comcast service line. As Bufis summarizes, "The signal goes through the Internet, out of our building, and then is transmitted via a microwave signal to a dish on the top of each facility."

Bufis works closely with Richard Funderburg, Lino Lakes' production manager, to ensure that audio and video get transmitted seamlessly. Funderburg and Bufis report to Bill Berger, director of technical arts, who heads up a staff that includes a full-time audio mix director at each campus, a full-time video director for each campus, and one lighting director plus several part-time lighting engineers.

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Dawn Allcot is the work-at-home mom of Ashley Lyn, born October 12, 2008. A full-time freelance writer and editor, Dawn is a regular contributor to Worship Facilities and Church Production magazines.