One of the greatest challenges many tech ministries face week after week is the difficulty of creating great worship services within environments and spaces that were never designed for these kinds of experiences. The degree of difficulty grows even higher for teams that are required to support two or more radically different types of worship styles such as traditional, contemporary or post-modern.
“There’s nothing in the world like meeting God and connecting people to Him. That’s my heartbeat.” Greg Worzel, Director of Worship, Messiah Lutheran Church, Weldon Spring, MO.
At Messiah Lutheran Church in Weldon Spring, Mo., Sunday mornings begin with an early traditional worship service, followed by two contemporary services that take place in the church’s multipurpose gymnasium. While the multi-purpose nature of the space allows the church and its in-house early childhood, elementary and middle school to share the space throughout the course of the week, the victim of the compromise arrangement was the quality of the sound and lighting.
The shortcomings of the original AVL systems were issues that Director of Worship Greg Worzel knew would need to be addressed from his early days at Messiah Lutheran. Fortunately for him, a deep sense of purpose and calling undergirded his ministry from his very first conversations with the church. “Fifteen years ago the senior pastor from Messiah called and was persistent about meeting with me,” recalls Worzel. “When we finally met, there was a great connection and conversation about our calling, heart for God and the Church.
”That passion for local church ministry was something Worzel shared at a core level with Messiah Lutheran. “There’s nothing in the world like meeting God and connecting people to Him. That’s my heartbeat,” Worzel continues. “It’s so humbling and such a great thing—God is so good to let me connect with Him and inspiring others to connect with Him. There’s nothing like it.”
Gym Class Hero
From the beginning the church’s production team knew that creating great sonic experiences for the contemporary service would be an issue due to the space where the service was held. “Having what we call a ‘church-nasium’ is a challenge,” states Worzel.
“When I first came here it was really hard. We knew we needed to remodel the actual platform, which helped some,” he notes. “The sound, however, was not evenly distributed at all. They did acoustic treatment to deal with delay and slap back, but there were just a lot of frequencies that naturally bumped much higher than they should have. The floor was tile as well, which was very resonant and reflective.”
Another difficulty posed by the church-nasium design was the actual layout of the room. “The challenge with the stage itself was that it goes the full length of the gym, but it wasn’t as deep as we’d like. This meant the band has to be on stage left while the vocalists are separated over on stage right. That means we have to really depend on the stage monitors,” notes Worzel.
As the final obstacle to creating great worship experiences on the weekend, the days in between services were filled with elementary and middle school gym classes taking place in the same physical space. “We put a ceiling-to-floor screen in front of the platform to keep basketballs and volleyballs from hurting anything during the week,” Worzel explains.
Plans for Progress
The process of addressing the shortcomings of the church-nasium sound and lighting systems began with the process of casting a vision for a better future in terms that church leaders and members could understand. “Our system had been in place for 16-17 years, and comparing the technology to cell phone technology helped people understand how much progress could be made with an upgrade,” said Worzel. “It helped also to let them know how much more responsible the investments we were asking for were compared to more traditional technologies like a pipe organ.”
“The single most amazing part of the new installation has been the new Nexo Geo M6 line array system. I would encourage anyone in a room like that to really invest in line array speakers.” Greg Worzel, Director of Worship, Messiah Lutheran Church, Weldon Spring, MO.
“This is a church with conservative fiscal views. We wanted buy-in and support,” continues Worzel. “Having been here 13 years really helped established the trust it took to make that whole process happen. In the end, the congregation trusted us to make the needed changes.”Another important aspect of casting the vision was to purposefully recruit and include other leaders to do some of the heavy lifting. “It wasn’t just me convincing everybody—there were other people in our corner,” shares Worzel. “Visiting other churches with strategic members of the board really helped cast that vision as well.”
Running the Play
Once the decision was made to move forward with new sound and lighting systems the tech team wasted no time moving into the installation phase, which was complete in the summer of 2017. The results were both immediate and impressive. “The single most amazing part of the new installation has been the new Nexo Geo M6 line array system,” asserted Worzel. “I would encourage anyone in a room like that to really invest in line array speakers. They’re expensive, but they’re far cheaper than building a whole new sanctuary.”
For the FOH audio position the church’s team chose the Yamaha LS9-32 digital mixing console. “The Yamaha LS9-32 gives us a lot of versatility, especially with its ability to save individual scenes,” Worzel says. “We also liked the ease of use. It’s easy to turn the board on, pull up a scene and get good results right away. And if our main sound guy has to be gone it’s easy for someone else to come in and get up and running very quickly.”
Moving forward with a digital console also presented a unique advantage in a context that required cooperation with an existing school. “In a church-nasium people from the school side can just go to their scene on the console and get what they need without having to worry about EQ or routing, which is amazing,” explains Worzel.
“Our system had been in place for 16-17 years, and comparing the technology to cell phone technology helped people understand how much progress could be made with an upgrade.” Greg Worzel, Director of Worship, Messiah Lutheran Church, Weldon Spring, MO.
For onstage monitoring Messiah Lutheran’s teams are still in the process of transitioning. “We bought the Aviom system with Shure SE215 in-ear monitors, which has taken some getting used to,” admits Worzel. “Most of our people prefer to use the Avioms with Behringer small powered monitors, which are nice and focused and don’t muddy up the sound onstage too much, but our goal is to get everyone onstage using those in-ear monitors within the next 3-4 months.”
In addition to the sound system overhaul, Worzel and his team took advantage of the opportunity to make big improvements in their lighting system. “We decided to go with the ETC Colorsource 40 lighting console, which isn’t a huge console but it does everything we need it to do,” shared Worzel. “It gives us a lot of control we didn’t have before, which we love.”
Rather than completely replacing lighting instruments that were still useful and dependable, Messiah Lutheran opted to reinforce and expand the church’s current abilities. “We installed 14 new Colorsource LED spot lights and 11 Colorsource LED pars, which we use in concert with our already-existing incandescent lights,” said Worzel.
Eyes on the Prize
While the new sound and lighting systems represent a major step forward in the overall quality of the worship experiences, Worzel maintains that what really matters in the end is the ministry’s commitment to discipleship and growth. “We have some amazing new talent that is coming up and it’s blowing my mind. I’ve been doing this for 33 years, and I’m seeing kids that are going to surpass me,” Worzel gushes. “Now it’s just a matter of teaching them about how to love and serve people.”
He closes, “I’ve been here for 15 years, and it’s great to see how the program has grown and developed. We’re so blessed to have something that I know is going to outlast us.”Alex Schwindt is a filmmaker and writer with over two decades of ministry experience. He’s also the creative director of Alex Schwindt Media, a boutique agency specializing in commercial, documentary and concept film and video.
