A recent production upgrade to support the ongoing growth at King Jesus Church in Miami, FL saw the church expand its Clear-Com infrastructure by incorporating an existing Encore analog partyline intercom system with a new Eclipse HX digital matrix system fitted with an E-IPA card, FreeSpeak II digital wireless transceivers and beltpacks, a HelixNet digital partyline, LQ Series of IP interfaces, and the Agent-IC mobile app.
The church has attendance of 15,000 to 20,000 each week at both its main and remote campuses located on five continents in addition to broadcasting online to hundreds of thousands of followers, many of whom reside in Latin and South America. Services are offered in Spanish, English, and several other languages.
The continuing growth has led the church to surpass the capacity of the Encore partyline system, with an evolving production crew consisting of camera operators, technical directors, director, producer, audio engineers, streaming coordinators, and various production assistants all working throughout the Miami facility. It was clear that the production team required more flexibility and bandwidth from its comms.
Sean Sweeney of CP Communications worked with KJM technical director Jonathan Garcia, to design the upgrade. “Communicating on Sunday was becoming more and more difficult, when you have 25 plus different people, doing 10 different things and all sharing a four-channel system… the idea of ‘controlled chaos’ comes to mind,” Garcia says.
The design utilizes an Eclipse HX Median frame with 16 ports of 4-wire and 32 IP ports on the E-IPA card, four FreeSpeak II IP transceivers and 15 FreeSpeak II beltpacks, giving them the freedom to roam the building while staying online with the production crew. Also installed was a HelixNet base station and LQ IP interface to support the front of house audio and lighting crews, allowing them to communicate easily.
To complete the new system, they implemented several Agent-IC mobile app licenses with an external internet connection, enabling the production crew to roam outside the sanctuary as needed, all the while still connected on comms. Together this system facilitates a modern workflow that takes into account hybrid and remote workflows.
While also producing in-person services, King Jesus Church produces and broadcasts services around the world. To help produce these global broadcasts, KJM has a broadcasting studio a few blocks aways, which is connected to the main facility over a WAN network, allowing all communications to happen via HelixNet beltpacks. The studio control room is outfitted with an Eclipse HX Delta frame, V-Series Iris panels, E-IPA card, Agent-IC, and FreeSpeak II beltpacks and transceivers.
“We now have a solid and flexible intercom system backbone for our communications that will be able to grow with us as we continue to expand our operations and broadcasting reach,” Garcia concludes.
