In most areas of the country, when families head off to the mall they are thinking about updating their wardrobes and not about finding a place to worship. Not so in Lakeland, Fla., where Pastor Jay Dennis did something most would consider crazy: he remade the shell of an old shopping mall into a home for his church’s growing congregation.
It was christened by its first congregants as First Baptist Church at the Mall. Today, it’s known to a new generation of worshippers simply as Church at the Mall.A good deal of research and demographic studies probably evidenced the future success of the Lakeland Mall that opened in 1971 on Memorial Boulevard, at the time one of the city’s busiest streets. A premier shopping and restaurant district, the 400,000-square-foot mall opened as a local attraction surrounded with popular stores, including Sears, Publix, Eckerd Drugs and Woolworths. It boasted 45 premier stores with Montgomery Ward and Woolco as the main anchors.
"I can’t say enough good things about the RCF loudspeakers.They were great to work with. Since the installation, we’ve added more RCF wedges to augment the system and have used RCF at our other campuses.”- Daniel Livingston, Technical Director, Church at the Mall, Lakeland, FL.
The mall was very successful through the 1970s and 1980s, until 1988 when local shoppers were attracted to the new 900,000-square-foot Lakeland Square Mall that had opened just a few miles away.When Sam's Club (located in the former Woolco store) moved from the old mall to the larger and more modern Lakeland Square Mall, the shoppers moved out, too. Its anchor stores gone, the Lakeland Mall closed its doors and sat empty until 1998 when it was purchased by Lakeland’s First Baptist Church leaders. In line with the plans for a church campus built on the footprint of the deserted Lakeland Mall, the old Woolco/Sam's Club portion of the building was redesigned to be used as a 2,400-seat main sanctuary for the church, including technology to support modern worship.
From Outdated to Updated
The original AVL systems installed at Church at the Mall worked well for the church’s traditional and progressive services until about five years ago. “We started seeing signs that our production systems needed to be upgraded to better support our pastor and worship teams,” recalls Daniel Livingston, the church’s technical director. “The audio system, in particular, wasn’t meeting our needs.” In recent years the church has moved forward on upgrades of other technology, including the replacement of four camera locations with Panasonic AK-HC3800 digital camcorders followed by major improvements in video control room equipment to support HD quality. Control room upgrades included moving to a Grass Valley software-based Karrera production switcher, Grass Valley's easily expandable Kaleido multiviewer system, and K2 media server and storage platform. The Karrera K-Frame switcher’s modular design offers users multi-format support, including 1080p and 4K, and a simple upgrade path as production needs change.The church lighting control was updated with a High End Systems Full Boar 4 lighting control system that includes two 15.6-inch multi-touch monitors with 10-point multi-touch and two additional video outputs. Four on-board DMX universes drive the rig, and two gigabit Ethernet ports are provided for console networking. “We love our Full Boar lighting console,” notes Livingston. “It provides all the programmability that we need, as well as straightforward control for our operators.” Livingston’s team has also replaced aging lighting fixtures with Robe Lighting Robin DLX moving Spots and MMX WashBeam fixtures, along with Robin 100 LEDWash fixtures and super-slim Robin 600 LEDWashes.
Audio Overhaul
With upgrades to video and lighting systems in place, just over a year ago, Livingston started looking closely at how to improve an outdated and marginally designed audio system. The church technical teams support two services on Sunday, one traditional and one progressive, but according to Livingston, their demands for audio aren’t all that different. “Other than the choir at the traditional service and the progressive service tending to be louder, both services use pretty much the same instrumentation: electric and acoustic guitars, piano and keyboard, drums, bass, and featured vocalists—give or take one or two players,” he says.
“As an experienced FOH engineer, I feel right at home on [the new Studer Vista 5 console]. IT sounds and feels like analog, but it’s digital.” - Daniel Livingston, Technical Director, Church at the Mall, Lakeland, FL.
“Our first move for improving audio was to find a suitable replacement for the mixing console we had outgrown,” Livingston continues. After auditioning other consoles that could support the church’s demand for over 100 inputs, he decided on the robust and flexible Studer Vista 5 console. “The analog feel of the Vista 5 appeals to me,” he says. “As an experienced FOH engineer, I feel right at home on it. It sounds and feels like analog, but it’s digital.”To find the best option for an FOH system, Livingston, who has many years of experience designing and mixing on systems in churches, theaters and road productions, demo’d different systems, ultimately landing on a system built with RCF powered TTL-33 active line array cabinets. According to Livingston, the RCF system presented the best combination of features for Church at the Mall. “These speakers sound really good. Plus, they are a good economical choice,” he says, “because each cabinet has built-in power and signal processing. It’s everything in one box.” Prior to installation, RCF engineers checked Livingston’s audio design that carefully considered the audio characteristics of the fan-shaped, 2,400-seat sanctuary.
Livingston’s team replaced aging lighting fixtures with Robe Lighting Robin DLX moving Spots and MMX WashBeam fixtures, along with Robin 100 LEDWash fixtures and super-slim Robin 600 LEDWashes.
Plans included providing side fill speakers necessary to provide proper coverage for the sanctuary’s wide seating area. The final design to be implemented called for 12 RCF TTL33-A active, three-way line array cabinets in a left-right array hang of six boxes on each side. TTL33-A cabinets feature 750-watt switching amplifiers and six high-power neodymium transducers, plus a 96 kHz, 32-bit DSP for signal processing. TT22-A dual 12-inch cabinets were added to each side to provide the needed fill in the fan-shaped sanctuary. TT52-A active dual 5-inch two-way cabinets were installed as front stage lip fills. Six TTS36-A dual 18-inch subwoofers installed on stage provide all the necessary low frequency enhancement for the system. “The RCF boxes sound phenomenal,” says Livingston. “The subs are very ‘musical,’ and vocals sit nicely in the mix. The system sounds clean and powerful throughout the sanctuary without being harsh.”RCF’s proprietary networking protocol software, RDNet, provided Livingston the ability to properly time align the system, but also provides both control and important monitoring features for all of the church’s RCF system objects. Since each device has its own DSP, engineers can address specific presets or modify parameters on a single object or groups of objects on the network, including changing level, delay, EQ and advanced subwoofer configurations. While reconfiguration using RDNet could be used to change the system to support traditional or progressive worship, Livingston and his team chose to have one DSP configuration for the room and handle changes in musical styles via changes of scene settings on the Vista audio console.
“The RCF line arrays were easy to install,” Livingston notes. After riggers installed a cantilever system to provide the needed mount points for proper speaker locations and an electrician added the necessary power runs, Livingston’s technical team was able to handle the bulk of the install, including the speaker hangs, all low voltage electrical, and commissioning the system. “I can’t say enough good things about RCF,” says Livingston. “They were great to work with. Since the installation, we’ve added more RCF wedges to augment the system and have used RCF at our other campuses.”
A Church on the Move
The past year has seen Church at the Mall’s original pastor, Jay Dennis, retire, and the entrance of a new and dynamic pastor, Aaron Bugner. Burgner is wasting no time taking full advantage of the church’s new technology and positioning Church at the Mall for future growth, including the addition of more technology at new campus locations. “It’s a great time for this church,” says Livingston, who notes that the new leadership has lit a fire under the established church and the church community in Lakeland. “It will be exciting to see where Church at the Mall is headed.”
