You don't get on Andrew Hunt's AV team just because you're a tech head. Hunt, who as technical arts director has been heading up the audio, video and lighting operations at the Blue Ridge Community Church since 2004, when the nondenominational church was still working out of spaces like a former grocery store and a middle-school cafeteria in Central Virginia, is usually more interested in the state of your marriage or how your kids are doing at school than whether or not you're handy with a soldering iron. In fact, the ability to take apart a video projector and reassemble it blindfolded might actually disqualify you for a post on his often-changing roster of volunteers that he manages with the church's other tech staffer, Mike Anderson. That's because Hunt has come to realize that it's not hard to get wrapped up in the technology for its own sake, but that the lights and buttons are simply a chimera, an illusion that we can actually control anything that's not part of a greater plan.
“You're not here to indulge your own pleasure that you might find in technology,” he says assuredly, but not so sternly as to suggest that he doesn't find some enjoyment in the bells and whistles himself. “There also has to be some sacrifice involved if you're doing it out of a sense of serving your relationship with Jesus Christ.”
It's not the way that other church technology team leaders might approach the staffing issue, where they actively look for previous experience or at least an avid sense of affinity for technology in their volunteers. Hunt's model might be closer to that espoused in “Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” Robert Pirsig's 1974 philosophical novel that suggests that understanding comes, in part, from learning the unfamiliar. It's also a compassionate model, one where's he is sensitive to the fact that AV technology can be intimidating and, under the circumstances of an expanding church where weekend services have strict deadlines, even overwhelming at times.
“Ultimately, my goal is not to get them connected to the equipment but rather to get them connected to serving, through the technology,” he says. “I'm less interested in what they know technically than what's going on in their lives spiritually. I want to know why they want to serve and to help them grow spiritually.”
It's a philosophy that's being tested as we speak. Blue Ridge Community Church, which settled into its current location in Forest, Va., in 2005, where it built its first permanent home around a 970-seat sanctuary supported with ministries for students, marriage counseling, fitness, creative arts and more, recently added Saturday evening services. That's been pushing the limits of some volunteers' availabilities. The result, Hunt acknowledges, is that he may have to sometimes simplify the technology agenda a bit for the service, perhaps paring back the graphics a little, or being a bit less ambitious with the audio mix.
“It's something we'll be talking about with our leadership,” he says, referring to the church's elder-led management structure. “It's also something we'll be praying on a lot.”
Prayer culture
“A great stage design and great audio are not going to convince anyone to accept Christ. But creativity and technical excellence can help break down walls.”
Andrew Hunt
Technical Arts Director, Blue Ridge Community Church, Forest, VA
Prayer plays a big part in the technology culture at Blue Ridge Community Church. Hunt says he, the church's department ministers, and his volunteers tend to ruminate spiritually regarding significant technology acquisitions. The current JBL PA system in the sanctuary, which was installed when it opened in 2005, has been holding up well, and is certainly light years beyond the portable DJ-level systems that the church relied on during its peripatetic early years. It consists of a combination of AE and PD Series cabinets and modules, with front fills using Marquee Series boxes and all powered by Crown CL4 amplifiers and processed dbx DriveRack 260 processing. However, the system has evolved a bit—it was originally configured as an L-C-R system, but this past year Hunt and Anderson decided to take another look and listen to it.
“Mike has the pro audio experience and I bring logistics to the table,” says Hunt, who also spent time working in a music shop that sold entry-level PA systems and spent some time mixing live bands on the road. They re-shot the system's dispersion and coverage patterns using SMAART measurement software and discovered that they could make it more efficient by reconfiguring it with just left and right hangs and resetting the processor's delays.
If the outcome wasn't exactly divinely inspired, it did underscore another reality at Blue Ridge Community Church. “What we encourage here, and what Pastor Dave Kountz encouraged in me, is that it's OK to make mistakes if we learn from them,” says Hunt. “If we hang the PA cabinets a certain way and then find out that something isn't working like we thought, we'll just go and reset those cabinets until the problem is fixed. It's OK to make a mess as long as you clean it up.” Hunt says this hopeful approach to AV is nonetheless contexted with reasonable margins for error. “If we're going to try something different, it won't be the day before a service,” he laughs.
What has been more recently upgraded was the church's main mixing console. The church's aging FOH Allen & Heath ML4000 and Yamaha M3000 monitor consoles were exchanged for a Midas Pro 2 digital desk. A total of 16 MyMix personal monitoring systems were also added—eight units for the band and seven for vocals, with one installed at the FOH position. Hunt says the new console has made it easier for volunteers to manage multiple bands, while a total of 16 channels of separate IEM monitor mixes (four stereo and eight mono) takes the load off the FOH mixer and offers the band and vocalists for the church's contemporary worship style more individualized control over their monitor mixes. “It's really been a win-win all around,” says Hunt, adding that they also installed a patch bay in the back-of-house rack that lets the system be set up on the stage for easier access during rehearsals and sound checks and then moved backstage for services. “It also saves us a lot of time during sound checks,” he says, noting features such as channel naming, remote unit control, and the ability to save profiles/mixes. He also added the Klark Teknik DN9650 AES/Dante interface so they can do virtual sound checks.
Hunt attributes prayer to leading them to the new console and monitoring mixing solutions, but acknowledges that market trends helped—pro digital audio products and systems have been steadily declining in price even as their power and functionality have been on the rise. It's a collateral benefit of Moore's Law but Hunt says the book of Acts is equally worth referencing. “It stresses that before any significant movement there is always prayer,” he says. “That certainly was the case here. The Midas and the MyMix equipment definitely seemed to come along at exactly the right time and price.”
“Ultimately, my goal is not to get them connected to the equipment, but rather to get them connected to serving..."
Andrew Hunt
Technical Arts Director, Blue Ridge Community Church, Forest, VA
Training ground
The church continues to upgrade its systems. Most recently they added a second Blackmagic Television Studio, which takes the feed from the same Blackmagic Design Atem Video Hub 16 X 16 live-production router that the main Television Studio uses and manages it for spaces outside the main sanctuary, including student and nursing-mother areas, as well as archiving it for podcasts and related media products.
These functions could conceivably be consolidated under a single control room, but Hunt says having a second offers one more training opportunity for volunteers, in this case a less-pressured environment where they can learn to mix live video outside the main sanctuary. And it can act as a back-up control room in the event the main one is taken off line for any reason.
The church also transitioned from SD to HD video, bringing in new Panasonic AG-HPX370 cameras to replace aging Sony DSR 500WS units. They also added two new Panasonic PT-DW740 7,000-lumen projectors. Lighting in the sanctuary has remained unchanged since 2005, with an ETC Ion lighting control [console], as many as 90 various fixtures, five moving-head lights, and 10 ETC Selador Paletta LED fixtures.
When Hunt was asked why the church didn't do what most seem to, which is to hire dedicated professionals to design and install its AV systems, his reply is that it would be easier most of the time, but not necessarily better. “The way we do it, I feel we're all more personally invested in what we're doing, and there are many more opportunities to teach and to learn this way, and to be a more hands-on steward of the money that the church gives to God,” he replies. “I would also add that this approach isn't for everyone. God has provided a volunteer base that includes riggers, programmers, building materials experts, professional engineers and designers, all of whom make up a complete team.”
And in the very long run, Hunt says that Blue Ridge Community Church's DIY approach to AV transcends the technology itself and reminds everyone, staffer and volunteer alike, that what they do, they do not for themselves.
“There is no power of God in the technology,” he states plainly. “A great stage design and great audio are not going to convince anyone to accept Christ. But creativity and technical excellence can help break down walls. At the end of my life, God's not going to ask me about how good the mix sounded, or how creative the stage design was, but rather how well I shepherded the people He put into my life, our volunteers. That's where the rubber meets the road.”
