Over the past 15 years, Kingdom Sound & Lighting has grown from a rental company to a leading designer and installer of sound and lighting systems, primarily for church and school applications.

The company’s customer base continues to expand in terms of both numbers and geographic scope. Based in Burnsville, MN, outside of Minneapolis, the company employs nine full-time staff members, with satellite offices in Brainerd, Minnesota and Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

Loren Bartelt manages Kingdom Sound & Lighting, and he recently took time to share his approaches regarding the keys to success in the systems contracting market, customer relationships, managing growth and more. PSW Install Sound Editor Keith Clark vistited Kingdom’s main offices for a first-hand look and conversation with Loren.

(Editor’s Note: Click here to check out a recent Kingdom Sound church project)

Keith Clark: What’s your background, as well as that of Kingdom Sound & Lighting?

Loren Bartelt: I’ve been involved with electronics and mechanics practically my whole life.

Loren Bartelt, multitasking at his desk.

Audio and lighting was always interesting, and I worked with the audio system at the church where I grew up in the ‘60s. It had a Bogen amp and Argus speakers on the wall, and when it worked it was marginal. When it didn’t work it was probably better (laughs). I joined Kingdom Sound & Lighting about 15 years ago, having run a couple of small businesses, working for several companies in the mechanical field and spending some time with the engineering lab at Toro, testing products like lawn mowers.

At the time, Kingdom was primarily a rental company, providing systems for local concerts, including some of the bigger Christian acts. Area worship leaders attended these concerts and would ask if Kingdom could design and install systems for their churches. For a time, the company resisted, but then did one and it was a big success. This led to a contracting division, and then they began expanding further with an MI store and some other things.

The company came to grow too fast, resulting in some difficulties. I was managing the contracting division at the time, and was asked about purchasing the company. I did, and set about building the operation that exists today, a systems contracting company specializing primarily in church and school markets, along with other areas like hotels and ice arenas. But our first love is the church market.

Keith: Why the primary focus on churches?

Loren: I have a natural passion for it, and all members of our company share this. We’re not just a sales company, we’re a training and education company, doing seminars and accepting invitations to speak to churches about systems.

Kingdom’s main offices in Burnsville.

We feel that churches don’t always understand sound, how it really works and how it can become an important part of their worship services. By going in and teaching them and training them on how it works and what to do, we’ve gained a lot of confidence from the local church market as a company to trust. This is a most satisfying way of doing business.

Keith: What are some of the common difficulties you encounter in the church market?

Loren: More and more, churches want to get into contemporary worship, but they often know next to nothing about the technology side required to do it right. They might have one or two microphones, a couple of speakers, and may not even know what a stage monitor is.

We’ve taken an approach of supplying demo systems, showing how to use the system and then leaving it with the church over a weekend. This makes a big difference in their understanding.