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"Having kids on the team can get stressful, but they are creative and they breathe new life into the ministry. I look for both maturity and capability," says Matt Groves, technical director at Grove City Church of The Nazarene in Grove City, Ohio.
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The Naz has three 25-foot-wide video screens built into the rear wall of the stage, and uses three Eiki LC-X800 Powerhouse projectors fed by a Ross Carbonite switcher. A Matrox Triple Head2Go can split a single 75-foot image across the three projectors.
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Matt Groves, Technical Director, Grove City Nazarene Church, Grove City, OH. Photos by Matt Groves and Dominic Stacer.
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"… the bulk of our changes to support contemporary programming occurred over the just the past two years," says Matt Groves, technical director.
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Behind the scenes of Grove City Nazarene Church, in Grove City, Ohio.
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Over the past year or so, The Naz, as the church likes to be called, invited several loudspeaker manufacturers in to demo their systems. "Ultimately the choice was the self-powered Renkus-Heinz IC2 line arrays," says Doug McLaughlin, audio engineer.
Nearly 70% of the people volunteering in the church's technical production ministries are in their early teens to college-age years—
and The Naz draws upon this youthful passion and energy. “My youngest team member is 14 and the age ranges all the way up to early 60s,” says Grove City Nazarene Technical Director Matt Groves. “Mentoring and teaching is very important to me as well as to the church in general.
I start off the new volunteers in video, running cameras for our video director. From there they can expand into other roles depending on their interests and abilities. And some have gone on to do some pretty amazing things. A few years ago two 13 year olds started volunteering for the department. Eventually one of them worked lighting and the other video. Now, one is traveling all over the country working tours, and the other is working for a major production house—and they are only 19 years old now.”
Groves adds, “We don’t typically need to do a whole lot of recruiting because the kids I currently have tell their friends about serving in our technical production ministries and invite them to join. They learn more than just pressing buttons and pointing a camera—they learn about design, different technical philosophies, and the technical aspects of all the equipment. These kids love it so much, they are here throughout the week, dropping in just to say ‘hi’ or learn something new. And yes, having kids on the team can get stressful, but they are creative and the kids breathe new life into the ministry. I look for both maturity and capability.”
And it’s quite understandable that Groves would share this passion about bringing youth into the technical production ministries. “I grew up in this church,” he says, “and I’ve watched it go through several phases. When I was young we were in another building down the street, and we had about 300 people in the church. Then, in the late 1980s, we decided to move and build a bigger building. From there, we’ve added on additional buildings to accommodate growth.”
Groves started volunteering in the church’s technical ministry program when he was a high school freshman school in 1999, and through that had the opportunity to get to know the church’s technical director. When he graduated from high school in 2003, he began working for the technical ministry while beginning his college career at Ohio State University.
Growth & Transition
“I have always had a fascination with video,” Groves describes, “and at that time the church was looking for a part-time video editor. Our services were far simpler then—we had basic white lighting for the stage, and a few videos here and there. In 2005, I was made a full-time employee as a production tech. In 2008, the technical director left, and the church’s leadership asked me to take the job two months before I graduated from college.”
Groves wanted to increase the effort put into the technical ministries, and the church started gradual systems upgrades. Just a few years ago, Grove City Nazarene added a contemporary service, and more contemporary production elements began to be added to support it.
"We don’t typically need to do a whole lot of recruiting because the kids I currently have tell their friends about serving in our technical production ministries and invite them to join."
Matt Groves
Technical Director, Grove City Nazarene Church
“We’ve added many LED and intelligent lighting fixtures as well as and other elements,” Groves adds. “But the bulk of our changes to support the move to more contemporary programming occurred over the past two years. In 2013 we primarily overhauled the video infrastructure and changed out the audio consoles; in 2014 we brought in a new camera package and replaced the PA system.” While the church has added the contemporary service and associated technical support, it hasn’t left its roots behind. “We are a multi-generational church with about 3,000 people attending on average and 500 of those attendees attend via the live stream of the services online,” Groves reports. “We are the largest Nazarene church in North America, and we've tended to be the ones in the denomination that push the envelope a bit.”
The Naz has three services each weekend, each with a different style. “Our Saturday evening service is more laid back, with a front-line vocal team and rhythm section. Our first service on Sunday morning at 9 a.m. has a more classic feel, with an 80-voice choir, full orchestra, rhythm section and eight vocalists. The second service is at 11 a.m. and contemporary in style. It’s more guitar-driven and the presentation is entirely different, adding haze and effect lighting,” he describes.
Stage Design, Production Workflow & Gear
Having two different service styles on a Sunday morning creates numerous challenges in the technical ministries area. Staff has between 35 and 45 minutes to turn the stage from classic to contemporary. To make this happen, they created a stage design and implemented some technical production workflows that facilitate the changeover.
“Our stage layout has the orchestra and choir for the classic service side by side in the upstage area,” explains Groves. “The rhythm section is positioned downstage from the orchestra and choir. Between the two, we have a set of arches created from truss, and the orchestra and choir are viewed through the truss. We have drapery that is rigged between the trussing, which is set after the classic service to wall off that upstage space that isn’t used for the contemporary service. For the stage elements that are in the downstage space, we have a rule that everything has to be on casters. That way, anything not needed for the second service merely has to be unplugged and rolled off the stage.” To change over the audio from one service to the next, Doug McLaughlin, the church’s FOH audio engineer, and Brent Park, the church’s monitor engineer, have defined all the inputs for that weekend’s service before the mid-week rehearsal. By the end of that rehearsal, they have saved a scene for that service in the Yamaha CL consoles. In between the first and second services, they simply recall that scene to be ready for the second service. The vocalists are all on Shure UR Series wireless microphone systems and Sennheiser G3 wireless in-ear monitors (many using Alien Ears custom-molded monitors). Wireless mics and wireless in-ear monitors help speed the transition between services.
When the church recently decided to invest in the video and audio systems, Groves and his team did the bulk of the design work, and brought in licensed riggers and contractors to help with the installation.
“For the video system, we looked primarily at Ross Video for the switcher solution,” Groves reports. “I’m a big fan of Ross systems. Ross had just introduced the Ross Carbonite 2M MultiMedia switcher, which has HDMI inputs to accommodate computers and HD-SDI connections. Our video director, Dean Jenkins, really took to the Carbonite. He’s programmed custom controls to perform whole sequences of functions, so that one person can easily perform functions that would normally require multiple people.”
SVT based in Brighton, Mich., handled the video system installation. The company’s David Scott suggested Ikegami HDK-55 cameras for the church. “Ikegami cameras are our first choice for most of our installations,” he says. “You really can’t beat it for price and quality. In many churches, lighting levels are on the low side, and the HDK-55 is unbeatable in low-light situations. Their color imagery is outstanding as well.”
For projection, The Naz has three 25-foot-wide video screens built into the rear wall of the stage, and uses three Eiki LC-X800 Powerhouse projectors fed by the Ross Carbonite switcher. A Matrox Triple Head to Go is used to combine the three projectors into one triple-wide image, and Renewed Vision’s ProPresenter is used as the presentation software. “When the old sound system was installed in 1997, it included 300+ patch points throughout the room and backstage,” states McLaughlin. “If you have ever worked around patch bays for any length of time, you know that if the ports are not exercised regularly, they start to lose their connectivity which presents itself in any multitude of audio noise issues or failures.”
In 2013 the theft of the church’s Yamaha LS9 monitor console necessitated the opportunity to make some changes. “This got me thinking about possible solutions for the console replacement,” McLaughlin continues, “which then got me thinking about the bigger solution. The plan fell into place in my mind—we would replace the LS9 with a Yamaha CL1 and one Yamaha RIO3216 input/output device. This paved the way to upgrade the FOH console six months later with a Yamaha CL5 and a total of eight Yamaha RIO Dante devices distributed throughout the building. This allowed us to abandon all of our analog cable and patch bays and connect everything digitally with CAT5.”
The aging PA system had its own set of problems that the church was struggling with. “We had three clusters covering the room: far left, center and far right. The subs were placed under the lip of the stage six feet away from the front row. This configuration caused high-dB ‘hotspots,’ areas lacking high frequency coverage, shrill hi-mid frequencies caused by overlapping coverage patterns, and high dB subs that could tie your shoelaces in the front row,” McLaughlin reports.
Over the past year or so, Groves and McLaughlin invited several loudspeaker manufacturers in to demo their systems. One system, however, stood out above the others. As McLaughlin reports, “Ultimately the choice was the self-powered Renkus-Heinz IC2 line array. With the built-in Dante networking, we are also able to send digital audio signals straight to the cabinets from the console, minimizing any external noise from outboard DSP gear. The IC2 allowed us to have a much shorter line array hang of only five cabinets per side with a center hang of three cabinets. The beauty of the Renkus-Heinz IC2 beam steerable array is that through the proprietary Rhaon software you are able to manipulate the direction of the sound plus or minus 30 degrees without physically moving the cabinet. The three main hangs in the sanctuary have very little toe or downward tilt to the flown array. The beam steering feature with the 120-degree splay angle of the arrays allowed us to cover from the front row to the under balcony back row and all of the balcony with little to no dB or frequency loss. We were also able to steer around objects to avoid unwanted reflections (such as the balcony front wall).” McLaughlin summarizes, “The Renkus-Heinz IC2 cabinets are problem solvers for tough rooms.”
For subs, the church selected Renkus-Heinz, flying three dual-18-inch DR18-2R over the stage. Installation of the new PA went to TechArt Productions of Columbus, Ohio.
“Every spoken word is heard from every seat in the room and the music sounds fantastic,” Groves says. “We have a wide room, so because of the 120-degree dispersion from the cabinets, the ability to steer it where needed, and the price point—it was the obvious choice. We were also able to use fewer cabinets with this system as compared to the other line arrays we looked at, so they are less obtrusive visually. This system has proven to be great for all our musical styles.”
For lighting, The Naz needs to be concerned about supporting both a less production-oriented classic service and a high-energy contemporary service with dynamic visual production. While they have a generous selection of moving head fixtures that include Martin Professional Mac 101s, Mac 250 Kryptons, and Robe LEDForce 7s, they usually limit their lighting use for the classic service to the ETC Source Four ellipsoidals powered by three Colortran 96-dimmer racks.
“With the LED fixtures we’ve added, we don’t use nearly as many dimmers as we used to,” Groves notes. “As for the intelligent fixtures, I really like the Martin brand and tend to stay with that line when I can.”
An ETC Ion console controls the rig. “The Ion was at a price point that worked for us, and we find it very volunteer-friendly,” Groves adds. A set of Philips ColorKinetics ColorBlast TR-12 fixtures light the mid-stage curtain for the contemporary service.
