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New Life Church, Conway, Arkansas
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In a baker's-dozen years, New Life Church (NLC) has put so many satellite dots on the map of central Arkansas that Seth Jeffrey struggles to name them all in a single breath. From Conway and Little Rock, the first two locations and the anchor churches whose sanctuaries seat 2,100 and 1,800, respectively, the church has expanded to encompass cities and towns within an approximately 50-mile radius: Cabot, Hot Springs, Heber Springs, two locations in Ft. Smith and most recently in Russellville and Searcy. Then again, Jeffrey had a month's worth of 90-hour weeks as the church opened those two locations, which are 30 miles apart, earlier this year, so a little sleep-deprived confusion is understandable.
A tenth satellite church is scheduled to open in October of this year, in Fayetteville, underscoring the fact that NLC was deemed America's fastest growing church in 2009, according to Outreach Magazine's Top 100. It's a lot to keep track of, especially within Jeffrey's purview of supervising the churches' AVL systems and the teams who operate them, a task he shares with the church's production manager, J. Parker. Managing it all is a work in progress.
“I asked my lead pastor to please not open two churches in the same month again—my wife was ready to kill me,” Jeffrey jokes. “But it's what we do. We are geared to launching churches.”
Orchestrated Mix and Match
He and Parker are trying to find ways to make technology cooperate with that mission, and they're using an interesting mix of new and older platforms to accomplish that. Each location has its own pastor and worship leader on site. The main sermon, by church founder Pastor Rick Bezet—an ardent proponent of the satellite-church model, he's a founding board member and overseer of the Association of Related Churches (ARC), a national church planting organization—is recorded in HD video at the Conway church during a Saturday evening service. The recording is then data-compressed from 70 GB to 2 GB and the file is sent via Dropbox for the other locations to show during their Sunday morning services. It will be shown on a variety of screens, although all the projectors have at least 720p resolution. Most are Digital Projection eVision Series 7K-lumens projectors illuminating Da-Lite screens and using Blackmagic Atem switchers. Lighting is mainly static, conventional ETC fixtures, though the use of Chauvet LED fixtures is increasing. All are controlled through a Jands Vista consoles. Sound systems vary by location, but they are starting to coalesce around Yamaha's Nexo system Geo and PS Series boxes, using an array of FOH consoles but with an emerging trend toward Midas Pro Series desks. Monitoring for the churches' individual bands is exclusively IEM now, with six newer MyMix systems in place and a smattering of older Aviom IEMs in some rooms.
If there's a pattern here, it's one familiar to many churches when it comes to AVL: taking advantage of the price drops that accompany a maturing digital AV market, even as those systems become more powerful and intuitive to operate. But at the same time, not jettisoning older technologies, such as the Midas Venice hybrid console at one of the locations, which Jeffrey says he likes because of its combination of analog interface and Firewire output—even as he eyes more Midas Pro 2 digital consoles for the future.
On the video side, Jeffrey points to the church's Blackmagic Design Atem video switcher and notes that they could never have afforded a $50,000 top-of-the-line Blackmagic switcher a few years ago, but that company's acquisition of the assets of Echolab in 2010 gave it a way into an entry-level product, the Atem switcher, which at about $7,000 was well-equipped, and well-suited to NLC's budget.
The Tech Team
"We put an emphasis on excellence because we’re honoring God...."
J. Parker
Production Manager, New Life Church, Conway, AR
Jeffrey and Parker have to keep another aspect of the technology in mind as they make decisions: the people who operate it. “We have to look at the interface and operation of every piece of equipment we consider,” says Jeffrey. “We use a lot of volunteers, so a primary consideration is always how easy is it to run.”
Over the range of nine locations, the skill levels of the volunteers can vary greatly. Thus, while they'll look for highly intuitive operation GUI's to accommodate the greenest members of the teams, they also have to avoid restricting the talents of the more experienced operators. Jeffrey cites the Jands Vista lighting console as an example of the kind of scalability he's looking for. “It's easy to run—I can have someone new on it up and running on its basic operation in 20 minutes, just doing basic on and off of fixtures; in two or three hours they'll be doing effects, yet an experienced LD can still do whatever they need to,” he says.
“I've found I can't do that as easily on an ETC or GrandMa, those aren't as adaptable to different levels of user capability,” Jeffrey continues. “They assume a much higher level of knowledge on the part of the operator.” As with the Midas mixers, he's also choosing platforms as much as products—with the Jands lighting consoles as the umbrella platform, they're using the Vista M1 at the church's smaller locations, the Vista S1 at mid-sized venues, and the Vista I3 at the largest churches.
For audio, Midas still supports both analog and newer digital consoles, which Jeffrey says was important because some church locations—several new affiliates are existing plants that elect to become part of NLC—also come with an embedded technology culture, some of which is analog and happily so. “The goal is to standardize on the Midas platform, and whether it's analog or digital doesn't matter,” he explains. “We have [engineers] who are old school and who love the way analog sounds and works, and we can buy a [used] Midas Heritage console on eBay for a few thousand dollars. They won't have plug-ins or sophisticated routing but they're incredible-sounding boards.”
Jeffrey acknowledges that would be an unsustainable approach long term, but as existing churches and their crews become part of NLC, it's pragmatic, until they are able to gradually update each location's technology complement. Another category where he's looking for consistency, but not at the expense of some variety, is with IEMs (in-ear monitoring systems), which they moved to starting in 2012 in order to eliminate wedge monitors, which can create feedback and stage wash issues in some of the church venues. Depending upon the location, the church uses both Aviom and MyMix personal monitor mixing systems. Jeffrey says the simplicity of the Avoim's routing is a plus, but the lack of effects and 16-bit resolution in the older, legacy models aren't as popular with the church's various musicians, who like reverb in their personal monitor mixes and the 24-bit audio quality the church's newer MyMix systems offers. “It's always a balance—cost, quality and ease-of-use,” he says. “That's the formula we use for choosing equipment.”
A Clear Hierarchy
NLC has a clear structure for its technical staff, which numbers about 300 volunteers across nine sites, with nearly half of them working at the church's two main locations. Each of those locations has a full-time tech director, three of whom are currently paid employees, at the largest venues. Others have part-time volunteer directors. (The formula is, once a church reaches an attendance of 90 for Sunday services, it warrants a part-time technical staffer; full-time tech directors are assigned to locations with Sunday attendance of more than 1,000.) The rest are volunteers, some of whom will, if they show sufficient aptitude and competency, become staffers themselves in the future.
"We have to look at the interface and operation of every piece of equipment we consider."
Seth Jeffrey
Technical Director, New Life Church, Conway, AR
Parker says the experience levels of those who want to serve in technical positions varies considerably, but that the church has a range of positions broad enough to create good fits. “We have some members who own their own IT companies, and they can make good video directors, for instance,” he says. “Someone with less knowledge, who just wants to get plugged in, they're running the ProPresenter software. The range is vast but you usually can find out where each person fits into it.” In some cases, candidates come in through the church's student ministries.
However, while Jeffrey and Parker place substantial emphasis on technical adroitness, the church's focus on the individual is tantamount to the technical. “There's a strong focus on love and respect in the church, and that extends to the technical side of things,” says Jeffrey. “It really flows from the top down, from Pastor Rick. It's his basic philosophy. It doesn't matter how amazing the equipment is—without people, we have nothing.”
Parker leavens that with a dose of pragmatism, adding, “We put an emphasis on excellence because we're honoring God, and there's a higher standard for working on the technology systems than, say, being a greeter. There's a level of efficiency were trying to achieve.”
There is a relatively open-door policy when it comes to recruiting tech volunteers. Anyone can come to Thursday evening meetings for church music and production staff that combine training and planning. There is no formal training program now; some basic aptitude screening is applied and slots are filled as they become open and training is focused on that, with training taking place on site. The length and intensity of training varies with the position: a graphics operator may shadow his or her instructor for three or four weeks' worth of services to learn the craft; a video director or camera operator might spend six months to a year in training, doing one or two sessions per week.
Fortunately, a good attitude tends to be reciprocated. For example, when one of the church's drummers, who is also a police officer, was recently delayed by a criminal investigation before a rehearsal, all of the other musicians agreed to push the start time of the rehearsal back to accommodate him.
New Life Church's next stop is in Fayetteville, Ark., closer to Tulsa than Little Rock and the church's furthest reach so far, with a population behind that only of Little Rock and Conway. The search is ongoing for a site that will be built from the ground up and will get the basic starter kit of sound and video, as well as graphics, with a router and switcher included to create the infrastructure for cameras to be added later. That outpost's tech team will be comprised of volunteers from the area.
“We develop [technical] talent locally,” says Parker. “We've discovered that if they're not part of the community there, importing people from another campus … doesn't work out long term. So we always try to develop from within each community.”
What they'd like to see is NLC continue what has been a very successful process for its AVL team members. “Our worship and production teams work well together, and in talking to other churches that seems rare,” says Jeffrey. “Not everyone sees eye to eye, but that's not a problem. We have a lot of communication between everyone, and that seems to make all the difference.”
