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The Refuge church in Charlotte, N.C. In 2011, The Refuge bought 30 acres and then waited on God’s direction.
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Two Panasonic PT-DW740UK video projectors with edge-blending technology cover a 30-foot wide by eight-foot high video screen. The screen is placed about 10 feet above the stage floor. A Sony MVS-3016A 2ME switcher feeds the center screen, and has the flexibility to frame IMAG or other video content as a picture-in-picture format over graphic content, eliminating the need for side screens.
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The Refuge church video wall.
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When the project began, The Refuge did not have an on-staff technical director. Church leaders worked with WAVE to refine the vision and create an A/V/L design solution that would meet the church’s goals while staying within the church’s budget.
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"The system they needed had to be affordable, but that doesn’t mean cheap." - Joe Jones, Project Manager, Summit Integrated Systems, Lafayette, CO.
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High-energy worship is a priority at The Refuge, and the sound system designed and installed by Charlotte-based WAVE is geared to deliver just that. The system features loudspeakers from Fulcrum Acoustics, QSC power and DSP, and a Midas Pro2 mixing console.
Having your church located in the greater Los Angeles area has its advantages. Home to Hollywood as well as a vibrant recording industry, a church can find itself with some serious volunteer talent to draw from. And that's the case at Shepherd Church in Woodland Hills, Calif.
“There are a lot of very accomplished people who're part of the church,” says Michael Bradford, bass player and audio tech at Shepherd Church. Bradford is a producer and audio engineer in addition to being a veteran studio musician, having worked with Anita Baker, Stevie Nicks, Kid Rock, Ringo Starr, Dave Stewart, and many others. Joe Fiorello, a lead audio engineer at the church, is a production manager at Musicians Institute in Los Angeles, and an accomplished recording and live sound engineer. Another audio volunteer is Mauricio Guerrero, a five-time Latin Grammy winner in the field of sound engineering.
Shepherd Church's main campus is in Porter Ranch, Calif., an affluent neighborhood in the northwest region of Los Angeles. The church attracts a diverse, multi-cultural group of people—Bradford quotes Lead Pastor Dudley Rutherford as saying the church's diversity is “what heaven will look like.” Growth drove the opening of three satellite locations in Agua Dulce, Woodland Hills (West Valley), and the West Side campus in the Westwood region of Los Angeles, on property owned by the Veteran's Administration. Across all campuses, Shepherd Church draws about 10,000 people each weekend.
Bradford, who initially volunteered as a greeter alongside his wife, plays regularly on the worship team at West Valley, but also mixes broadcast services on occasion at the Porter Ranch campus. “The church environment brings a pleasant, great-sounding room and a great staff with a truly great attitude,” he says. “Audio pros can sometimes be a little bit elitist with their knowledge, but at church it's not about resumes, or credits, or money. It's all about using whatever talents that God gave us for the purpose of serving Him.”
The West Valley campus meets in a high school and faces the same challenges of any portable church: limited access to the venue, necessitating complete setup and tear-down each Sunday. As the church continued to expand, it soon outgrew its initial audio capabilities. “Our audio console was an older Yamaha model,” Bradford explains, “and while it's a good console, we bumped up against the number of monitor mixes we could create from it, and we were not able to EQ the individual monitor mixes.” He notes that the technical team also foresees the need to create separate mixes for other areas of the facility.
Cutting the cord
Having been a Mackie fan for years, Bradford was intrigued by the company's new DL32R wireless mixer. The DL32R doesn't have a traditional physical control surface; it's completely controlled through an iOS app. The mixing hardware itself is rack-mounted backstage or onstage with the other backline gear, eliminating the need to run a snake to an FOH mix position. “When I showed the feature set to the church staff, they were very excited about the possibilities this would open up,” Bradford says.
While Fiorello confesses to being an “old school mixer” who enjoys having 48 or 56 faders on a console right in front of him, a current theatre gig has him mixing in the orchestra pit on an iPad that is sync'd to a Yamaha M7CL. This allows him to hear what the audience hears, including the front and center fills. He says that the Mackie system seems to be the next logical step in the shift to wireless mixing. “The advantages to not having a physical mixing console are vast, including no loss of seats in the prime seating area,” he says. “Not having to deal with cumbersome snakes when set-up time is a premium is also a huge win.” And as an added bonus, because the unit is onstage with the rest of the backline gear, the chance of running up against ground loop issues from multiple power sources decreases: “There's less chance for the guitarist to get a shock when they step up to the vocal mic.” The mixer also enables musicians with iOS devices to control their own monitor mixes, and their access to it can be restricted to their aux send.
Wireless mixing from a tablet isn't without its challenges, however. “At a church,” Fiorello describes, “it's not uncommon to have a situation like this: the praise team has just completed their bit, you see the pastor in the wings getting ready to come up to deliver his message. The band needs to complete the tune, then bumper music is coming from a computer from another location. My mind knows I have to mute the six praise team mics, mute the worship leader mic, fade VCA for band, un-mute the video playback input, and un-mute the pastor's mic after the bumper and be prepared to ride the levels.” On a large control surface, this is simply a question of managing VCAs and faders, which are all visible to the engineer. On a tablet, it becomes a little more complex: “I find myself taking shortcuts—un-mute the pastor and hope he doesn't sneeze, un-mute the video and hope they do not need to re-cue. I believe it's just a question of time before someone offers a good Bluetooth work surface that is programmable to help pull off some of these moves that are quite commonplace in theatre and places of worship.”
With space at a premium, however, Associate Pastor Chester Nisperos says that the church's acquisition of the wireless mixing system was a wise decision. “Adopting the Mackie DL32R is a smart and best-practice move on our part from a portability, flexibility, and affordability viewpoint,” he says, noting that it leaves room for other equipment. “And not having to roll out a snake and tape it down is a huge time-saver.”
At the same time it acquired the Mackie DL32R, the West Valley campus replaced its old L-Acoustics speakers with Mackie SRM750s. “We've only had the Mackies for a few weeks, so it's a little early to tell as I'm still tuning them to the room, but they definitely have a lot of horsepower,” Fiorello says.
Lighting and Video
For lighting, Shepherd Church's West Valley team loads in a combination of ETC Source Fours and Chauvet LED fixtures. A two-scene preset console is used for control. “We hope to upgrade to a ChamSys MagicQ PC-based lighting control system to give us more flexibility and control,” Nisperos explains. “I'd like to get to where we have the service pre-programmed so we get more consistent results from service to service and week to week. And that would also enable a less technical volunteer to run the cues.”
The school allowed Shepherd Church to install four lighting pipes on the walls of the facility for front lighting, and Chauvet LED lighting is used for color washes and uplighting. An older Christie projector is used for the center screen where the
sermon is projected, and Epson projectors light up two side screens. Renewed Vision ProPresenter is used to run media for the services.
People Before Technology
Bradford believes that as sound processing—including EQ, compression, gating, and effects—grows in complexity, in combination with the shift to wireless mics and in-ear systems, the onus is on tech directors to remain on top of the latest innovations. At the same time, church technicians should optimize their knowledge of the gear on hand. “It's great and fun to get new toys, but part of good stewardship is also making sure we get the most out of what we already have,” he says.
Doing church tech is different than operating technology in the secular world, Bradford notes, because in the secular world the goal is to sell something, be it a product or a performance. At church, engineers are laying the groundwork for people to worship and communicate on a spiritual level.
“So yes, it's a tech thing, in that we use technology. And yes, it's a people thing, in that people work together for a higher purpose,” he says. “But it's really a God thing. When people are at church and all the barriers to worship are removed and the atmosphere is created to encourage uninhibited worship, then we have done our part in growing the Kingdom of God.”
