Redemption to the Nations church in Chattanooga, Tennessee, one of the fastest growing churches in the country, reports that it recently renovated a 2,000-seat sanctuary. The space was outfitted with a new Elation intelligent lighting system spec'd and installed by intyde, a creative systems integration company based in Franklin, Tenn.
The growing ministry sits on the site of the former Highland Park Baptist Church, a once iconic megachurch, as well as the campus of defunct Tennessee Temple University. With a vision to gather the entire ministry onto one campus, church leaders took the opportunity to acquire the 55-acre site in 2014 and transformed it into the Redemption to the Nations campus.
Background for renovation
Since many of the campus buildings were outdated with antiquated lighting and audio systems, Redemption to the Nations began to renovate a number of buildings, including the 2,000-seat worship auditorium. Intyde, a specialist in designing scalable audio, video and lighting systems, is Redemption to the Nations’ vendor of choice for many of the campus renovations, and completed an in-house design-build for the sanctuary, with new audio, video and lighting systems, including the infrastructure needed to support them.
Planning of the sanctuary renovation began in April of 2017 with the intyde team also handling the full system design. The sanctuary building, which hadn’t been updated since sometime in the 1980s, was completely gutted and rebuilt. “There was no cohesive lighting concept before, just a mix of static and older automated lights and other discharge fixtures,” states intyde Integration Sales Manager Nathan Tomberlin. “Most of the previous lighting was discharge fixtures and the power draw was huge. That was something we wanted to address. It also made for a very warm platform.”
All-LED lighting solution
Although the client didn’t specifically request LED lighting, according to Tomberlin, their desire to lessen the power draw, eliminate a large circuit count, and save on the power bill naturally led intyde to the LED lighting solution. “They also save on maintenance costs, upkeep is down, and they save by not having to invest in dimmers and additional transformers,” Tomberlin continues. “We wanted to give them tools to create great moments, and with the Elation lighting system, I think we’ve done that.”
The all-LED lighting system includes a variety of Elation LED moving heads – Satura Profile, Platinum SEVEN, Platinum Spot III, and ACL 360i – along with Colour 5 Profile ellipsoidals and SixBar 500 battens.
Merging church lighting with theatrical lighting
The worship auditorium, a large space that measures 124 feet deep and is extremely wide at 253 feet, required an even front wash of light across a roomy stage. The previous system did that poorly by using 50 foot of a single truss layer to attempt a 120 foot-wide wash. Tomberlin describes the intyde solution: “Instead of filling up a front truss with ellipsoidals, we started the design by identifying each position on stage and on the house floor, and designed a tri-truss layered (upstage, downstage, altar) three-point focus on front wash with Colour 5 Profiles, supplemented with Satura Profiles with their 20,000 lumens of power and framing shutters.”
Each fixture group, when used alone, demonstrates a unique but complete look in the design while allowing ample room for creativity. “There should always be a balance between design and function, and each fixture should serve a purpose,” Tomberlin states. “We needed to provide a powerful back-lighting solution and decided the Platinum Seven with its multi-zones and dynamic zoom range was the best choice for cost/function. The Platinum Spot LED III was the obvious pairing to the Platinum Seven for the rear spot position with its zoom-able spot with frost and changeable gobos.”
The powerful ACL 360i single-beam moving effects are used to complement the vertical LED display columns by creating stacked beams with a full range of motion. Intyde added the SixBar 500s and its individual LED control to supplement the LED wall for a minimal static color look. Lumen output of all the LED luminaires had to be sufficient enough to power through the 1200nit LED wall and as much of the lighting is on motors, full design changes and reconfiguration of the LED wall and lighting are uncomplicated. To underline the system’s adaptability, Tomberlin says that any of the lighting equipment can be motored down and moved elsewhere on campus if required.
Venue to envy
With an all new infrastructure and state-of-the-art entertainment technology systems, the Redemption to the Nations sanctuary operates as a full functioning theatre or touring house that effectively serves the variety of applications the sanctuary space is used for – conferences, plays, concerts, live broadcasting and special events, as well as the ministry’s many weekly services.
- Elation Equipment:
- 7 x Satura Profile
- 14 x Platinum Seven
- 21 x Platinum Spot III
- 18 x ACL360i
- 27 x Colour 5 Profile (26 degree lens)
- 6 x Colour 5 Profile (36 degree lens)
- 12 x SixBar 500
