There are few opportunities more satisfying for church tech directors than when leadership, opportunity, passion and collaboration collide in the creation of a new space for modern worship. For Danny Dagher, production director at Christ Fellowship, based in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., that experience was one he was able to share with
his entire team as they helped design systems for their new Port St. Lucie campus auditorium. “For us the end goal was to create an experience that engages people,” states Dagher. “We want people to be able to come in and connect with the content and the message, and in production we want to do our best to facilitate that. The Port St. Lucie campus has given us an opportunity to take everything we’ve learned and create something better than we’ve ever been able to before.”
First Steps
Dagher’s pathway to that kind of visionary leadership, however, wasn’t nearly as clear when he first sat down at an audio console. “I’ve been involved in production in some form or another since I was 12 years old, but I never saw myself in a production director role,” shares Dagher. “Even up to four years ago I saw myself as the guy sitting in the audio seat.” “I’m the story of investment,” continues Dagher.
“I’m the story of investment. When I was young I had a mentor who really fostered my interest in sound and took me under his wing.” Danny Dagher, Production Director, Christ Fellowship Church, Palm Beach.
“When I was young I had a mentor who really fostered my interest in sound and took me under his wing. He actually taught me to mix a full orchestra with 55 channels of input, so I was really fortunate to be exposed to that early on.” After years working in a number of different live production and studio settings, Dagher first began his tenure with Christ Fellowship by serving for a year as a volunteer. “Continuing to grow and learn is how I’ve landed where I am today,” he shared. “A while back our leadership approached me and began to encourage me. They called out some of the things they thought would make a good marriage between me in the role and where the church was heading.”
A New Domain
Like many multisite churches, the decision two years ago to launch a new Christ Fellowship campus in the community of Port St. Lucie came together as a blend of opportunity and design. “The original facility belonged to Digital Domain,” says Dagher. “Our first service there happened in spaces that used to be just offices and cubicles, which was really rough with the 12-foot ceilings.“But the response from the community was overwhelming. There were literally people sitting in the halls watching TVs,” Dagher continues.
“No one was expecting that. After that, the struggle was about how we could create a great space to reach the people that were showing up.” When the time came to begin designing the new 2,000-seat auditorium for the campus, the production ministry was invited to be a part of the process from the very beginning. “We really built the kind of trust with leadership where we could say, ‘If we move some things around we could have a better level of engagement and immersion,’ [and] they listened,” states Dagher. “It was really our first campus where AVL became the driving factor of the design. We’d never had that level of trust and collaboration with the architects and leadership, and it was incredible.”
The production team’s insistence that every aspect of the worship experience exceed expectations made a big impression on the AVL design team from Mankin Media Systems of Franklin, Tenn., who partnered with Christ Fellowship on systems design and installation. “I loved the intentionality that we were able to exhibit through the integration of all different types of technology to really create an immersive worship environment,” shares Tim Corder, senior solutions advisor with Mankin. “The most humbling thing was to see how it was received, and how the effectiveness of the environment propelled all of the amazing growth at the location.”Corder continues, “Christ fellowship has an extremely high excellence bar. Their goal is to create the best, most distraction-free experience for their attendees. It’s so rewarding to walk alongside and dream together with a client like that.”
Some Assembly Required
The primary driving consideration in the design of the new Port St. Lucie campus audio system was ensuring the highest possible quality. To achieve those results Dagher and his team selected L-Acoustics line arrays following an extensive testing process. “We’ve had a long relationship with L-Acoustics going back to 2009,” says Dagher. “We love their products and their support is second to none. They have boxes for every size or style [of] room you can imagine, from kids spaces to youth spaces to conference rooms, and the boxes are so consistent.”
“We’ve had a long relationship with L-Acoustics going back to 2009. We love their loudspeakers and their support is second to none.”Danny Dagher, Production Director, Christ Fellowship Church, Palm Beach Gardens, FL.
For mic’ing the vocalists and communicators the production team chose Shure and Aviom. “We went with six Shure PSM-900s, which are being driven by an Aviom monitoring system,” Dagher reports. “All of our bands are accustomed to maintaining their systems, which takes a lot of the pressure off the FOH audio engineer. Those systems are just rock solid.” For video control, Dagher and his team went with the Ross Carbonite Black.
“We use a Ross switcher at our broadcast campus, and we’ve stuck with their products to deliver our experiences,” he says. “We’ve been with them for a long time and it definitely seemed like the right fit for the campus.” He adds, “We really want that what-you-see-is-what-you-get feel when it comes to representing what’s happening on the platform with quality and integrity.” Which is among the reasons why the team selected Panasonic 4K AK-UC3000 cameras with Fujinon ZA lenses for accurate visual representation, he shares.
On the Light Side
In order to create the most immersive experience possible, the production team chose LED displays from CreateLED. “It’s the first campus that our side screens and 3:1 center screens are all LED,” states Dagher. “Mankin really helped us walk through the whole process. They’ve been great in helping us incorporate everything.” He continues, “With lighting, there are a lot of companies creating affordable lighting that makes a huge impact. That means that, for us, the sheer number of lighting instruments that we can now use creates an amazing palette for our lighting designer to work from. Previously that just wasn’t achievable, but it’s possible now because of where technology has gone.”
To create that palette Christ Fellowship’s lighting designers chose to move forward with a mix of Martin Quantum Profile and Chauvet intelligent LED fixtures.
“The dream is that we continueto connect people to Jesus, and the way we do that is by creating engaging experiences.” Danny Dagher, Production Director, Christ Fellowship Church, Palm Beach Gardens, FL.
In Conclusion
“We’re dreaming of pushing into engagement with every discipline,” states Dagher. “We don’t need to be bleeding-edge all the time, but part of our dream is to instill in our teams that desire to drive our disciplines to the highest level we can in order to support the mission and vision. Whether that means pursuing training or certifications, we want to be continuing to learn and grow.”
Ultimately, what matters most to the entire production team at Christ Fellowship is that they stay faithful to the mission. “Ministry is not easy, but to me the difficulty is the indicator that the mission is important and worth doing,” he says. “The dream is that we continue to connect people to Jesus, and we do that is by creating engaging experiences. Each of the people on our team have a specific gift set, and us doing whatever we can do to connect people to the Gospel creates the win for our ministry.”
