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Rob Willis, Pastor of Journey Church in Barrington, N.H.
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"Sure, we could have spent thousands or more on a better camera, but we wouldn't use most of the features we'd have paid for—by the time we did, the camera could be obsolete." John Hilman, Volunteer Tech Team Member, Journey Church, Barrington, NH.
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"Wirecast is essentially a digital AV switcher, doing the job of what a $10,000 piece of hardware would normally do. It’s an easy way to create a professional-looking production inexpensively." John Hilman, Volunteer Tech Team Member, Journey Church, Barrington, NH
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Concert-style lighting for the 300-seat venue is comprised of 10 Chauvet SlimPar 64 and 10 Chauvet ColorRado 1-Tri Tours. Control is handled by a Chauvet Data Stream 4 DMX-512 optical splitter for distribution and ADJ's myDMX software.
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From left: Rob Willis, Pastor. Scott Redfern, FOH-Sound Tech. John Hilman, Volunteer Tech Team Member. Josh Metivier, Videographer/Photographer. Brandon Hilman, Worship Band Guitarist.
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To control front of house sound and to produce recorded services, the church uses a Presonus StudioLive 24/4/2 digital mixing console with a Mac mini running Presonus Virtual Studio Live software and a Presonus HP60 headphone mixing system.
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Telestream’s Desktop Presenter app, part of the company’s Wirecast 6 software, is used to integrate slides and titles shown on-screen in the auditorium and for adding those elements to the live stream.
Journey Church, a growing, mid-sized church in Barrington, N.H., doesn't have a huge budget for technology. Yet, they have found ways to put elements of the latest technology to work to attract local followers, as well as to expand the church, reaching more worshippers via the Internet.
“There are many churches that have better technology than we have,” says Pastor Rob Willis, “but we have learned how to do a lot with a little. The trick is to know what you need at the moment and take the next step to 'move the ball down the field a little'.” Journey Church's all-volunteer technical team operates the technology in their recently acquired 300-seat sanctuary and has implemented several cost-effective Internet-based strategies that are introducing the church's contemporary worship style to a world of new worshippers.
Willis, a native of the Northeast, moved to Rochester, N.H., in 2003 to take over Journey Church when it was just six weeks old, with just a dozen-or-so members. Under his direction, the growing church moved to an industrial location when it reached 150 members and, most recently, made a move to its new home in Barrington just a few miles from the University of New Hampshire to service its current base of 400-500 members. Willis has a history of 'connecting' with people, but has no background in the technology that today is helping to grow his church. “I don't know a lot about technology,” he confesses, “but as a communicator I'm looking for every possible way to communicate the Gospel. If technology can help me reach more people, I'm all for using it.”
Learning Through Doing
In addition to being open minded, Willis has embraced technology by listening to those around him who are gifted in an area of technology. “I get a thrill,” he says, “when our vision is advanced by using our limited resources wisely.” He offers the example of how the Sunday worship has been transformed with the recent addition of an electronic drum kit. When he saw that it was needed, the drum kit became a key purchase. “I enjoy that type of resource management,” says Willis. “That simple purchase made a serious impact.” The popular 9 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. Sunday services at Journey Church feature contemporary music with acoustic and electric guitars, bass, drums, and keyboard, as well as voices from a small a praise team with two to four singers.
To support contemporary music and worship styles in the new location, Willis engaged John DeGange, principal at DeGange Sound Solutions of Belmont, N.H., to help create concert-like sound and lighting systems in the new sanctuary. DeGange, who has been working with churches since 1992 and established his own design and installation business in 2011, was happy to work with Willis and his technical volunteers to get the best systems possible, involving the team to reduce costs. “I found the volunteers at Journey Church to be very capable,” recalls DeGange. “They were trying to create something special using the tools and talents they had and I was there to provide the big pieces and 'fill in the holes' where needed. It all worked well.”
Getting into Gear
DeGange specified a monophonic sound system to cover the long, narrow sanctuary using three QSC KLA12 active line array cabinets in a single hang over the stage. KLA speakers feature a 500W x 500W power module and extensive DSP features, along with a 12-inch, low-frequency driver and 1.75-inch diaphragm compression driver. For this installation, DeGange took advantage of the KLA's 90x18-degree coverage pattern that would effectively cover a majority of the seating in the long hall. “The KLA's provided the ideal coverage pattern for this single hang,” he recalls, “giving us the ability to hit the back wall and front seats, as well as to shade the down throw cabinet to get more even coverage for the seating area.” With guidance from DeGange, the volunteers were able to improve sound in the main sanctuary with acoustic treatments for walls that they built and installed themselves.
To cover low-end necessary to support contemporary music, DeGange installed two QSC KW181 subwoofers that feature a 1000W (2 x 500) Class D power module and an 18-inch cone transducer. DeGange frequently recommends QSC speakers. “QSC makes my job easy,” he says. “QSC are high-quality speakers that sound great. For my church and school business, their speakers and amps cover a large percentage of what I'm looking for. Plus, their support is outstanding.” An additional QSC GX3 425W amp is installed to drive two Wharfdale Titan 12 passive speakers used as stage monitors.
"I don't know a lot about technology, but as a communicator I'm looking for every possible way to communicate the Gospel."
Rob Willis
Pastor, Journey Church, Barrington, NH.
On stage, all instruments go direct with guitarists using Line 6 pods and Line 6 wireless packs to get the sounds they need and freedom to move on stage. Shure SM57 wired microphones are used along with a Shure BLX4R wireless receiver and BL2/SM58 microphone. To control front of house sound in the sanctuary and to produce recorded services, the church added a Presonus StudioLive 24/4/2 digital mixing console and a Network Sound Mamba digital snake using MediaNet protocol over standard CAT 5 cabling along with a Mac mini running Presonus Virtual Studio Live software and Presonus HP60 headphone mixing system.
DeGange worked closely with the church volunteers to install wiring for audio and lighting, where the church volunteers would install the cable and DeGange would attach endpoints and test. Dividing the work saved the church the expense of labor and kept the project on schedule. DeGange installed trusses at key areas over the stage to provide locations with dramatic concert-style lighting, as well as even lighting more suitable for broadcast recording. The church provided fixtures, including 10 Chauvet SlimPar 64 fixtures to provide up-lighting and wash effects, and 10 Chauvet ColorRado 1-Tri Tours to supplement lighting moved from their previous location. Lighting control is handled by a Chauvet Data Stream 4 DMX-512 optical splitter for distribution and ADJ's myDMX software.
To enhance the worship environment, DeGange installed a high-quality 164x103-inch Vutec projection screen high on the back wall along with a Sony VPL-FH36 3 LCD 5,200-lumen projector. “That screen and projector combination offered the large, clean projection system that Journey Church needed at a great price point,” he recalls.
Eye on the Big Picture
Where some church leaders might be looking for a bargain, Pastor Willis looks more at whether the equipment in question will provide a good starting point for his team. “We welcome the opportunities to use new technology,” he says. “It makes it easier for us when it's not too expensive. We want to be able to move fast in order to take advantage of technology we can really use today and not invest heavily in features that we might never use.” As an example, Willis offers that what his team has done with the basic consumer video camera has started them down the road to producing video, which he feels is important to the church's future. “Sure, we could have spent thousands or more on a better camera,” he reflects, “but we wouldn't use most of the features we'd have paid for—by the time we did, the camera could be obsolete. We try to buy just what we need to take the first step. Sometimes, that turns out to be something simple. Then, we're ready for the next step and prepared to invest more.”
A particularly network-savvy volunteer, John Hilman, who was introduced to the church about two years ago, has been instrumental in making Journey Church an Internet destination for many worshippers. “Pastor Rob approached me with a vision for online campuses,” says Hilman, “He wanted a way to reach people new to the area to show them what we're all about.” Using the basic equipment at the church, Hilman found some clever ways to use different angles from the church's single, stationary video camera to emulate a multi-camera shoot. He has also found affordable ways to make video content from the church available to anyone with a PC, tablet or smart phone.
Hilman's video setup includes one basic Canon XA20 HD camcorder (outputting to HDMI) mounted on a tripod in the production booth located at the back of the sanctuary. For sound, he takes two outputs from the house audio console and runs each channel into an ART SplitCom Pro splitter with a Whirlwind IsoXL line-level isolation transformer to clean up the sound quality. From there, sound follows two paths: One direction is L/R of the video camera's inputs (for local raw footage) recording directly into the camera and the other set of outputs goes to two channels of a Mackie Mix5 mixer. Panning one hard left the other hard right allows Hilman to use the two aux outputs to create a stereo mix for the line inputs of his streaming computer for broadcast. Hilman calculates the total cost of the setup for sound to be just over $100, which he believes is a small price to pay for better sound quality. “Also, splitting out the audio this way avoids hiccups in sound when switching from one source to another tied to HDMI,” he adds.
Telestream Wirecast 6 software is configured to get the sound source from Hilman's audio setup and video from the camera's HDMI output along with additional video from the church's media PC (an iMac running ProPresenter 6). The Windows PC running Wirecast 6, equipped with a Blackmagic Design Intensity Pro HD capture card, HDMI and Internet connection, was assembled by Hilman for less than $1,000. On Sunday morning, other volunteers use Wirecast 6 software to add titles and slides and preview shots with audio before pushing them live. Telestream's Desktop Presenter app is also used to integrate slides and titles shown on-screen in the auditorium adding those elements to the streamcasts.
Features of the Wirecast 6 software are used to generate the video files to stream Sunday services live while also producing broadcasts for events such as baptisms, weddings, memorials, and mid-week sermons. “Wirecast is essentially a digital AV switcher,” says Hilman, “doing the job of what a $10,000 piece of hardware would normally do. It's an easy way to create a professional-looking production inexpensively.” Since Wirecast can easily duplicate any shot, Hilman can set up on the wide angle and then name that shot, duplicate it, zoom in, then pan left, center, and pan left and zoom in. “You can just change the shot and use different transitions,” he says, “so it looks like you're going to camera one, two, and three, or panning across the stage.”
Using the free service of Church Online Platform, events inexpensively produced by the volunteers at the church are live-streamed or presented on demand at the church's Internet TV station, as well as on YouTube, Vimeo and Roku channels. Using simple embedding HTML code, links can be easily added to websites and made available on mobile and other devices.
The People Behind the Technology
Journey Church's technical ministry consists of two volunteer technical teams who serve two weeks on and two weeks off. Five people on each team serve in operating the camera, attending Wirecast console, mixing house sound and monitors, as well as controlling lighting and producing live video. Hilman has also used the same system components and methods to provide live feeds and looping announcements to flat-panel displays in the church nursery and cafe areas, essentially creating a low-cost and easy-to-operate digital signage system. According to Hilman, “We've made an art form of doing things in a way that looks like we've spent a lot more money than we have.”
Hilman cautions that not all attempts at 'technology-on-a-budget' are successful and that with any new technology you do have to plan for failures. “Mid-week rehearsals are particularly important to try things out in a realistic way before you find yourself in the uncomfortable situation of a failure during a packed service on Sunday morning,” he states. Plus, by starting small, when attempts at new technology do fail or have a rough start, it typically hasn't involved a large upfront financial commitment. There is less pressure since less is at stake. “That's the beauty of taking one step at a time,” Willis offers, “and it's easy to support.”
The church plans to stay with the all-volunteer technical staff that continues to open new doors for them. While it's still early, it's likely that video will continue to play a developing role in the future of Journey Church, and Hilman is already planning a larger streaming PC with a larger video capture card to support additional cameras and inputs. “We are excited about our next steps,” says Willis, who is looking to start a second campus in 2016 that will have components of video teaching and worship. “The opportunities that technology presents to us are incredible and we want to encourage that vision by our volunteers,” he says.
Willis advises churches who hope to grow in the same ways as Journey Church to listen with an open mind to those who are gifted in technical areas, and not to use technology as a tool to measure themselves against churches with big budgets. Most importantly, he also advises churches to know what their next step should be to increase their exposure—not just wait for it to appear—and look for ways in which technology can help.
“I can only see the opportunities for our ministries continuing to expand through the use of technology,” Willis closes. “If we can find people where there are no viable churches, shut-ins, special needs families and 24-hour caretakers, why wouldn't we use technology we could easily afford to reach them?”
