Fellowship Missionary Church, located in Fort Wayne, Indiana, is one of the largest Evangelical churches in the area with a membership of more than 2,500 people.
The sanctuary is unique in that it serves as a gymnasium, community room and worship space for the diverse congregation.
Kirk McKinley, technical director at Fellowship Missionary Church, along with other church leaders recently decided that the sound reinforcement system was long overdue for an upgrade. They called upon Circle City Audio (CC Audio), based in Indianapolis, IN, to provide options that would be flexible enough to handle the current demands of the room.
“The room looks a lot like a gymnasium with a stage set back into the far wall,” explains Andrew Van Veld, owner and system designer at CC Audio. “Fortunately it is not your average gym acoustically – the space has been treated well. When the room is filled with seats and people it sounds pretty good.”
With acoustics removed from the equation, the goal was to create a system that would better support contemporary worship services as well as the occasional concert or special event hosted in the space.
Because CC Audio offers live event services in addition to design and installation, Van Veld was very familiar with the Adamson Metrix line arrays – which are a staple of their inventory. He was confident that the compact line arrays would provide the features the evolving sanctuary required.
“We brought in our Metrix system and did a 4-hour demonstration for the church leaders,” Van Veld adds. “We played every variety of music available and they checked it out for vocal intelligibility as well. They had listened to other line arrays, but the Metrix demo sealed the deal. They were very, very impressed with the system.”
“As soon as I heard it I knew we had found our system,” McKinley concludes. “The first thing I noticed was the punch in the mid-range so the vocals are extremely clear. One of my biggest surprises was how clear the pastor sounded on a system that was very musical. The church members are absolutely delighted.”
CC Audio installed left-right arrays, each consisting of ten Metrix line array enclosures – two Metrix Subs at the top followed by six Metrix and two Metrix W enclosures at the bottom. Two T21 subwoofers are located on the ground under the stage for additional low end.
Because FOH is located in the balcony in the rear of the room, CC Audio also supplied an Adamson Spektrix Wave for use as a monitor at FOH. The system is powered by three Lab.gruppen PLM series amplifiers.
