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Destiny Church of Rocklin, Calif., recently completed a major transition to a concert-style venue (left). In similar fashion, the church’s youth facility (right) recently received a major lighting upgrade to help support a new EDM-style (electronic dance music) worship service.
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Caleb Franke, teenage son of Destiny Church’s technical director, Rick Franke, designed the lighting system for the youth facility. "We wanted to host something that would attract kids from the local area, not just those who already attend Destiny Church," says Rick Franke.
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Most of the new lighting fixtures at the church are from Elation Professional or its sister company ADJ. For example, in the newly redesigned youth facility, a truss ring over the stage features ADJ Inno Spot Elite, and 8000-lumen LED-based moving light with motorized focus, motorized iris and six glass gobos.
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"I wanted a stage that I could obviously do a lot with; something that I could make go crazy for EDM and do some cool stuff with, but also be able to dial it down for the youth service." - Caleb Franke, teenage son of Technical Director Rick Franke, Destiny Christian Center, Rocklin, CA.
Originally planted as Sunset Christian Center, the current Destiny Christian Church in Rocklin, Calif., has seen a lot of changes over the past 27 years. Pastoral leadership, however, has remained constant, with the original founding pastor Greg Fairrington still leading the church.
“Our current building is about 18 years old,” says the church's creative arts pastor, Kent Ferrin. “It has an auditorium with raked seating for 1,200 people. The stage has a mid curtain and a movable drape covering the back wall. A roll-up door leading onto the back of the stage provides easy load-in and -out, and makes doing things like hosting concerts much easier. It gives us a lot of flexibility.”
At one time Destiny did a number of live theater-type segments and events, and incorporated drama in the weekend services almost every week. They have moved away from that, favoring concert-style music instead of drama.
Over the past five years the church has upgraded its technical systems to keep pace with the changes in the service elements. They first worked on the main auditorium, upgrading the audio and lighting systems, and most recently performed a significant overhaul of the youth ministry space.
Main auditorium Audio
“We brought in Russ Berger Design Group (Addison, Texas) to take on the acoustics aspect of the main auditorium,” describes Ferrin, “and Wally Duguid of Special Event Services (Winston-Salem, N.C.) handled the audio system design.” The system being replaced was designed for choir and piano, and was not up for handling the new concert-style worship environment the church wanted to create.
“We installed a JBL Vertec VT4887 line array system, with three arrays giving a left-center-right configuration,” describes Duguid, the system designer for the project. “At that time, the JBL system was well-suited to the space. To select between the various options that would work, we facilitated having the church staff visit a number of venues to listen to their sound systems, and the JBL system is what they liked the best.”. Lab Gruppen amplifiers power the sound system, with a Yamaha DME 64E DSP system providing audio signal processing. The church recently upgraded the audio console to a Yamaha CL5. “The new audio system was important,” adds Duguid, “but at least 50% of the improvement in the sound came from the acoustics work of Russ Berger Design Group.”
“With audio, the original system was simply antiquated,” states Ferrin. “This new system allows us to present a much better time of worship that is pleasing to the ear, with great coverage in the auditorium. The old system had coverage issues and we wanted to make sure that every seat would now be a good seat. The line arrays we put in really helped us with eliminating the hardness the old system possessed. And the new Yamaha CL5 audio console allows us to have better rehearsals. Sound checks are better because of the upgrade to the new technology.”
"The lighting was such a huge upgrade, and some aspects took people by surprise."
Rick Franke
Technical Director, Destiny Christian Center, Rocklin, CA.
A Focus on Video Production
While drama may have been phased out at Destiny, video production has taken a significant role in communicating information to the church's congregation. Brandon Kauffman, the church's media director, joined the staff just a few months ago, focusing on media production work.
“We do weekly announcement videos, as well as videos covering the various ministries at Destiny,” states Kauffman. “We are shooting video on pretty much a daily basis to produce the media for the services and online use. We just obtained a couple of Canon C100 cinema cameras and a set of Rokinon cinema lenses for them, and have ordered a 3DR Solo drone helicopter for getting aerial footage. We also use a monopod a lot instead of a tripod as it enables us to move from point to point quicker, and an Atlas 30 camera slider dolly helps us get nice, steady camera motion shots.” For video in the auditorium, Kevin Hartman, Destiny's media director at the time this renovation took place, along with Alive Media based in Sacramento, Calif., outfitted the main auditorium for video presentation as well as live video capture and image magnification (IMAG).
“Destiny wanted to preserve as much of their existing investment in equipment as was reasonable,” reports Adam Armstrong, owner of Alive Media. “To that end, we reused two of their Sanyo XGA projectors, expanded the side screens to a 16x9 format, and simply masked off the top and bottom of the 4x3 projected image to use then in a widescreen format. The church wanted to do both a broadcast video mix which would be used for recording as well as transmission to monitors throughout the facility, and also an IMAG mix for the auditorium.” For a center screen, the church's lighting designer, Rick Franke, who also serves as the church's technical director, added an Elation LED video wall, giving the church the ability to use video or still image backgrounds to set the stage look.
“We wanted to have an SDI infrastructure, and at the time, the Panasonic switchers were the most cost-effective option for the broadcast and live mixes,” Armstrong adds. “We used the AV-HS400 for the broadcast mix, and the AG-HMX100 for the IMAG feed. We kept an analog patchbay for the video cameras, since back then there were no SDI routers that fit within the project's budget.” Panasonic HD video cameras were also installed, with an AG‑HPX370 being used as the main manned camera. An AW-HE870 camera mounted on a pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) remote control system with the AW-RP655 remote controller and an additional PTZ camera, the AW‑HE50, rounds out the camera complement. A Clear-Com Tempest intercom was also installed for communication between the director and camera operators.
To bring the service and other video material to those gathering in the lobby, Destiny Church installed a video wall consisting of 45 Elation EZ6 LED video panels, creating a huge impact on those entering the facility.
Lighting with Intention
The lighting upgrades over the past five years may be the most interesting aspects of the improvements, and show some of the unique aspects of Destiny Church's ministry approach.
Franke, also owner of Illuminate Lighting Services, was especially invested in the project, and knows the church's DNA and ministry style. “Destiny is definitely a cross-generational church,” Franke states. “We want to create an atmosphere that people feel is exciting and relevant, but also to create an environment that people feel comfortable worshipping in. We have a great senior's ministry with 300-400 people, and there are 200-300 in the youth group. There's not one demographic that outweighs another.”
“What we had before the auditorium renovation five years ago was an all-conventional system,” states Franke. “We had a lot of Par cans and ellipsoidals, and used scrollers to get some color. We eliminated all of the Par cans and color scrollers, and started buying LED color-mixing fixtures as they became of sufficient quality. We've really liked the Elation Sixpar fixture, which has red, green, blue, amber, white and Ultra-violet emitters. We've kept the ellipsoidals for our key lighting for now, but almost everything else [is] fixtures from Elation.” Along with the Design Spots, Design Washes, Rayzor Q12 and Par-style LED fixtures, an Elation HX500 hazer was added to show off the beams of light from the fixtures. “The lighting was such a huge upgrade, and some aspects took people by surprise.” Franke notes. “The first week we added in the haze, people thought the building was on fire.”
A Jands Vista T4 lighting console is used in the auditorium for controlling the rig. “The Vista System is very intuitive, and works great with volunteers,” adds Franke.
The most unique aspect about the use of technology at Destiny Church, however, is its youth ministry programming. The recent upgrade to the youth auditorium includes a lighting design by Franke's teenage son, Caleb Franke, which is designed to support not only the youth services but electronic dance music (EDM) events. “We wanted to host something that would attract kids from the local area, not just those who already attend Destiny Church,” states Franke. “So, once a week we put on a weekly event on Wednesday night for high school students. It might be a DJ event, feature EDM, or a live band.”
“I wanted a stage that I could obviously do a lot with; something that I could make go crazy for EDM and do some cool stuff with, but also be able to dial it down for the youth service,” explains Caleb Franke. “The design I wanted to go with was a really full look on the stage; all the gaps being filled in really well and obviously a lot of color—versatility was key.”
To keep the project within budget, the Frankes turned to both Elation Professional and ADJ, sister company of Elation Professional. Products selected include the Elation Rayzor series, Inno Color Beam Z19, ADJ Inno Spot Elite, Elation EPAR Tri, ADJ Dotz par, ADJ Mega flash DMX strobe light , ADJ Ultra bar 6, ADJ Sweeper Beam Quad LED, Z- 350 Fazer hazer/fog machine, and ADJ Pixel Tube. A Jands Vista PC-based lighting controller with an S1 programming wing is installed in the senior youth room, and a Vista system with an M1 playback wing is installed in the junior youth room. “For cross training Vista has been really good for us. Today's new LDs, the kids coming up through the youth ministries, are so visual so they pick up the Vista system really easily. And the Elation fixtures have really stood the test of time—some of these fixtures have more than 8,000 hours on them [and] only [require] very basic maintenance.”
Franke says that the church leadership completely embraces the new systems and ministry initiatives for the youth. “They understand that you need to do something exciting to attract young people. Pastor Greg is a big believer in reaching young people and sees the potential for outreach in holding these types of events.”
