When Emergence Church in Totowa, N.J., set out to reach a “younger” audience, they discovered that demographics were not to be their main concern.
“Emergence began as our Lead Pastor Ryan Baitzel's desire to communicate the Gospel to those who were outside the church,” explains Executive Pastor Steve Hawthorne. “But it has turned out to be far more than a demographic issue. It's a culture-change thing. There's a very cynical culture in the Northeast. No longer do people come in and sit down and view the preacher as an undisputed authority. We want to do our best to make sure people don't miss the Gospel because of the way we try to communicate it.”
Hawthorne says, “You can have the fanciest show and in our culture, it can be seen as manipulation. The DNA of Emergence Church is Christ-centered; even [with] the production components, we don't want [them] to get in the way of communicating the message. We have a real simple DNA here: we think everything is a Gospel issue. It's not a style issue, a tech issue—it's a Gospel issue. That governs all we do as a church. We want to present Jesus, even if it costs us some creative elements. If we fail, it's because people rejected the Gospel—that's all we present.”
But failure is the last thing Emergence Church is seeing. Started six years ago as a multisite campus of Jacksonville Chapel, the staff began with about 50 people attending. Growth was rapid, resulting in Emergence having three Sunday morning services and one Sunday evening service. After prayerful consideration by Jacksonville Chapel leadership, Emergence Church “emerged” from Jacksonville Chapel and was planted as an independent entity in former warehouse space in December 2011. Currently, Emergence Church is averaging about 1,100 in attendance.
Qualified self-design
The church's new location was originally designed for industrial use, and it needed a complete internal renovation. The church's part-time technical director, Ken Marechek, and church tech volunteer Todd Peden (who works full-time as a manufacturer's rep for AVL companies) led the effort to select and install the audio, video and lighting components for the new space.
While not all churches have people with the background to handle the AVL design, Marechek and Peden both have backgrounds that made it a safe road to travel. Installation was performed by Rich Hochuli at RHAVS in Oakland, N.J.
“My schooling background is in film and video production,” describes Marechek. “After school I got into doing post-production work and volunteering at my church. Eventually, I landed a job at an audio production company, doing support for live corporate events and concerts, and doing some installation work. For the past three years I've worked as a freelance audio production person, supporting events in an A1 or A2 (primary or secondary audio engineer) capacity.”
Usually Marechek functions as A1 [first audio engineer] for the church's services and has a volunteer crew to assist on audio as needed, and to run the video system. “While I enjoy working outside of the church and the interaction this affords with the non-church, I'd love to be full-time at the church someday,” he adds. “I really believe God has called me to serve this particular church body.”
Peden has worked in the AV world for a long time, and is employed by SKMAC in Reisterstown, Md., a rep firm for companies like Roland Systems Group and Chauvet Lighting. Peden volunteered his time to research options for AVL systems, presenting them to Marechek and Hawthorne as the renovation of the space proceeded.
“Part of the decision process was simply personal preference,” states Peden. “We chose equipment that was best aligned with what the church was doing in the praise band. This meant support for high-energy, high-output systems.”
Audio system selection
“there’s a very cynical culture in the northeast. no longer do people come in and sit down and view the preacher as an undisputed authority. We want to do our best to make sure people don’t miss the gospel because of the way we try to communicate it.
Steve Hawthorne
Executive Pastor, Emergence Church, Totowa, NJ
Peden's familiarity with the Roland product line led him to recommend a Roland-based solution for audio and video. The tight integration and ease of use throughout and between the various Roland products created a system and workflow that matches the church's overall philosophy of “simple, but effective.”
A Roland M-480 serves at front-of-house (FOH) as the audio console, with Roland M-48 personal monitor mixers for the band members and a Roland R1000 48-channel digital audio recorder and REAC digital snake.
With all components based on Roland's REAC digital snake, integration between these components is tight and provides significant ease of use, Peden reports. Audio inputs are connected at the stage box end of the digital snake, converted to digital audio, and transferred via simple CAT5 networking cable to the R-1000 recorder. The R-1000 has a pass-through for the REAC protocol, and sends the signals through another CAT5 cable to the M-480 mixer. To play back the recorded tracks, the engineer just hits play on the recorder, or uses the recorder controls built-in to the M-480 mixer. No repatching of cables to feed the console from the recorder is necessary.
“We use this for training new people without needing a band present,” Marechek says, “as well as [for] multi-track post production of our music. We can easily produce rehearsal recordings based on our multi-track recordings so that our musicians have practice recordings exactly the way we play the songs.”
In addition to multi-track recording using the R-1000, the M-480 mixer provides for two-track recording directly onto a flash drive inserted into the USB port on the console's control surface. “This lets Emergence get the sermon up on the website immediately at the end of the service,” states Peden.
The M-48 personal monitor mixers are also integrated with the console, enabling both the musician on stage as well as the engineer at the console to adjust that musician's monitor mix. And the M-480 console can also send presets to any of the M-48 mixers, enabling the FOH engineer to set each musician's personal profile on their mixer while the band is setting up.
For the loudspeaker system, Peden says Tannoy was chosen for its high output levels with good imagery, and Lab.gruppen amplifiers, a sister company of Tannoy, was selected for its high power capabilities in the smallest rack space.
For loudspeaker management and speaker processing, a Rane HAL system is used, selected for the support of remote audio devices. “The HAL system enables people to plug in an iPod or a microphone and use a wall panel to send the signal to the PA system, without having to bring up the entire sound system. No one is needed at the FOH position to just play some background music or use a microphone for announcements,” explains Peden.
Wireless and wired microphones and wireless in-ear monitors are all Shure models. For monitoring the wireless systems, Shure's Workbench software runs on a Mac at FOH.
Video support
For video support, the church wanted the ability to adjust the appearance of the stage without using physical set design. To this end, the church contracted with Frank Keresztes of RGB Services in Manahawkin, N.J., to install an 11-foot by 20-foot Da-Glas (manufactured by Da-Lite) glass rear-projection screen starting at floor level. Yes, glass—weighing in at approximately 1,500 pounds.
“We use the recording feature on the Roland M-480 console for training new people without needing a band present."
Ken Marecheck
Tech Director, Emergence Church, Totowa, NJ
“The glass screen is significantly more brilliant,” states Peden. Hawthorne adds, “Architecturally, the glass screen fits in much more seamlessly.” It's installed more like just another wall in the room, instead of being treated like an add-on screen. Although, baseball games in the auditorium are probably out of the question now.
Two side-screens are used for lyrics and sermon notes, using Hitachi projectors. A high-lumen Christie projector handles the center screen.
“A Roland V-1600HD video switcher controls output to the screens,” says Peden. The V-1600HD can be configured as a two-zone mixer, allowing separate signals to be sent to the side screens and the center screen.
“We typically send just the background image to the center screen,” states Marechek, “and the same background signal with lyrics overlaid to the side screens.”
For video capture of the services, a feed from the V-1600HD plus feeds from the Vaddio PTZ camera, the pastor's mic, and ambient mics go into a Roland VR-5 AV Mixer and Recorder. This enables another volunteer to both mix audio and select video for the sermon recording as well as future video streaming.
Macs running ProPresenter are used for both graphics needs in the auditorium, as well as digital signage feeds to flat-panel monitors throughout the building.
Lighting and control
In line with the “keep it simple” theme, lighting doesn't get any more extravagant than using color for setting mood. Chauvet LED lighting is used for the stage to keep power requirements and temperatures to a minimum, with Colorado 1 fixtures for front lighting; Colorado 1-Tri fixtures for back lighting; and Colorado Batten 72 cyc fixtures around the perimeter of the room, allowing all the walls to be washed with color.
House lighting is provided by basic incandescent bulbs at the end of ceiling-mounted rods. A Leviton 12-channel dimmer provides dimmable power for the house lighting system.
Control of the various systems, including lighting, is handled by an Aurora Multimedia system. “The Aurora system is a control system comparable to an AMX or Crestron system,” describes Peden, “but significantly less expensive, and programming can be performed by anyone—no special licenses or software systems are needed.”
The Aurora system controls lighting presets, and can be used to control the projectors, video switcher and Blu-ray player.
Through well-selected systems that integrate tightly with each other, Emergence Church is able to use sophisticated technology to achieve its goal—keeping services simple to keep the Gospel at the forefront of all they do. Originally intended to reach young adults, Emergence has connected with people of all ages, from teens through seniors, showing that the Gospel's enduring truth doesn't need window dressing to prevail.
