Attached directly onto the side of Damascus Road Community Church’s steel-framed exterior, Gordon-Systems installed a 16-foot by 10-foot LED wall to accommodate outdoor worship.
Who hasn’t heard the dusty old saying, “Necessity is the mother of invention”? It’s a sentiment that rang true at Damascus Road Community Church in Mount Airy, Maryland.
In the early days of the pandemic, the church found itself unable to accommodate churchgoers inside its worship space. “Pre-COVID we were cramming so many bodies into our auditorium (450 capacity), but then with the distancing guidelines of six feet we could barely fit 100 people,” describes Daniel Busche, the church’s technical director. “We wanted people to feel a little more comfortable with their personal space and in their personal bubble.”
The tech team and church staff also could not keep adding more and more worship services each Sunday so that everyone who wanted to come and worship actually could. And that’s when Damascus Road’s healthy expanse of outdoor space began to look especially good to Busche and the church's leaders.
The church sits on a large property with a great deal of acreage. “It was a natural progression, coming out of the winter [in early 2020]. The weather was getting nice, and we had this really ample space right next to our building,” Busche says. The space was the answer to Damascus Road Community Church being able to invite more people to worship, safely, outdoors in a grassy area that had already served as an alternative multi-function space for the church and community.
A solution on the side of the building
In a setup the church is still using today, Busche and his team worked with Gordon-Systems out of Gaithersburg, Maryland, an AV company that designs, builds, and maintains systems for its clients, to create an easy-to-use, volunteer-friendly outdoor AV system. In tandem, Gordon-Systems’ church-focused integration division, called Elevate Integration, handled making the open-air systems work and play well in unison with what was happening inside the building.
“We knew the LED panels were going to serve us well for usage in direct sunlight. They’re extremely bright, have great color reproduction, and the pixel density is good."
Daniel Busche, Technical Director, Damascus Road Community Church, Mount Airy, MD
Attached directly onto the side of Damascus Road Community Church’s steel-framed exterior, Gordon-Systems installed a 16-foot by 10-foot LED wall. “We knew the LED panels were going to serve us well for usage in direct sunlight. They’re extremely bright, have great color reproduction, and the pixel density is good,” Busche says of the solution, admitting that he came into the initial exterior-worship concept as more of an audio guy.
Gordon-Systems’ owner, Charles (Chip) Gordon, made sure that the audio component was designed alongside the video system for a complete package that works seamlessly for the church’s tech team. As Busche describes, “We had some issues inside our normal auditorium, with room tuning and routing. So Chip spec’d a QSC Core device that enabled us to retune our outdoor space and actually run everything into and out of the same unit. So now we can control quite a number of things inside and outside with the same touch panel, or iPad, because it’s now on our network. That was a really great benefit that we hadn’t been expecting.” [Find a list of the major components of the design/install at the end of this piece.]
"The supply-chain crisis affects everything from project planning to implementation. So all stakeholders must try to develop patience during projects."
Charles (Chip) Gordon, Owner, Gordon-Systems, Gaithersburg, MD
Along with the forethought that Gordon-Systems put into the system, Busche praises the company’s reps for their above-and-beyond approach to the installation and service parts of the project. The manufacturer of the LED panels, ATS Pro of New Hartford, Connecticut, received kudos from Busche, as well. ATS actually drove the panels and frames down from Connecticut to Maryland. Then, with the help of Gordon-Systems, the new system was tested and tuned within a day.
The biggest challenge of the Damascus Road outdoor LED project was a state-of-the-world problem, according to Gordon—and it was shipping delays. "The supply-chain crisis affects everything from project planning to implementation," he says. "So all stakeholders must try to develop patience during projects."
The tech team at Damascus, made up of Busche who works full time and a high school student who works 25 hours per week, had the required patience with both the supply-chain issues and with their own limitations. "It might seem like we're a monolithic organization given the scope of this project, but that's not the case. So it was really great collaborating with the Gordon-Systems team," he states.
Busche says the team was also fortunate that the composition of the church's building was more than strong enough to safely hold the relatively lightweight video wall installation, with no modifications necessary. In addition, the girth of the building allowed it to safely hold two line arrays that hang on either side of the video wall—five boxes per side to ensure excellent coverage. “The hangs are passive,” he describes. “Then we have two dual 18-inch subs that we use out there that are active.”
"It might seem like we're a monolithic organization given the scope of this project, but that's not the case."
Daniel Busche, Technical Director, Damascus Road Community Church, Mount Airy, MD
In the end, both the Damascus Church team and Gordon-Systems' were pleased with the project and the way it took on a life of its own. As Gordon says, "Damascus Church realized [its outdoor video wall] could be used for multiple ministries, for the church members as well as outreach to the community."
Busche says the first day the team used the new outdoor system for its members and the community at large was Easter 2021. Since the outdoor system is fully weather-proof, everything in the setup but the subs (which were brought inside for security reasons following the service) stays outside year-round. And that includes special outdoor staging constructed by the church.
Keeping an open mind moving forward
With COVID having waned in the springtime of 2021 before picking back up again in late summer, the outdoor worship solution remains in heavy use. “We’re still honoring those that serve on a weekly basis,” Busche notes, “those who are a part of our smaller bubble of volunteers and band members and preachers who really need to be protected, for several reasons, from the virus.”
The outdoor installation, still in the center of the church’s activity in late 2021, is perhaps providing the impetus for staff to continue to think innovatively about their space and how they use it.
“We’re currently praying through and seeking guidance on what the next step is for our congregation, as far as a new kind of sanctuary and a retrofit of our old space,” Busche notes. Room for classrooms, too, is on the praying and planning agenda.
But for now, men’s and women’s Bible studies, vacation Bible schools, tailgate parties, community movie night, and barbecues are just a few examples of the kinds of activities happening around the outdoor AV installation.
“We’ve had a lot of homes being built in our area, so there’s a lot of growth happening all around us,” Busche closes. And as always, Damascus Road Community Church is committed to making sure there’s enough space for everyone.
Major Components of the Design/Install:
RCF TTL33-WP (10 boxes, 5 per side)
RCF SUB-9006AS (2)
RCF RP9006 (Rain Cover for Subs)
RCF QPS9600 (2 Amps)
ATS Pro OOH LED 6.67mm (15.75’ x 9.45’, 720 x 432, 10,000 nits)
QSC Core110F
QSC TSC-80t—G2-BK (8” touch panel at FOH)
Behringer S32 (stage input box to accompany our already-owned x32 for worship services solely outside)
Gator G-tour 12ru case
Cisco SG350-28p (managed switch for new connections)
Blackmagic Design Smart Videohub 20x20 (for additional video routing for LED Wall)
