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"They added retractable raked seating to give the new space clear sightlines to the stage, but also enable them to move the seating out of the way for other types of events." Mark Thompson, Owner and Primary Designer, Clarity AVL, El Dorado Hills, CA.
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"We moved into a space that we could afford, and this helped turn the church around. We also started giving a portion of the church’s income to missions, and have slowly increased that over the past decade." - Lorin Miller, Associate/Worship Pastor, Auburn Grace Community Church, Auburn, CA.
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A glass-roofed atrium is used as a fellowship hall, and for overflow space. This space is fully integrated with the main audio system in the auditorium using a Dante digital audio network.
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"We decided to go with a Crestron control system that has a dedicated touch panel in the video booth and an iPad app for remote control." - Mark Thompson, Owner and Primary Designer, Clarity AVL, El Dorado Hills, CA.
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A Crestron control system allows a non-technical volunteer to set up the sound, video and lighting systems for simple, mid-week functions with a single push of a button. The same system helps the church operate its weekend services with just three volunteers.
Auburn Grace Community Church has seen a lot of change over the past 10-15 years. About 15 years ago, church attendance at the Auburn, Calif.-based church decreased and the senior pastor resigned.
“When I first came on staff at Auburn Grace Community Church,” says Lorin Miller, associate/worship pastor, “attendance was about 50-60 people. Phil Sparling, the youth pastor at the time, had just been promoted to senior pastor, and he was faced with a lot of difficult decisions.”
Miller continues, “Pastor Sparling rebuilt the church staff with people he felt could do what needed to be done. The leadership wanted to move slowly and carefully, rebuilding the church on solid biblical principles.” With the lower attendance also came lower income, and the church decided to move out of the building that had been their home for many decades and into a smaller space, renting out the building to another congregation while the church regrouped. “We moved into a space that we could afford,” explains Miller, “and this helped turn the church around. We also started giving a portion of the church's income to missions, and have slowly increased that over the past decade. We now give 12% to missions.”
After a couple years the church grew and gained momentum, and was able to move back into their original facility. Now with about 800-1,000 in weekly attendance, the church turned its attention to modernizing their aging facility.
“If you're trying to attract people who don't go to church,” Miller says, “how you take care of your building does matter. No one goes to a restaurant that's run-down and smelly—you go to one that's nice. Likewise, the building needed some serious work and modernization to make it both appealing and [to] attract those in the community once again.”
Miller himself also has undergone a change throughout his career. “I received my degree in Bible with a Music minor from Oral Roberts University,” he states, “and then went on to get a Master's degree in Humanities. I've been involved in music most of my life, and have toured as a classical musician. However, I spent over 20 years working in television production in Los Angeles, working on high-end TV commercials as a location scout and photographer.”
Fifteen years ago, though, he transitioned into full-time church music ministry at a large mega-church in Sacramento, Calif., which let him follow the calling God placed on his heart and enabled him to be at home with his family significantly more often. After a few years, God opened a door for him at Auburn Grace, which was a better fit for his family. At Auburn, Miller has both the worship ministry and technical production ministry under his leadership.
Flexibility & Ease of Use
"They added retractable raked seating to give the new space clear sightlines to the stage, but also enable them to move the seating out of the way for other types of events."
Mark Thompson
Owner and Primary Designer, Clarity AVL, El Dorado Hills, CA.
The renovation included architectural upgrades to many parts of the church facility with a significant part of the project upgrading the audio, video and lighting systems to become more flexible and user-friendly. Through prior good experiences at his previous church with Clarity AVL based in El Dorado Hills, Calif., they were the logical choice to get the call for the project at Auburn Grace.
“Auburn Grace wanted to extend [its] seating capacity by removing the back wall of the sanctuary and expanding the space into the former atrium and office area,” describes Mark Thompson, owner and primary designer for Clarity AVL. “So this was a significant change in the room. In this new area, they added retractable raked seating to give the new space clear sightlines to the stage, but also enable them to move the seating out of the way for other types of events. And it’s because of the wide variety of events that flexibility and ease of use were so important. “When I walk in to meet with a potential church client,” Thompson continues, “I ask a lot of questions about what happens at the facility at times other than the weekend services. This needs to drive the design of the AVL systems as much as does the weekend services.” Auburn Grace holds a number of events throughout the week, and since the church relies on volunteer staff it wanted to make sure that simple events could be handled without the need to call in a tech team. Therefore, Thompson paid close attention to the details of what happens Monday through Saturday.
“There are a lot of events where the only thing needed is a microphone for the person talking, video from a laptop, and basic stage lighting,” Thompson presents as an example. “Therefore, the system design needed to take that into consideration. We decided to go with a Crestron control system that has a dedicated touch panel in the video booth and an iPad app for remote control. The DSP for the audio system is a Peavey Media Matrix Nion which we’ve set up to process both the outputs of the audio mixer as well as some direct stage inputs. By integrating it with the Crestron control system, one press of a button will send a mic input directly to the PA system without the need to pull out and set up the audio console, and it also can activate the video system.”
For larger events and weekend services, the church has an Allen and Heath GLD80 console on a cart that gets wheeled out to the floor. This allows the room to be mixed from an ideal position, but doesn’t require dedicated space allocated on the floor. The lighting system is controlled through a Mega-Lite Enlighten One system located in the Crow’s Nest at the back of the room, but can also be controlled by a Lightronics SR516D 16 button controller. The SR516, in turn, is controlled by wall panels around the facility. These nine-button controllers call up lighting presets that incorporate both house and theatrical lighting. The video system is primarily fed from a Mac running Renewed Vision’s ProPresenter, which is also placed in the Crow’s Nest. However, a wireless keyboard, monitor and mouse extension system allow ProPresenter to be controlled from a position next to the audio console, if desired.
This combination of a movable FOH position, Crestron control and wireless technology allows Auburn Grace to fully staff an event like its weekend services with three techs; allow a simpler event to be run with just one or two techs; or very simple events to be run with no tech volunteers at all.
Immersive Video
The original video plan was to do the usual motorized drop-down projection screen against the back wall of the stage, until Miller and Lisa West, one of Auburn Grace’s lighting volunteers, had a vision for something better. “She wanted their video use to be more integrated into their environment,” says Thompson, “and not merely be a screen mounted on the wall. So, they built a wall positioned out from the back of the stage and used screen paint to turn the wall into a video screen. Mega-Lite NE Color FX18 LED light bars positioned behind the wall allows them to create colors and effects that extend the colors of the background videos out from the screen and across the back wall of the stage.
"One of the things we care about when selecting manufacturers for a project is, how will they take care of you after the sale?"
Mark Thompson
Owner and Primary Designer, Clarity AVL, El Dorado Hills, CA.
In addition, the Enlighten One +Media media server option for the lighting system is able to output HDMI video that’s used as the background for their ProPresenter lyric slides. In this way, the lighting console is in full control over the video content as well as the lighting scenes, and provides seamless integration between the two. It works and looks fantastic.” A Panasonic PT-DX100UK 10,000-lumen projector was reused from prior to the renovation since it was still up to the task for brightness. A short-throw lens replaced the previous lens on the projector, enabling it to be mounted closer to the wall and prevent items and people on stage from obstructing the sightlines between projector and screen. The Crestron system includes a video switcher for controlling what signal gets sent to the projector.
Lighting & Control
Besides the Mega-Lite Enlighten One with +Media controller and the LED light bars behind the screen, most of the house and stage lighting is provided by conventional fixtures from Electronic Theatre Controls (ETC) and generic PAR can fixtures. Four new Lightronics dimmer bars were added to new lighting positions to support additional lighting options. They also make use of a couple older Elation intelligent fixtures that were purchased several years earlier.
“We initially chose Mega-Lite for the lower costs, which helped us stay within budget,” says Thompson. “But they have been great to work with, and we’ve now used them for several projects and are very happy with them.”
Audio Integration
Part of the overall renovation project was to enclose the outdoor courtyard that was formed by the “U” shaped building, turning it into a beautiful glass-roofed atrium and fellowship space. It’s also used for overflow space for large events, and they wanted this space to be fully integrated with the main audio system in the auditorium.
The Dante digital audio backbone of the audio system was extended into this part of the facility, providing both inputs and outputs for audio support. “Something pretty cool is that one of the Allen & Heath ME-1 personal monitor mixers that are used for the band can be brought out into the atrium and used as a 32-channel mixer, feeding into a small powered loudspeaker, to mix an event out there,” states Thompson. For the auditorium PA system, a Tannoy VQ speaker system was chosen. “The VQs are very natural sounding,” states Thompson, “and you can get crazy loud with [them] if you really want to. It provides us with very even coverage in this space. We also use two of their VS 218 subs flown over the stage in an end-fired array.”
Thompson adds, “One of the things we care about when selecting manufacturers for a project is, how will they take care of you after the sale? Tannoy has provided us with excellent service.”. Lab.gruppen provides the amplification power, and Renkus-Heinz wedge monitors are used for the vocalists, with the band using in-ear systems. “The entire project went really well,” Miller concludes, “and Clarity AVL has been excellent to work with. They went above and beyond. The flexibility we have in controlling the system is just what we wanted, and the way the video projection and lighting works together gives us a lot of options for changing our look.”
