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Photos courtesy of Grace Point Church
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Volunteers at Grace Point Church project images, lyrics and video center stage to a Christie Digital LW650 3LCD 6,500-lumen projector, and two Christie Digital WX10K-M 10,450-lumen, dual-lamp projectors at either side of the stage. Da-Lite screens are used throughout the main room.
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With a limited budget that would only support a tech staff member with minimal experience, the church opted to hire a production company to come in for several hours each week to check lines and set the systems for the coming week. With everything professionally managed, the arrangement makes it fun and easy for the volunteers, who are made to feel like “rock stars” at their jobs on Sunday morning. Photos courtesy of Grace Point Church.
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A new Yamaha CL3 digital mixing console with Dante networking provides command and control during services.
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Photo courtesy of CCI Solutions
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"The Tannoy VQNet speakers have the same technology used in Tannoy's studio monitors, just in a bigger box,” says CCI's Senior Systems Consultant, Mark Pearson. The new main FOH system at Grace Point features three Tannoy VQNet 100’s flown above the stage, supplemented by three VNet 218 subs.
There is a rare and beautiful closeness to worship at Grace Point Church in Bentonville, Ark., where Pastor Jared Sears is head of worship and music and Pastor Tim Logan runs media outreach. They have managed to make worship warm and welcoming for worshippers and volunteers, even in their new 800-seat sanctuary. As a result, the church has seen continued growth, finding ways to expand even on a limited budget. Pastors Sears and Logan have also developed a unique relationship with a local production company to provide the technical expertise that enables their volunteers to produce a professional-quality, compelling contemporary service without the overhead of a full-time technical director on staff.
“With no [on-staff] technical director here, per se, we work as a team and our volunteers run the show,” says Sears. Sears stepped in to handle worship five years ago as Logan, who was previously worship pastor, devoted himself to media outreach. While Logan's 30-plus years in ministry and Sears's youthful approach make for a powerful combination, the move to worship pastor wasn't easy for Sears. “I was a youth pastor,” reflects Sears, “and really wasn't preparing for worship ministry, so I had to learn a lot along the way.” The church's previous sanctuary presented a monumental learning experience for the young pastor that would last four years until the new sanctuary was completed.
“The old sanctuary was essentially a gym,” says Sears, “a big rectangular box with no acoustic treatments.” Try as they did, mixing for the entire congregation became impossible, ultimately forcing Sears and his team to resort to moving people's seats to alleviate sound complaints. “It was a no-win situation,” says Sears. So when Grace Point Church was designing its new sanctuary, along with a warm and welcoming feeling, they wanted the new sanctuary to have great sound.
Working out the details
Working in Sears’s favor was his church’s proximity to Walmart’s corporate headquarters, also in Bentonville. The retail giant employs sound engineers and production personnel, some of whom are among Grace Point Church’s avid volunteers. As the design of their new sanctuary progressed, the sound-savvy volunteers were able to help connect the church with AV designers and installers CCI Solutions based in Olympia, Wash. CCI Senior Systems Consultant Mark Pearson was tasked with helping the church design systems for the room. The design team for the church consisted of Pearson, Sears, Logan, and a local AV specialist, Cameron Magee of avad3, a nearby video and audio production company.
Following the church’s warm and welcoming philosophy, the sanctuary was designed to keep people “close” in worship. The 120- by 80-foot space provides for an asymmetrical, fan-shaped seating arrangement with seating that runs close to a low stage and a removable back wall to allow for future expansion. “It’s a flexible design that promotes a friendly atmosphere where everyone feels close,” says Logan. “We needed a sound system and lighting that would support that.” The church also wanted audio and lights to support the production and big sound of the 12-piece praise band featured in worship, along with the ability to easily change stage plots to make productions more interesting. “Essentially, they needed a flexible system that would ‘rock,’ but stay on budget,” recalls CCI’s Pearson.
Pearson responded to the sound system challenge with a design that features three Tannoy VQNet 100s flown above the front edge of the stage as mains for the sanctuary. A full range, three-way loudspeaker system with high-output capability, these boxes feature integrated digital signal processing, network control and dual-channel Class D amplification along with a wide, well-defined dispersion. With the room’s seating conveniently separated by aisles into three wedges, one VQNet per seating area provided sufficient coverage and even sound throughout the room. Three custom VNet 218 subs were added for low-end support. The European version of the Tannoy sub was selected for its slightly smaller dimensions to fit below Grace Point Church’s very low (just 28 inches) stage.
“I love the reproduction of speech and clarity with Tannoy,” says Pearson. “The coverage from modeling during the design phase to implementation met and exceeded all expectations. The Tannoy VQNet speakers have the same technology used in Tannoy’s studio monitors, just in a bigger box.”
The new 800-seat sanctuary is, “… a flexible design that promotes a friendly atmosphere where everyone feels close. We needed a sound system and lighting that would support that.”
Pastor Tim Logan
DIRECTOR OF MEDIA OUTREACH, GRACE POINT CHURCH, BENTONVILLE, AR
Additional coverage for front row seating is provided by five Tannoy VX5.2s placed around the perimeter of the stage. VX5.2s feature a five-inch, dual-concentric driver and a discrete five-inch bass driver for extended low end. Two IS 52s (professional in-stair speaker) with four-inch drivers and a one-inch high-frequency driver were inset into the stage stairs and powered by a Lab.gruppen C20:8 amplifier.
Distributed audio covering the church’s foyer, gallery and coffee areas uses six Tannoy OCV 6 pendants, four CVS 8s and seven CVS 6s, to provide consistent and clear coverage in a space where ceiling heights vary between 10 and 26 feet. Pearson also specified two Lab.gruppen E 12:2 amplifiers to drive the sanctuary’s monitor system and two E 8:2s for the distributed systems. Pearson says that his experience with Lab.gruppen amplifiers leads him to choose them repeatedly. “They are phenomenal amplifiers,” he says, “and deliver what they say.
For a mixing console, Grace Point needed a top-quality board that would be easily operable by both volunteers and professionals, as well as provide a digital network audio transport system to save cost on infrastructure. “We looked at many options,” Pearson recalls, “and landed on the Yamaha CL series for its quality and rock-solid transport for the network with Dante.” The team installed a Yamaha CL3 24-fader console with Dante along with Yamaha RIO1608-D and RIO3224-D stage boxes installed at the back of the stage. Sub snakes from the boxes all come forward. The team believes that snaking in this fashion, as opposed to using fixed floor pockets, presents less of a tripping hazard, provides more flexibility and quicker set-up when reconfiguring the stage. For speaker processing and signal routing in the facility, Pearson chose BSS Harman’s London Blu-100 12 x 8 digital processor configured with two Blu-Bob2 eight-channel analog breakout boxes.
Visual interpretation
As part of the original installation, Pearson installed a fully equipped lighting system with a Jands Vista S1 control surface, ETC Unison 48-channel/24-module dimmer rack and six ETC SmartBar 2 distributed dimmer bars to support 12 ETC 26-degree ellipsoidal fixtures for key lighting and eight SourceFour parnel fixtures for fill. To this, the church has added five floor-mounted Chauvet Colorado Batten 72 Tour washes and four Chauvet Q-Spot 560 LED moving lights also on the floor. The church has also bolstered its system with more color from 16 Colorado 1 Tours and added a dramatic look with an Elation HZ-400 high-volume haze generator. According to Magee, having lights on the floor makes for quick changeovers, and the proximity of the lights to the action on stage gives lighting designs more punch.
Since Grace Point Church relies on Aviom A-16II remote personal headphone/line mixers for monitors, Pearson found it ideal to integrate the existing units by adding an AVIOM16/o-Y1 card to the new Yamaha CL3 digital console along with a second A-16D Pro A-Net Distributor. According to Magee, the full complement of distributed Aviom mixers provides both reliable monitoring and flexibility. “Aviom allows us to easily expand when needed,” says Magee. “Some weeks we may have 12 people on-stage, and other weeks only eight. Aviom allows us to keep one system implemented on the FOH console, and simply expand by plugging in more personal mixers. Otherwise, using traditional mix busses, we would have to reconfigure on a weekly basis.”
Logan’s media volunteers project images, lyrics and video center stage with a Christie Digital model LW650 3LCD 6,500-lumen projector equipped with a 1.2-1.5:1 short lens to a 14x5-foot Da-Lite screen. Two Christie Digital WX10K-M 10,450-lumen dual lamp projectors each with ILS 0.73:1SX+/0.67:1HD lens light up two 16x9-foot Da-Lite screens at either side of the stage.
"Essentially, they needed a fl exible [sound] system that would ‘rock,’ but stay on budget…."
Mark Pearson
SENIOR SYSTEMS CONSULTANT, CCI SOLUTIONS, OLYMPIA, WA
Manpower & perspective
While the new technology provides the tools, the key to the success of Grace Point Church is its devoted volunteers. To keep teams close, Sears and Logan lead BodyLife groups (small groups) with their volunteers in their homes. At rehearsals, the groups “circle-up” and regularly spend 15 to 20 minutes sharing and in prayer. They do this to keep the experience intimate and prevent volunteers from becoming detached from the team and their mission. But even with knowledgeable and active volunteers, Sears and Logan knew they needed help to get the best from their new technology. The budget, however, would only support a technician with minimal experience.
When asked to help find a part-time production person, Magee suggested that rather than a full-time engineer with minimal experience, the church bring in his company, avad3, for several hours a week with a plan to set up productions that would be run by volunteers. “This has really worked great,” says Magee, who now comes to play with the band on Sunday mornings. “On Sunday, I don’t touch the equipment,” he says. “It’s all run by the volunteers.” Each week, someone from avad3 comes in to clean up from the previous Sunday, meet with Sears and Logan, line check everything and recall the scenes for rehearsal on Thursday. “We serve to support the volunteers,” says Magee, “to make it fun and easy for them to look like rock stars at their jobs on Sunday morning.”
According to Sears, another benefit of having avad3’s support for a fixed number of hours during the week is that it helps focus the teams on the important work that needs to be done. “We could have hired a less experienced person to be around every day, but I’ve seen those people burn out trying to do everything for everyone. This arrangement keeps us at a professional level and allows our volunteers to really enjoy the experience.”
Looking to the future, Sears says he’s not sure what the Grace Point Church will be like in 10 years, but he is sensitive to never over-producing their services. “As our culture has changed with more professional production at Grace Point, we haven’t heard a lot of complaints about cost or production,” says Sears. “We hope to continue in that direction.” Sears adds that his two guiding principles for technology are as follows: “What’s the return on our investment? That is, will it grow the ministry?” and “Who will run it?” Those principles, he says, will guide the church’s technology growth into the future.
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