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They say, “If at first you don't succeed, try, try again,” and that's exactly what the pastors of Fellowship Baptist Church in Saginaw, Texas, did when it came to their sound system. They tweaked. They made adjustments. They called for expert advice. And they got more and more frustrated as they realized that their church's building design simply didn't lend itself to great sound. Enter Jim Martin of Texas Systems Integration. With a strategic design, FBT equipment, and a gutsy plan to reach the building's 35' high apex, the senior consultant didn't just meet every one of the church's sound challenges – he had the congregation raising the rafters with praise, too.
According to Steven von Stein, Children's and Worship Pastor, the church was originally intended to be a multi-purpose space. With this in mind, the structure's 35' high central worship area was flanked on each side by smaller wings, just 8' high, that could be sectioned off by dividers, as needed. Practical but not ideal, the building is what von Stein describes as “a huge boxy space where the sound just bounces all over the place.”
"We’d have to turn the volume way up to reach the back of the room, any sound coming out of the ceiling speaker in the center section wasn’t carrying below or into the wings, because it was reflecting off of the sides of the vaulted ceiling."
Steven Von Stein
Children's & Worship Pastor, Fellowship Baptist Church, Saginaw, TX.
Before working with Martin, the pastor remembered having terrible sound in the entire house. “We'd have to turn the volume way up to reach the back of the room,” he says. “Any sound coming out of the ceiling speaker in the center section wasn't carrying below or into the wings, because it was reflecting off of the sides of the vaulted ceiling. Meanwhile, we had speakers in the side wings that were hanging down in the front, just a few feet over people's heads… If the pastor would go into a quiet mode, you couldn't hear him, but when the music would start, if you were anywhere near those speakers you got blasted out. I often wondered how anybody could sit there… It was kind of a mess.”
To solve these unique problems, Martin showed up with a set of FBT speakers, including two CLA606 columns for the church's side sections and a single-hang Mitus 206LA line array for the center of the sanctuary. He explained that by angling the multiple modules within the array toward different parts of the interior, and by strategically timing each one, sound would carry to all areas of the church, flawlessly. The biggest challenge, it seemed, was figuring out how to get the array up to the towering ceiling. When using the crawl space was ruled out due to excessive height between the beams and ceiling tile, Martin knew he had to tackle the problem from below. Boldly stacking a small man lift on top of a larger one, the two devices were extended upward with a technician and the array standing on top of it all. “It was a little precarious,” von Stein says. “Even fully extended, the technician still had to stand on his toes to get up into the space and anchor the equipment properly.”
Ultimately, it was this type of dedication, as well as FBT's superior sound, that led Fellowship Baptist Church to use Worship Systems. “We met with several AV companies, but were just really impressed by Worship System's level of professionalism,” von Stein offered. “They really considered our vehicle, the types of music we play and our unique circumstances, and they factored all of that into their design. And then they spent hours after installing it, making sure everything was perfect; they were meticulous about setting and balancing the system for us.”
And as for FBT, von Stein says there's just no comparison. “It's night and day different,” he added. “The clarity is something you notice immediately. You can hear the nuances that every vocalist and instrument produces, and the quality is more real, more true. The balance of low, mid and high range frequencies is amazing, and even the pastors are amplified properly throughout the space. It's funny because now, of course, everyone in the congregation is just used to the richer sound. But initially, whether they had a trained ear or not, everyone came up to me to say they noticed a huge difference. Those speakers put out some serious sound.”
