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Multi-site The Crossing in St. Louis, Missouri.
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Most of the live video equipment was brought over from their venue. A Panasonic AVHS300G serves as their main switcher. Three JVC GY-HD250U HD video cameras plus a PTZ camera are used for the webcast and video transmission to the satellite campuses.
As the son of a church planting pastor, Bill Swaringim was exposed to technical production ministry early on. “My earliest memory of church tech is walking into church one day and seeing the guy sitting behind the mixer. It was just an eight-channel board at that time. I asked my mother if I might sit next to him for the service, and my mom said, ‘Well, if Gary doesn't mind….' That one thing—sitting back in the tech booth with Gary—God used it to grab my attention and ignite my passion for communicating the Gospel.”
In the years that followed, Swaringim was involved in all things tech at his father's church, but entered full-time ministry as a children's pastor. After a few years, God called him to be the youth pastor at another church, and then orchestrated his first full-time technical ministry position at a large church in Chicago.
“This was back in 2001. That first tech position was rather bumpy, but God can teach you a lot in situations you wish you weren't in. I grew as a leader through it. I am thankful for my experiences at that church, and I believe I am a better technical director because of it. In July of 2007, God opened a door for me to join The Crossing here in St. Louis, and I moved back home to become their first full-time technical director,” Swaringim reports.
He continues, “This church is solid, with a healthy culture. It flows from [the] top down and is modeled at every level. It is another place God has brought me to learn a lot. It has been challenging and fulfilling just trying to keep up with what God is doing around here. Over the last seven years, we've grown from one technical director to eight full-time technical staff and three part-time technical staff. We oversee four venues across three campuses, and have more than 10,000 per weekend participating in our services.”
Vision & Focus
The Crossing team realized it needed to increase the seating capacity at the main campus to facilitate the growth they were realizing. “We didn’t want to build an epic auditorium,” Swaringim states, “This goes against our DNA and values as a church since we have a multi-site church strategy and want people to attend church in their own communities. Instead, we sought to increase our seating capacity from 850 seats to 1,250 and repurpose the existing auditorium as a video venue, as well as for our youth services and larger classes.”
The Crossing has a unique communication style for its services, with Lead Pastor Greg Holder bringing a conversational, two-way style to his messages. He frequently asks questions of the attendees, both those in the main room as well as in the other venues, using technology such as texting to receive congregational responses via the campus pastor. He may use an iPad to write answers onto a graphic background and have them projected on the venue’s video screens, or take a low-tech approach and simply use markers and write them down in a way that all can see.
“The seating is arranged to facilitate a three-way communication model: the pastor to the congregation; the congregation responding to the pastor; and the congregation communicating with each other,” says Swaringim. “Greg highly encourages people to talk back during the message. He loves interaction, and frequently walks the room during his message. He wants people to respond, and gives times where they get to talk to each other to discuss questions he’s posing.”
To that end, seating at The Crossing wraps around the platform, and the platform is raised just enough to improve sight lines, with walkways that blur the lines between the seating area and the platform. This configuration allows those attending to see each other’s faces during the service, as well as those on the platform, and encourages open communication.
Room Design
To outfit the room, The Crossing brought in Idibri (formerly Acoustic Dimensions) of Dallas, a long-time design partner in creating spaces on the church’s campuses. Idibri worked closely with church staff to create the vision for the room, and Summit Integrated Systems of Lafayette, Colo., performed the installation.
“The Crossing wanted a room that was unique and different,” comments David Stephens, senior consultant with Idibri. “We started out with a warehouse look and it evolved from there. The seating area is asymmetrical with a mezzanine seating level on the right side of the room. It fits their style and mission, and the wrap-around seating makes the room feel smaller than it actually is. There was a lot of concern about maintaining the church’s personality and intimacy.”
Audio System Approach
“The Crossing already had a room that sounded good,” notes Ryan Knox, Idibri’s audio system designer for the project. “They wanted to scale that up and not lose anything. The fact that they had a room with which they could do an A/B comparison made it a little nerve-wracking at times,” he quips.
In the old auditorium, the church had an alternating left-right system across six speaker clusters. This worked well for them, and they wanted to maintain the alternating L-R concept.
“In the new space, however, we had a difficult time reconciling speaker locations with the depth of [the] room. We ended up with six clusters at [the] front of the space that act like four when you are in the back of room. We also added a delay ring that’s also alternating L-R to keep [the] same level of envelopment all the way to the back.”
“Ryan and I went round-and-round on speaker design,” adds Swaringim. “I did not want that particular box for this room and was not totally on board with what Ryan was proposing. He worked hard and made many tweaks to the design to make sure we were happy. There was a little tension there, but he led the process well. I trusted him because of our history and my familiarity with his other work. In the end, it was the right choice for this space. It really does sound good in there.”
"The seating is arranged to facilitate a three-way communication model: the pastor to the congregation; the congregation responding to the pastor; and the congregation communicating with each other."
Bill Swaringim
Technical Director, The Crossing, St Louis, MO.
The loudspeakers are all EAW QX-series cabinets. “They were the right product to do what we needed them to do,” Knox says. “There weren’t a lot of other options that had the throw pattern and bandwidth to get the alternating L-R to work. The design was really more about the physics requirements of pattern control than sonic ability.”
Flown JBL sub-woofers with Danley subs under the platform augment the low end, and Lab.gruppen amplifiers power the system. BSS London digital signal processing provides loudspeaker management functions.
For an audio console, the Yamaha CL5 was chosen for front-of-house. “We were originally planning on bringing over our PM5D from the old room,” comments Swaringim, “but Summit Integrated Systems helped us on the installation end in freeing up some resources to acquire the CL5 without compromising the design budget.” A Yamaha CL3 console is used for the webcast mix.
Dante digital audio distribution is used campus-wide for audio signal transport. All channels from the main stage can be sent to not only the broadcast mix position but to overflow rooms, as well, allowing audio team members to custom mix for the specific needs of that room, if desired.
“The Dante network was probably the biggest challenge of the installation,” says Joe Jones, project manager for Summit Integrated Systems. “This required extensive collaboration with the church’s IT manager, Jim Michael, (also a volunteer on the church’s sound team). In addition to FOH, broadcast, and the Nuendo Live audio recording system within the new facility, we are sending an additional 32 channels to two overflow venues that sport existing M7CL and PM5D consoles with MY16-AUD cards. These overflow feeds share bandwidth on a 10GB fiber uplink with all of the church’s network traffic including HD Video streaming to the web and offsite campuses.”
Video Projection
For in-room projection, Jason McKelvey, the Idibri consultant working the video side of the project, came up with an unusual but effective design for the rear projection video system.
“Bill, Stan Yoder [associate technical arts director at The Crossing] and I created what we are calling a set of video projection pods,” states McKelvey. “They are shaped like a slice of pie, and enclose the projection screen and projector. Made from six-inch truss, and wrapped on four of the five sides with black fabric, the pods shield the rear of the screens from both ambient and stage lighting.” And as the video pods are a self-contained entity, they can be moved around the stage or even rotated to present different configurations.
Barco RLM-W12 three-chip DLP projectors with short-throw lenses and Da-Lite rear projection screens are used in the pods, and a Coolux Pandora’s Box media server feeds the projectors. Through Pandora’s Box, the screens can be treated as three separate entities or as one large screen. The media server also has a live video input that can be passed through to the screens for occasions when they want to use IMAG. Renewed Vision’s ProPresenter is used for graphics.
Video Webcast
Most of the live video equipment was brought over from the church’s old room. Three JVC GY-HD250U HD video cameras plus a PTZ camera are used for the webcast and video transmission to the satellite campuses. A Panasonic AVHS300G is the main switcher, but church staff has plans to upgrade to a Ross Carbonite system in the near future. An Imagine Communications Seleno streaming system is used to transmit video and audio to the other venues.
For new equipment, a Ross Video NK routing system was installed to add flexibility to the video infrastructure.
Lighting
For lighting, an investment was made in infrastructure to enable more sophisticated lighting options.
“Their previous room was just about lighting the stage,” comments Stephens. “In this room they have the ability in the future to light the entire environment. An extensive catwalk system is placed in the ceiling to allow quick access to the fixtures, and the ceiling is much more open than their previous room.”
A distributed dimming system using ETC SmartBars makes better use of their resources, letting them place dimmers where they need them, and gives them access to non-dimmed power for LED and intelligent fixtures everywhere. DMX data is distributed through the room using Pathway Connectivity sACN (streaming architecture for control networks) components.
"We didn’t want to build an epic auditorium … since we have a multi-site church strategy."
Bill Swaringim
Technical Director, The Crossing, St Louis, MO.
Much of the lighting equipment came over from the old room, including the Jands Vista S3 lighting control system and 12 moving lights made up of Martin 250s and Martin SmartMacs. New conventional fixtures for additional key lighting and LED fixtures for color washes were added to the room.
Emergency Backup
With the large online presence of the church, continuity of systems was an important consideration when outfitting the new space.
“Since this facility is used for broadcasting to the Internet and several additional campus locations,” states Jones, “everything required to capture and broadcast has an emergency backup power system. A generator provides power for all pertinent systems. In the event of a power outage, UPS units keep systems up during the few seconds it takes for the generator to start up. This includes some theatrical lights, the lighting console, FOH audio console, broadcast audio console, wireless microphone receivers, all networking, video control room, cameras, media servers, computers, ClearCom, and any other critical components.”
Human Networking
“I’ve come a long way from when I first started in technical ministry,” wraps up Swaringim. “Back in 2001, there weren’t many full-time church tech directors. I wished there were other people to connect with who understood what my job was like and could relate to the highs and lows of this type of ministry. When I moved to The Crossing, I was encouraged to start connecting with other tech directors.”
As part of that process, Swaringim played a role in the development of Church Technical Leaders , an organization that services the tech community by providing resources and opportunities to grow as a technical leader and foster community among other church techs. And he also plays an integral role in the Tech Leader’s Retreat hosted by WFX (Worship Facilities Conference and Expo), each year.
Other Organizations
