It Takes More than Just Turning it On

By Lynn Noe, Customer Relations Coordinator

If you are like me, you look forward to the time of Praise and Worship at the beginning of church service. The music sets the tone for deep worship, reflective moments, and giving glory to God through song. In these moments, you stop and take time to focus your full attention on God. The music, lyrics, lighting and video combine to set the environment for our all-out engagement. And this helps prepare our hearts for the message that day. Ask any tech team and they will tell you, this is their passion.

So what does it take to create the ideal environment for worship in a new auditorium? We took the opportunity to meet with Steve, Casey and Ben, the pros at Acoustical Dimensions, as they were commissioning the Audio-Video-Lighting(AVL) for the new auditorium at College Park Church in Indianapolis.  They partnered with Aspen Group to help create the best AVL dynamic for church services. Even with technology, the first step begins with an assessment of who the church is, how they worship, and how they have and will use AVL technologies.  For optimal results, the planning begins early in the design process. 

Many design details impact the quality of sound in a worship area including the shape of the room, type and placement of seating, type of floor and ceiling, and wall material.  The HVAC systems have to be designed so the noise they produce isn’t intrusive to the sounds within the room. All of this is considered from the time of early stage design planning through construction and installations. 

As the move-in date approached for College Park, commissioning of their AVL began. This when all of the systems were tweaked to achieve the desired output and the staff was trained to use the new equipment. Any church that has undergone a large construction project knows what an intensive time it is for their tech team. Speakers were tuned, wiring checked, microphones tested, frequency responses analyzed, and delayed timing systems assessed. Add in the video piece with cameras, large screens in the auditorium, plus various screens throughout the building, and you can begin to grasp the scope of the AVL components, not to mention the software that is used to mix graphics, music, video and live feeds, and what it takes to learn and operate the tech booth and tech room equipment. It gives me a whole new appreciation for tech teams who master all of the various media to creatively do work for the Kingdom.