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At the top of the equipment list you would expect to see an amazing new digital mixing console, right? Wrong. Two Midas Heritage 3000 consoles provide 15 feet of analog bliss, according to Production Manager Andrew Stone.
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The Christmas event is structured more as an edgy, high-tech variety show as opposed to a scripted show with a drama theme running throughout.
If you look at Church on the Move in Tulsa, Okla., now, you'd never guess that just a few short years ago this church was very traditional in service style.
“Our auditorium didn't have many elements that would ‘grab you,'” says Production Manager Andrew Stone. “The music was very churchy, and we had few creative elements. The house lighting was just basic fluorescent lights. In fact, compared to what we do now, it was rather boring. Lots of blazers and ties, and the music was a traditional large church band complete with a brass section. Definitely not very cool or edgy. There were fern plants and flags everywhere—very ‘Midwest.' Forty- and fifty-year-olds loved it, but there wasn't much of an edge to anything.”
Despite being well attended, Pastor Willie George noticed an issue surfacing. As the church grew older, the younger generation wasn't staying in the church. The services weren't doing much to hold their interest.
George's son, Whitney George, also on staff, started discussions on what could be done to reverse that trend. One of the big issues noted was there was little connection between the younger generation and those on stage. “Almost every person in the band was a seasoned professional in their 40s or 50s,” explains Stone. “They didn't have that angst that comes across emotionally of the person who's scared to death to be playing in that huge room.”
So Church On the Move started revamping the service style, Stone reports, saying, “That's how I and a lot of our team got here. The music changed over a short period of time. We started changing the look, feel, sound, culture, and even the basic DNA.”
Within just a few months, Church On the Move was doing very different music. They ceased using professional musicians, and the demographics of the on-stage talent changed significantly.
“At 43 years old, I'm now actually one of the oldest people here working the services,” Stone says. “Almost everyone on stage could be my child. We went from almost all paid professional musicians to younger volunteer players, and we did it really quickly. We were terrified that first weekend, and it wasn't perfect, but it worked, and we knew that this was the way to move forward. We needed to simplify some things to make it possible for the younger musicians to do it. But one thing about most of today's worship music is it can be quite simple to play. And, this has spawned some of the cooler things we do, like our Christmas production.”
The promise of Christmas
While the church’s production has become a Tulsa tradition, Stone makes it clear that at Church on the Move, everything is constantly re-evaluated, and if something no longer appears to be a “win,” they do not hesitate to drop it. In the case of the Christmas production, however, it has been a consistent win.
“A ‘win’ in the context of the Christmas production for Church on the Move is getting people to return and be a part of this church, or for that matter—any church. [We try] to get them involved in church somewhere. We use this event as a reason for someone to walk in the door that wouldn’t normally enter a church. Tons of people come who would not walk through the door of a traditional church. And we plan our biggest sermon series of the year starting the first weekend in January. We’ll then do a sermon series on something in January that would intrigue a person new to church, such as on marriage or relationships. Some of our largest church attendances are in January and February because of the Christmas production.”
Planning, & Lack Thereof
The Christmas event is structured more as an edgy, high-tech variety show as opposed to a scripted show with a drama theme running throughout. And the creative process is rather random, occurring later in the year than Stone is ideally comfortable with.
We use this event as a reason for someone to walk in the door that wouldn’t normally enter a church.
“So I’m sitting here today on September 4th, and I don’t know what we’re going to do for Christmas yet,” Stone says. “It’s not looking like it’ll be a big technical show. And it’s cool that we’re free to be freeform in our planning and creativity, but it’s very daunting. Every year about this time, we’re going, ‘What are we going to be doing?’”
Stone continues, “Whitney George, who was our creative director last year and is now our executive pastor, comes up with random individual bits as he goes about his days. And these get woven into a tapestry. He looks at how he thinks different age groups will react to each piece. Is there something that every age will latch onto? It generally looks like a strange collection on paper, but when you see it, it always works. It changes a billion times—they are looking for those moments, and one moment may not work well where it’s sandwiched into the flow. It just morphs. It can be one of the most frustrating production situations you can find yourself in. I want decisiveness. I want to know what I’m working towards. And it’s constantly changing. It can be particularly frustrating for people like our lighting designer, where knowing the sequence through each element as well as through the entire show gets to be especially important.”
From a technical perspective, the production team might see an effect or look that’s popular in a touring show and use it as a creative jump-off point for their own show. In the months leading up to the 2013 event, lasers were a popular effect on the Justin Timberlake tour that came through, and it gave them some great ideas on how to utilize a similar concept.
The production started with the Dallas String Quartet playing a unique, high-energy arrangement of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” followed by a rich and lush version of “Carol of the Bells” as a duet, with most of the band backlit in silhouette, building to a high energy level and lots of lighting flooding the auditorium. This transitioned into a colorful dance number to an edgy version of “Sleigh Ride” that extends the energy level from the previous element.
Next, the production takes a dramatic turn in a radically different direction that perfectly demonstrates Stone’s comment about things looking strange on paper. Imagine an edgy, funky, hip-hop-like version of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” meets David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.” Robot-like dancers in space suits backup the lead vocalist with lots of blue lighting and lasers, and add in some flying effects for the lead vocalist just for good measure. “It’s probably the least Christmas-feeling event you’ll ever see,” Stone notes. “But it has a massive Christmas message. The first three numbers are quite big and awe-inducing. Most of the cooler stuff we blow out in the first three songs. It’s not unlike a big concert—a big opening and a big ending.”
“When we try to build this into a stage set that’ll work,” Stone continues, “that’s where some of the real artistry starts coming about. How are we going to take this crazy thought process that has these poignant moments and do it in a way that affects people?”
When it comes time to present the Christmas message, they pull out a piece that was created by John Mitchell, one of their long-time band members. “He wrote this amazing orchestrated piece that walks you through the Christmas story,” Stone describes. “It’s an awesome and moving moment, and it’s very effective.” Then when it’s over, they may go into a big worship moment that sets up the pastor for an invitation to accept Christ.
The Gear that Makes it Happen
Stone has done an excellent job in covering the details of the AVL equipment in his blog at https://seeds.churchonthemove.com/blog/post/24, where many of the details can be found. Yet, here are some of the highlights of the church’s equipment usage and philosophy.
For audio, Church on the Move is very attached to the Harman family of companies. Their JBL Vertec line array system is powered by Crown amplifiers; audio is routed by BSS Soundweb London DSPs and DBX 4800s. And here’s where you expect to hear about the amazing digital audio console, right? Wrong. “Our front-of-house system is pure awesomeness,” Stone says. “We have two Midas Heritage 3000 analog audio consoles linked together to function as one console. It is 15 feet of analog bliss, and is freaking amazing to mix on because it sounds so good. I’ll stay with this until it quits serving us and no longer enables our ministry to be effective.”
Guitar cabinets are kept backstage in a room dedicated for guitar amp isolation. Once set up and mic’d, a rolling isolation case is wheeled over the amp to minimize sound spill into the other amp’s microphones.
"We went from almost all paid professionals to younger volunteers."
Andrew Stone
Production Manager, Church on the Move, Tulsa, OK
“You will see guitar amps on the stage with microphones in front of them, but they are just there for the set design—they aren’t actually connected to anything,” says Stone.
For lighting, Church on the Move has an extensive lighting infrastructure, and until this year used a MA Lighting GrandMA console. “We finally got to the end of what the GrandMA was capable of doing,” Stone shares. “I never thought that could happen. So we’ve upgraded to the GrandMA 2.” GrandMA OnPC is used in other rooms at Church on the Move that require that level of lighting control.
DMX is distributed by Pathway Connectivity’s Pathport DMX-over-Ethernet nodes. The combination of the GrandMA 2 and Pathport gives them eight universes to play with, and since they reconfigure their lighting system frequently, they opt for the touring edition of the Pathport nodes.
Outside of a core set of fixtures, most of the moving light inventory is rented instead of purchased. “This provides our lighting designer with a lot of flexibility, and eliminates a lot of maintenance from his workload,” states Stone. “Here’s what’s interesting, though. We don’t just build up a Christmas set and tear it down when the show is over. Whatever we put in for Christmas we use for a few months. So we really need to challenge our notions on how this will make sense for us. The primary reason is this: I don’t want someone who was blown away at Christmas to come back and see everything torn down and simple when they return to check out a weekend service. That feels like a bait-and-switch move to me. So we do the same level of production throughout the year.”
The core lighting rental for this production included 36 Elation Platinum Beam 5Rs, 24 Martin MH3s, 18 Martin Viper Profiles, and eight Martin Viper Washes.
“A cool addition to our arsenal are the Martin VC-Dots,” Stone adds. “We actually purchased these two years ago. These were used to outline the large scenic triangles you see in the show.”
Church on the Move is a big fan of Martin lighting fixtures, and primarily rents that brand. “They work great, and they really complement the style of Daniel Connell, our lighting designer,” Stone says.
Two Barco I-6 LED walls replace the traditional projector and screen utilized in most churches. The 2013 Christmas production was the last event where Church on the Move used its Hitachi SD video cameras. “Honestly, these SD cameras looked so good on the HD LED walls, no one ever guessed that we weren’t sending an HD resolution image to the screens,” says Stone. A Barco FSN-150 switcher is used for the IMAG and streaming feeds, preferred for its low latency. And for the audio to accompany the video stream and Vimeo channel videos, they simply use their FOH mix. “I make sure that the FOH mix is as good for the video feed as [it is] for the room,” states Stone.
For the flying effects, Louisville, Ky.-based ZFX was brought in to work with the team. “We worked directly with their team to integrate their fly system plan into the stage and rigging design we had already flown and implemented,” describes Stone. “Once we had things figured out on paper, they sent one technician out to us and he worked with our production staff to get it flown and checked out. That same guy also stayed for a couple of days and trained/certified two of my staffers as flymen. We’ve brought ZFX in a couple of times now, and it’s been a very simple deal to pull together. So it was a collaboration of a certified flying effects company bringing in the knowledge and then my crew actually operating the system for the run of the show. [It] was the best of both worlds for our team.”
Overall Effectiveness
While not the traditional church Christmas production, no one at Church on the Move doubts its effectiveness. It’s worked excellently for them as an outreach program, but rather unexpectedly as an “in reach” program, as well.
“We hired the Dallas String Quartet for this year’s production,” Stone closes. “One of their players, someone who was not a Christian, was so affected by being a part of the program that he accepted Christ. And on returning home after the event, his wife and son were so affected by the life-change they saw in him that they also accepted Christ. They all returned to Tulsa to be baptized here.”
