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Images courtesy of Aaron Biby.
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The new lighting system features a Jands Vista L5 lighting console. “The piece of equipment we’re most happy with is the new Jands Vista L5 lighting,” says Aaron Biby, technical director, First Free Rockford, Rockford, Ill.
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The new audio system had a new Yamaha CL5 spec’d, but budget restrictions were going to prevent the console from being installed. “... An anonymous donor stepped forward at the last minute and funded the console purchase.”
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We had dim projectors projecting onto drywall. The PA system was 15 years old, and designed for reinforcement of voice and orchestra.” Everything was outdated, and didn’t support the church’s new contemporary worship style.
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Upgraded audio, video and lighting systems provided a striking visual and sonic difference for the church. Lighting was improved, in part, by getting rid of 2/3 of the previous fixtures and adding new and improved control.
Finding the right person to hire for a church staff position can be much harder than it seems. The odd mix of skill sets that most positions require can narrow the playing field quite a bit.
And in ministry, perhaps more than in any other vocation, it's critical that the potential staff person understands and integrates well into the church's doctrine, personality mix and leadership styles (and shall we add, its quirks).
It's almost impossible to obtain absolute assurance of a good fit from a typical interview process, and many a church has brought new staff from another area only to discover that it was a poor fit. It's not surprising, then, that many churches prefer to hire from within the congregation whenever possible. If they've been attending and volunteering in the church for years, it's a pretty good chance that both the candidate and the staff know how well the fit would be right at the start of the hiring process.
This was the process for both tech staff hires at First Free Rockford of Rockford, Ill. Aaron Biby attended First Free Rockford as a teenager. His family relocated from Texas after his father accepted the executive pastor's position at the church.
As Biby reached adulthood, he moved away and eventually landed in Tulsa, Okla., playing in a band. After a year of that and anticipating an engagement, he wanted full-time work, so he took a position with a church in California where he was responsible for IT systems and AVL.
“I didn't realize how little I knew,” comments Biby. “I learned a lot of what I know now on the job in church. We went from just [video in] the main room, to that room plus a video venue, and then added a video-venue church plant. I learned a lot about working with volunteers, and about leading a ministry as opposed to merely being an engineer.”
After six years, Biby and his wife (a Rockford native) realized that California would be a difficult place to raise a family. On a trip back home to Rockford to visit family, both felt that Rockford was where God was calling them to settle. They relocated out of obedience, and Biby found a job doing IT work at a local consulting company. After a time, he returned “home” to First Free Rockford.
Biby volunteered on the worship team as well as the tech team, and over time, shared his heart with the pastor about his desire to serve the church in full-time ministry. When the church's technical director stepped down a couple of years later, Biby was a natural fit for the position, and God blessed his desire to return to church ministry.
David Peterson, the assistant technical director, also grew up in First Free Rockford, leaving as a young adult to pursue a music career. Eventually he and his wife moved back to the Rockford area, resuming their attendance and volunteering at First Free Rockford. Biby learned of Peterson's interest in a church staff position, and eventually hired him in a 20-hour per week role. Within the past year, this position was expanded to a full-time role.
“David has been great,” comments Biby. “We are like-minded, and it's wonderful to no longer be concerned when I take a weekend off.”
The church
Like the people who attend the church, the service style of First Free Rockford has changed over time; the church added a contemporary service about a decade ago. Not wanting to alienate those aligned with the traditional service style, the contemporary service was added at a later time slot. For a long time, the tech team had only 15 minutes to turn the stage from traditional to contemporary. However, no changes were made to the room or to the equipment to adequately support the contemporary service, and other areas of the property were also showing their age.
“At the same time I started working here, our pastor, Rusty Hayes, was hired,” states Biby. “New to both First Free Rockford as well as the town, he had a good outside perspective. He saw the crumbling parking lot, leaky roof, and lack of adequate technology. We had dim projectors projecting onto drywall. The PA system was 15 years old, and designed for reinforcement of voice and orchestra.” Everything was outdated, and didn't support the church's new contemporary worship style.
"First, we wanted systems that were flexible. Second, everything needed to work well for a volunteer environment. And third, we wanted a system that would meet the typical rider specification of touring groups.”
Aaron Biby
Technical Director, First Free Rockford, Rockford, IL
The church leadership put together a capital campaign that focused on resurfacing the parking lot; repairing the roof; sprucing up the auditorium's interior; updating the AVL systems; and funding a scholarship program to help educate students who desire to enter ministry. The goal for the campaign that was to raise $3 million; $3.2 million was pledged by the congregation.
The plan
Selection of the AVL firm to handle the renovations actually began well before it would be a reality. “Randy Lyttle, one of our FOH engineers, worked for a man named Brent Hayes, president of SVL Productions, and spoke very highly of him,” states Biby. “I had also experienced some of Brent's work in other facilities.”
Biby met with Hayes and explained that he was looking to build a relationship with an AVL contractor who would know the church's style, personality and needs, and thus be able to recommend products that would work best for the church—and not merely be products for which they are distributors.”
So when this project came to be, the church decided to simply go with SVL Productions instead of putting the project out to bid.
“We had three goals we wanted to achieve in the AVL part of the renovation,” Biby reports. “First, we wanted systems that were flexible. Second, everything needed to work well for a volunteer environment. And third, we wanted a system that would meet the typical rider specification of touring groups.” The church hosts many Christian concerts, and wanted to reduce the need to rent equipment when a tour comes through.
The execution
“The plan was to do a full audio, video and lighting system overhaul,” states Hayes. “In the end, we were able to do the audio, most of the lighting, and a little of the video. The remainder of the video upgrade needed to be postponed to the future for budget purposes.”
Audio
At some point in the church's history, a center thrust was added to the platform, and that area of the platform was especially plagued by sound reflections from the walls of the fan-shaped room. “We brought in Aaron Johnson of Johnson AV Engineering in Chicago to do EASE modeling (Enhanced Acoustic Simulator for Engineers, a software program) of the space, help identify specific areas that needed acoustical treatments, narrow down the loudspeaker options to ones that would provide even coverage throughout the room, and work with us on the final tuning of the room,” states Hayes. “We tried a variety of speaker models, including multiple line array configurations. Ultimately, the Danley Sound Labs speakers were the best choice for this project.”
They divided the room into three wedges and provided alternating L-R stereo coverage throughout the space. SH60s and SH69s make up the main clusters, with SH-Micros providing front-fill and under-balcony delays. A flown cardioid subwoofer array of three TH-118 subs provides low-end coverage.
“It's one of the most impressive sub[woofer] installations I've heard,” says Hayes. “One of the things they had to rent consistently in the past were subs. There's no need for additional rentals any longer.”
While Danley's are available in a self-powered configuration, running power to the hang positions would have cost a lot more than reusing the power in the existing rack locations. Powersoft amplifiers were installed in the old amp racks, chosen for their sonic quality and power-efficiency. Where the old system took two full racks of amplifiers and processing, the new system only needed one.
The new audio system had a new Yamaha CL5 spec'd, but budget restrictions were going to prevent the console from being installed. “However, an anonymous donor stepped forward at the last minute and funded the console purchase,” states Biby. “This has been a game-changer for us in turning the room between services. All of us on the tech team are very grateful.”
Hayes attributes a lot of the success of the audio systems to the work that was done before a single component was installed. “Without Johnson's help, in identifying the problem areas of the room and laying out the speaker locations that would give us the least amount of addition reflection, I don't think it would have gone as well,” Hayes states.
Lighting
“Originally, the church made heavy use of conventional PAR fixtures,” states Hayes. “Literally hundreds of PAR64s were removed.” These were replaced with more efficient conventional fixtures from ETC. Thirty Source Four Zoom fixtures, 10 26-degree Source Fours, eight Source Four PARs, and eight Source Four Parnels provide traditional white light, with ETC Sensor dimming providing the power.
To add color, 16 Chauvet Colorado 1 Tri-Tours, eight Chauvet Colorado Batten 144 Tours, and four Chauvet Q-Spot 560 LED fixtures, as well as four Elation Opti Tri Tour fixtures, provide a significant color-changing flexibility.
“The fixture count was cut to 33% of the former count,” says Hayes. The new lighting system features a Jands Vista L5 lighting console. “The piece of equipment we're most happy with is the Vista L5,” states Biby. “It is extremely user-friendly and has built-in touch screens. Programming it is like using iMovie. I added the outline of the stage as the background for the touch-screen, and did a fixture layout relative to that picture. It makes it easy to quickly identify fixtures that light a specific part of the stage— you don't need to know fixture numbers or look things up on a separate lighting plot. One of our volunteers commented that they felt more comfortable on the Vista after one weekend than on our previous console (an old ETC Insight) after five years. We also have a Vista S1 in our smaller venue— once you are trained on one, you're trained on all.”
Video
Budget constraints prevented First Free Rockford from fully executing its plans for video, but they did install fixed Da-Lite projection screens on the sidewalls, a new motorized center screen over the platform, and new Panasonic projectors.
“The center screen is really nice because it will lower all the way down to the floor of the platform if desired,” Hayes says. “They are using this as a backdrop option at times.”
“Down the road we plan on installing a Ross Carbonite video switcher,” adds Biby. “Our current switcher is SD, so we have to down-convert our HD cameras to SD resolution to run them through the switcher.”
In conclusion …
Both Biby and Hayes are very pleased with the results of the renovation. “SVL Productions delivered—they nailed every detail,” states Biby.
“I've been really pleased with the volunteer team here at First Free Rockford, and it has been such a blessing to be a part of this church. As far as a ‘dream destination' as a place to live, Rockford would not have been our first choice. But relationships are far more important than geography, and the people here are awesome. That means everything to us. We love the people here, and we love the church.”
And Biby adds, “We have kids from the church going to college to enter ministry as a result of this campaign. It's been a very exciting three years here. It's nice to see First Free Rockford impacting our community.”
