Fielder Road Baptist Church in Arlington, TX has a main auditorium that seats approximately 3,800 and includes high-tech audio and video systems to support a modern worship experience.
As part of its outreach ministries, Fielder Road Baptist also holds two worship services each Sunday in the auditorium of a middle school in an area of Arlington with a large Hispanic population. One service is in English, the other in Spanish.
Because the school uses the auditorium during the week, Fielder Road Baptist operates this outreach ministry as a “portable church” using sound and video equipment that must be set up and removed each weekend.
Don Erdmann, Fielder Road Baptist’s main audio video engineer, wanted the benefits of a digital mixer for the portable church ministry.
However, the digital mixer for this new ministry needed to be compact, reliable and easy to learn and operate It needed to store all settings from week to week to enable fast setup and consistent sound at each service.
In addition, Erdmann wanted the mixer to maintain the church’s high technical standards for operation and sound quality.
Erdmann contacted Baxter Lawson with Sound Productions, an Allen & Heath dealer in Dallas who had worked with church in the past.
Lawson recommended the Allen and Heath GLD Series and set up a demo with the local Allen and Heath rep firm, Aldridge Marketing. Erdman says he was impressed that a church volunteer who attended the demo was able to use the GLD mixer in about 20 minutes.
“The GLD has an analog feel with pots and dials,” he says, “but it’s also got a large touch screen for the digital users.”
Erdmann sets up a GLD “layer” (scene) for each user. This becomes the user profile and makes it possible to customize the GLD for each service and volunteer. “That way,” he says, “the experienced users have lots of power but we can also make it easy for the new people.”
The GLD’s built-in “dSnake” digital snake was a major factor in Fielder Baptist’s decision. “We really needed a digital snake for quick setup and the other digital mixers we looked at didn’t have this feature,” says Erdmann. He also uses the GLD’s Aviom interface for on-stage monitoring.
“Everyone who has used our GLD has fallen in love with it,” Erdmann concludes. “It’s everything we need for our outreach ministry and, if we had a problem with the mixer in our main auditorium, I wouldn’t hesitate to unpack the GLD.”
