“Our pastor preaches regularly that we all have at least ‘one life' around us that we can affect and bring to Christ,” says Jason Cooper, director of operations and administration for Calvary Christian Church in Bellevue, Neb. This focus on influencing one more person for Christ fueled Calvary Christian's recent reallocation of space within its campus to make better use of the resources God has provided. “We were maxed out in terms of worship space, children's ministry space, and parking,” Cooper continues. However, still owing money on the activity center/gymnasium that was built seven years ago, it was not feasible for the church to take on another building project.
The church's journey up to this point began when it brought on Ron Leach as the new part-time director of weekend services. Leach was the director of the worship arts program at Nebraska Christian College (NCC), and took on the role of bringing the worship style at the church from blended to a more modern, contemporary style. As part of this transition, Leach brought on Barry Stackhouse, an instructor at NCC who teaches instrumental performance and technical production, as the church's part-time technical director to change the direction of the technical ministries team.
“I love working here,” states Stackhouse. “It's a great place for me to bring kids from the college. They do internships here, and it's a great way for them to get experience outside of the classroom. That's also why the college is now located [just outside] Omaha—to be closer to more churches and give the students additional opportunities for real-world experience.”
As the church grew, staff contemplated what would be feasible to ease the space challenges on Sunday mornings. They considered adding services, but this wouldn't help the overcrowding of the children's ministry area during prime attendance times. Another option was to move the offices from the north building where the worship center was to the activity center building (the south building) to make more room for children, but this didn't help with adding capacity to the worship center. They needed another option.
A VISION
At this point, some informal discussions with Church Solutions Group (CSG) based in Lake Barrington, Ill., began. CSG is the college's primary AV consultant, and with two of NCC's faculty now on staff at Calvary, the relationship was a logical outcome.
Dave Miller with CSG walked the church's facilities with Lead Minister Scott Beckenhauer, discussing the options they had considered to date. With none of the options fully addressing their needs, Miller suggested a more radical approach of converting their activity center into the primary worship center. “We needed more seats at the prime worship hours,” comments Cooper, “and converting the activity center would be the most cost-effective way of getting those seats.”
“We just bounced ideas around until we arrived at our final plan,” adds Stackhouse.
“We conducted a vision campaign over three years to raise the money for the project,” says Cooper. Through this campaign they raised the $850,000 needed to make the necessary modifications to the campus; $250,000 was allocated to outfitting the activity center to be a worship center, and to create nursery and pre-kindergarten spaces out of the existing classrooms in the building.
To convert the activity center/gymnasium into the primary worship venue, however, several things needed to be addressed.
“We built out the stage to give them more space,” describes Aaron Asay, church relations for CSG. “Black curtains were added that can be pulled all around the perimeter of the room to make it feel less like a gym and more like a worship space. The curtains also help with the acoustics of the room.”
GEAR SOLUTIONS
A key design goal of the new sound system for the room was musical quality and low-frequency response to support the “rockier” musical style. Meyer Sound cabinets were selected, with the main speakers UPA-1Ps and UPM-1P used for down-fills. The design team also chose EAW FR250Z subwoofers powered by QSC PLX3602 amplifiers. “Great speakers leave less room for error with volunteers,” Asay says. “Everything we put in was with the idea of ‘what would [best] equip and enable the volunteers.'”
A Yamaha LS9-32 audio console serves at front-of-house, chosen for its quality and because of the wide range of consoles available in the Yamaha digital family. “We knew they would have other venues on the campus. As they build out other spaces we can get an appropriate-sized console within the same family,” Asay reports.
For stage monitoring, an Aviom system is used to allow band members to set their own monitor mixes.
Without the means to add additional power to the building, augmenting the lighting in the room required low-power options. “Elation LED lighting is installed for all the stage lighting,” Asay says. “We used their ELED DW PAR fixtures to create a good three-point lighting plot and added Elation TriPar RGB color mixing fixtures for accent lighting.”
The white LED lights have both warm and cool color temperature options, Cooper adds, saying, “The RGBs, of course, have a full color range. Having the color flexibility is a huge step for us. We have a handful of these fixtures that we use on the floor to accent. Being able to change the color of the room is pretty useful for creating mood.”
For house lighting, Leprecon MX-1200 dimmers power ETC SourceFour PAR fixtures, providing warm, dimmable lighting over the seating area. The entire lighting system is controlled by an ETC SmartFade 1296 console.
The church experienced so much growth as the new worship space opened that they immediately needed to add a video venue in the original worship venue, now used as a chapel. So they needed video equipment that would support this.
A JVC GY-HM750 ProHD camera captures the service, and a BlackMagic Design Atem 1ME switcher handles video switching duties. Sanyo WM5500 projectors are used with Da-Lite Cinema Contour screens. To create graphics and slides for lyrics, Renewed Vision's ProPresenter software is used on an Apple MacIntosh computer platform.
The video venue features live worship, but experiences the teaching through time-slipped video. A TiVo system is used to record the teaching and play it back when the video venue is ready to start that part of the service. “This idea we picked up from Seacoast Church,” Asay says. “Using a low-cost DVR like this saved the church at least $10,000.”
Stackhouse recaps: “Our video venue is a mini version of the main room. We have a 16-channel LS9 instead of a 32-channel, and the stage is configured and set similarly.” Meyer speakers are also used in the video venue with JBL subwoofers.
THE END RESULT
“Overall, we are really pleased with what we were able to do with the budget we had,” Stackhouse continues. “People walk in and can't believe it's a gymnasium. The whole system really represents the style of music and service we are doing very well.”
Asay, too, is pleased, saying, “This was a really great project in terms of ‘how much is a church willing to do to increase capacity to reach people?' They didn't have a lot of money. Winter in Nebraska is bitter cold. When there's a foot of snow on the ground, people need to drop the kids off at one building and then walk across the parking lot to the worship center. But this was the best option for them, and the church has grown from 700 to 1,100 in less than two years.”
He continues, “For the church that has the ‘woe is me' attitude, this project shows that it should be about what can be done with what we've been given. What's the most we can do with it? God has blessed that, and continues to bless Calvary Christian Church.”
