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Photos courtesy of Dustin Whitt at Free Chapel
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With between 7,000-8,000 people attending its Gainesville, Ga., campus each week (and more in two satellite campuses), Free Chapel is one of the larger megachurches based in the Atlanta area. Led by Pastor Jentezen Franklin for the past 25 years, the charismatic church has seen steady growth ever since, and has worked to remain relevant to surrounding culture through use of technology. Franklin's Kingdom Connection broadcast ministry, seen both through streaming and over broadcast television around the world, reaches uncounted more. “Music is a big part of our experience,” states Chief Experience Officer Dustin Whitt. “We incorporate a variety of musical styles in our weekend services, from edgy rock to traditional hymns.”
Free Chapel's technical director, Michael Henson, says, “On a typical Sunday we launch [the service] with a news video informing the attendees on what's happening at the church. Then we kick off into music, typically doing three songs. After that comes the announcements and the offering. We do one more song, then go into the bumper video that transitions us into the message.” While the basic service flow remains fairly consistent, how the church executes it can vary signifi-cantly from week to week. “Free Chapel has an approach of ‘everything changes,'” says Whitt. “Nothing stays the same.”
Staff Backgrounds
Both Whitt’s and Henson’s background help facilitate Free Chapel’s style of production. As for Henson, he spent several years working for Majestic Productions out of Summitville, Ind.
“Most of my life I grew up in the church world,” Henson says. “I became saved at a camp during middle school, and during high school sensed the call into ministry. I didn’t see myself as pastor, or missionary, so I kept asking God, ‘What do You want?’ God answered with, ‘Just say yes, and I’ll show you later.’ And that’s what I did.” Throughout his youth, Henson always loved technical things and got involved with technical ministry at his church, learning from those with more experience. As he learned and grew, the ministry direction for his life became clear. “I went to the Passion ’05 conference and was ecstatic over the experience,” Henson describes. “Then at Passion ’06, I started talking to the lighting guy, Jon ‘Hillbilly’ Weir, from Majestic Productions who was there, and made a connection with the owner of the company, Ryan Bates. It turned out that they needed help around the shop, and it developed into a career with them for seven years. I worked on many tours, including Chris Tomlin’s.” Through this experience, Henson’s ministry direction formed into wanting to bring the professionalism found in the touring world to the church. Whitt also was familiar with Majestic Productions, and when Free Chapel opened up a technical director position, he asked the owner at Majestic if he knew anyone that might be interested. Knowing Henson’s desires, he referred Henson to Free Chapel, and Henson and his new family made the move to Gainesville.
Whitt brought the experience of freelance audio work, as well, and had served seven years at North Point Community Church’s Buckhead campus in various roles, including audio and lighting director. Free Chapel hired him as a freelancer when they were having audio issues—before they had any technical ministries staff. After Whitt was able to address the church’s audio challenges, they brought him on as staff. “I was brought on as the service producer to lead the production, music and guest services teams,” Whitt explains, “but also greeters, ushers, etc.—anything that directly impacted a visitor’s first experience at the church. As the church grew, Free Chapel formed a four-person executive team, and I moved into the role of chief operating/chief experience officer.”
Campus Progression
"...the color reproduction was better with Absen than other LED products costing at least three times more."
Tim Corder
System Designer, Moyers Group, Atlanta, GA
The Gainesville main campus was built ten years ago to facilitate their growing community and broadcast ministry, and at the time, they debated whether to go with high-definition video systems, or stay with standard definition. “SD was a better financial move,” comments Henson. “We stayed with SD for stewardship reasons, although we did install quality SD equipment.” Eight years later, the church has completed an overhaul of the video system at the campus, and has transitioned completely into the HD world. “We did it primarily for excellence,” comments Whitt. “With the norm in broadcast television now being HD, it’s a noticeable difference. And our pastor is always stating that if the name of Jesus is going to be associated with something, it needs to be as excellent as it can be. And we have found that many who call Free Chapel home were in part drawn here by the production values. They’ve been blown away by it. Then they come to love the church, to be a part of it, then to know Christ and be baptized.”
Free Chapel turned to Moyers Group, a 30-year-old design/build integrator with offices in Carters-ville, Ga., and Lubbock, Texas, to design and implement the new audio and video systems, with President Jeremy Moyers and System Designer Tim Corder heading up the project. “The scope of the upgrade was an all-new broadcast video rig,” states Moyers, “as well as upgrading the video display technology, audio mixing consoles and infrastructure, production intercom, production network, and digital signage.” At the same time, the church independently selected a new lighting console. “My desire is to make sure all systems are flexible and can accommodate changes easily,” Whitt says. “The new sound system, as well as the new LED walls for display, are letting us do new things.” To accommodate the desire for flexibility, Whitt and Henson drew on their touring roots when evaluating system options. Tours need to get in and out of venues quickly, so this was a good foundation to build upon.
Audio & Video Choices
Free Chapel retained its Meyer Sound PA system, but replaced the infrastructure and upgraded its subs to Meyer 1100-LFCs. “When we built the building, we were limited almost from day one with what we could do,” Whitt says. “The monitor mix capacity was insufficient, and was a big limiting factor. So the goal of the upgrade was to move to a platform with more scalability and capacity.” “We landed on Digico consoles for FOH, monitors and broadcast,” Corder states. “We looked at a lot of consoles, but Digico really stood out in [its] ability to support all the unique things the church wanted to do, as well as have products that would work in all the various venues and campuses.” Free Chapel is standardizing on Digico in all its rooms equipped with PA systems. “In all our systems, it’s our desire to be standard across all rooms and campuses so once a person is trained in one room, they are pretty much trained for all rooms,” adds Henson. The digital infrastructure of the Digico system has also enabled them to eliminate several racks of patch bays. “All patching is now done digitally through the Digico Optocore system,” Corder says. “Before, if we had a special event Friday night, resetting for Sunday was a nightmare,” adds Henson. “With all the manual patching, it was never reset perfectly. Now, with everything being digital, resetting the patching and console is just a matter of loading the right show file.”
“The core part of the new video system is the Platinum router by Imagine Communications (for-merly Harris Broadcast),” states Corder. “Every video source and destination passes through the router and it also handles all multi-viewers, embedded audio, and line level audio throughout the video rig.” This enables convenient monitoring and quick repatching of video paths, meeting Free Chapel’s goal of flexibility. Both the IMAG and broadcast control rooms have switchers from Ross Video. “We want con-sistency from one control room to the next,” Henson says. “Ross has proven they understand and value the church market,” adds Moyers. “They provide 24/7 support, and we’ve never had a negative experience putting Ross equipment into our client’s venues. The consistent free software updates for the life of the switcher keep them current and oftentimes add new features, providing tremendous return on the church’s investment.” For video cameras, Moyers Group spec’d seven Hitachi HD1200s. “Hitachi is a great partner for the church,” Moyers says. “They provide great support, send out engineers to perform commissioning and training, and offer lifetime loaners if a camera needs repair. The cameras also have the ability to output multiple resolutions.” Henson reports that the team talked about running its entire video system at 1080p.“But the display technology is not there yet to benefit from it in any of our live venues. The Hitachi cameras let us capture video at 1080p for editing, but use the 720p feed for the live video to the room.”
A highlight of the new video system is the Absen 3-mm LED video walls. “Our old rear projection system was 4x3 aspect ratio,” Whitt says, “and were fixed in place. The room also has a lot of win-dows, and we really wanted the ability to keep the shades open and still see the displays. Even with a 20,000-lumen projector, this would have been difficult. So we were really hoping we could find an LED solution that also made sense financially.”
What totally sold them on going LED was the cost of ownership compared to the price of projection over a six-year time period.
“We considered products from many of the leading LED wall manufacturers, and when we did a comparison on Free Chapel’s stage of Absen to the other finalist options, the color reproduction was better with Absen than other LED products costing at least three times more,” Corder notes. “Bottom line: we chose Absen based on performance—and the significantly lower cost than the competitors was a huge bonus.” What totally sold them on going LED was the cost of ownership compared to the price of projec-tion over a six-year time period. They found it actually was in the same price range. “The initial cost of going LED was higher,” Corder notes, “but after you factored in lamp and light-engine replacements for the projectors over that five-year time period, it came in about the same. The probability is high that the church will replace the LED walls because of advancements in technology before they would replace them due to them wearing out.”
“The flexibility of being able to move and reconfigure the LED walls as needed was another huge plus,” adds Whitt. LED walls are made up of numerous smaller panels, which can be reconfigured into different shapes and sizes to fit a particular event’s needs. LED walls are significantly heavier than projection screens, and so when installing this sort of technology, care must be taken to be sure that the parts of the building supporting the weight of the screens are capable of doing so. All of Free Chapel’s LED walls are rigged with standard touring rigging equipment, allowing them to be physically moved and reconfigured as simply as possible.
Lighting Notes
Free Chapel makes use of a full moving-light rig and was already well equipped, but in the move to become consistent across all venues, they upgraded their lighting console to MA Lighting’s Grand-MA 2 console. “We love the flexibility it is giving us,” states Henson. “The GrandMA brought forth the ability to do more on the fly in a way that other manufacturers can’t quite do. Instant changes, quick turn-arounds—it’s a cutting-edge console. We have touring acts that come through throughout the year, and many tours use the GrandMA. If they decide to use our system, they are already familiar with the console.” How you use equipment is just as important, if not more so, than what equipment you have. “In terms of lighting,” adds Henson, “what I look for is how the people respond in worship to the at-mosphere we’re creating. Lighting can provide an amazing environment for worship. The way we do lighting, the audience responds great in worship.”
The Bottom Line
“The role of a contractor is to help a church evaluate price and feature trade-offs, and make good decisions,” Whitt summarizes. “They need to make sure the equipment is a good fit. Moyers Group really gets to know the church to make sure the best options are considered. Tim Corder has done a great job of doing his homework and explaining why each piece of gear is best for that installation.”
Moyer concurs, adding that each church is unique. “It is our responsibility to approach each client through this lens,” he says. “It is so rewarding to partner with churches all over the country like Free Chapel and help them leverage the latest technology to do what they do at the highest level possible.”
