By Dawn Allcot, Photos by Steve Wulf.Thanks to an Electro-Voice distributed sound system and NetMax N8000 DSP control system, congregation members can hear the word loud and clear during sermons performed by Young, his brother Senior Pastor Scott Young, or any of the other six pastors on staff. The addition of a three screen, six-projector video system controlled by dual Vista System Spyders, takes the projection systems to the next level. According to Young, this particular combination of blending and warping through a dual control system has never been done before, and required some technical support from the projector manufacturer to help get it to perform properly. Meanwhile, architectural and theatrical lighting help set the atmosphere in the sanctuary with colorful wall washes and other special effects.
But that’s not where the Church of Hope’s technology begins.
The prominent “Tower of Hope,” a 15-story steeple, employs the same lights used in Las Vegas’s Luxor hotel; 3.2 billion candle power of illumination highlights a 100-foot cross, while Studio Due CityBeams wash the outside of the tower in colored lights.
When congregation members pull in to the parking lot, they hear music distributed through 30 loudspeakers mounted on 25-foot-high poles.
All this, plus extensive A/V, lighting and broadcast systems inside the building, showcases the church’s commitment to technology.
Room to Grow
When Senior Pastor Scott Young, Peter’s brother, joined the interdenominational Church of Hope in 1996, it had only 35 members and was deep in debt. Dynamic growth brought the church up to 500 members by the time Peter Young arrived in 2000. At that rate, the church would soon outgrow its 17,000-square-foot building.
“The property itself would not have allowed us to expand beyond 1,500 people,” Young explains. “We were living and operating on a campus that was far too cramped.”
After four years of prayer, negotiations, bids, building permits, fundraising, and architectural planning, the church broke ground, in 2005, on a 52,000-square-foot worship center spanning 16 acres of the church’s new 50-acre property on I-75. On Palm Sunday in 2007, the Church of Hope held services in its new sanctuary, signifying the completion of phase one of the six-phase building project.
The facility includes a sanctuary with room for 1,390 chairs, a 3,500-square-foot foyer with an espresso bar and eight LCD screens, a game room called “The Zone,” a choir rehearsal room, a life center, a worship chapel, a recording studio, and office space.
Total cost of the audio, video, lighting, and broadcast systems exceeded $1.2 million, with close to $700,000 going to video, including broadcast systems, $400,000 spent on audio, and approximately $150,000 spent on lighting.
Winter Springs, Florida-based Encore Broadcast Solutions designed, specified, and installed most of the audio, video, and broadcast systems, but sub-contracted parts of the project. Encore’s Jeff Cameron says, “They wanted to do some pretty sophisticated stuff … and wanted to find someone who would work with them within their budget.”
The church saved money by selecting a lower-cost, yet equally effective distributed sound system instead of a line array loudspeaker system, sub-contracting Longwood, Florida-based Pro Audio Solutions to install the audio gear, and buying the lighting fi xtures direct from Jacksonville, Florida-based ARC Associates Lighting Inc. With help from ARC’s President Fred Costantini and world-renowned lighting director Dan McKendrick, Young designed the lighting systems himself. Young was exceptionally pleased with the entire experience, noting, “Above Encore, I really chose Jeff Cameron. I was confident in his competence to supply the right equipment and to work with me when I needed something. We built a trust relationship.”
Distributed Sound
The audio system in the sanctuary was designed to grow with the church. In the future, the sanctuary can become a gymnasium and youth sanctuary, with zoned sound systems and a movable athletic curtain.
The Electro-Voice (EV) NetMax N8000 audio system controller and DSP processing hub fulfills a number of purposes for the church. Because all audio processing can be routed through the system, the church didn’t have to buy multiple DSP units for each room. Most importantly, the system provides the flexibility needed as the church’s audio requirements change.
Ricky Johnson, president of Pro Audio Solutions, comments, “NetMax is flexible and expandable as a matrix management system and DSP processor. It can grow with the church as their facility gets larger and as their system zones and equipment requirements change.”
The contractor installed one N8000 controller as a DSP processing hub, and another to remote control the zones, running seven inputs and outputs.
The church’s Media Director Lee Valenti or any of the four audio engineer volunteers can control the volume and EQ in the main sanctuary, classrooms, coffee bar, parking lot, or any other zone from any Internet-equipped laptop.
At Cameron’s recommendation—and after attending a Bosch Communications Systems House of Worship Expo in Florida—Young was sold on using Bosch Communications products throughout, including Electro-Voice Xi series speakers, EV mics, Klark Teknik compressors and equalizers, and Dynacord mixers in the studio and the Zone.
Monte Wise and Jim Pfitzinger of EV answered Young’s questions and offered support throughout the project. “Bosch has great products and great support,” Cameron says. “That’s why I went with them.”
The main sanctuary includes EV Xi- 1153A, Xi-1123A, and Xi-2181A series speakers fl own in a left, center right configuration, painted black to match the ceiling over the stage and the sanctuary walls. Four additional Xi-1152As were added as delays halfway to the back of the sanctuary. Four EV Xsubs were placed under the stage, with Xi-1082s used as front fi lls. The speakers are powered by CP Series amps. The room was modeled with EASE software.
A Yamaha M7CL 48-channel digital mixer was used at the front-of-house position, with a 16-channel expansion card added. On stage, Aviom personal mixers were specifi ed for use in the sanctuary, along with four EV Zx5-60 fl oor monitors. The 16/o-Y1 Aviom A-Net Interface Output Card allows musicians to receive a live feed directly from the mixer.
The room did not receive any acoustical treatment, but the saw-tooth ceiling was designed with absorptive properties for live performance, as well as to hide the theatrical lighting.
Additional EV speakers were placed throughout the building and in the parking lot, where 30 ZX1i100t eight-inch two-way weatherized 70-volt speakers hang from posts and from the portico to broadcast the church’s message outside its walls. These are powered by PA2400T amplifi ers also built by Electro-Voice. “If you drive in and you’re late, you know you’re late because the worship team is on [in the parking lot],” Young says with a laugh.
Professional Lighting, On a Budget
Worshippers don’t want to be too late, though, or they will miss the dazzling array of lighting effects, designed by Young with input from lighting expert Dan McKendrick. The package, all controlled through Compu Live software on the Compu PC DMX controller from Elation, includes Elation Power Spot 700s, Design Spot 250s, 30 Elation OPTI RGB LED-based color changers, and a variety of ETC Source Fours. Recessed LED lights on the side walls allow the volunteer lighting techs to wash the walls in different color, fading from red to purple to black, for instance.
The Church of Hope incorporated the architectural lighting under the same
controls. The house lights can be turned on and off independently, but when the Compu Live software runs, it overrides the manual controls, preventing anyone from changing the house lights during a service.
New Standards in Video
For Church of Hope, the video projection systems set new standards in terms of size, visual excellence, fl exibility, and control. “You’re getting 50,000 total ANSI lumens of projection on a screen that’s more than 600 square feet,” Young says.
Projecting such an image in such a large room, without using rear projection, was one of the most daunting tasks for Cameron of Encore and his video designer, Gadiel Marquez. “If we had the space and the budget to go rear-projection, it would have been easier,” Cameron says.
Cameron and Marquez opted for four Sanyo PLC-XF46N 12,000 ANSI lumen projectors for the 22-and-a-half by 30-foot center screen, and two of the same for the dual 94.5-inch by 168-inch Da-Lite side screens. The center screen is motorized; when the choir is singing, it displays the words to the songs above their heads. When the praise team leaves the stage, the screen rolls down fl ush to the side screens, and images can be blended together. Processing is accomplished through Vista Systems Spyder 240 and 362 control systems.
“Something of this size has never been done before,” Young says, admitting that training his full-time media director and volunteer staff on the equipment has been a challenge, even with help from Sanyo technicians. Moving graphics, image magnifi cation, edge blending, feathering, and warping are just a few of the system’s capabilities. “The Spyder is a complex piece of equipment because it can do so much, and we are still learning about all it can do,” Young says.
While the projection systems have expanded the church’s capabilities beyond anything they could have imagined, the new cameras and switcher have integrated easily into services, helping make the operators’ jobs easier.
Encore specifi ed and installed an EchoLab Opera 3716 16-In/8-Out digital broadcast switcher, a Hitachi Triax Studio Camera package with three Z4000WT cameras, Canon lenses, and a Sony BRC300 pan/tilt camera with an RM-BR300 remote control.
In addition to the sanctuary projection system and the broadcast video systems, the church also has 40 fl at panel LCD monitors, ranging in size from 32 inches to 50 inches, for distributed video in the foyer, the Zone, the Life Center, Studio One, and the Worship Chapel.
Eight 50-inch LED monitors in the foyer allow worshippers to catch the “Live in Five” pre-service announcements before taking their seats in the sanctuary. Digital signage, of course, is the next logical step for churches striving to be ahead of the technology curve, a 21st century twist on the age old tradition of the lobby bulletin board.
“Jesus used what was contemporary,” Young says. “He was artistic in how he told his stories, and told stories based upon what the culture understood. We want to demonstrate, through the use of technology, that we are being culturally relevant.”Dawn Allcot is a regular contributing writer to Church Production and Worship Facilities magazines.