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Tech with Conscience
Valley Christian Church in Hopewell Junction, N.Y., takes on AVL upgrades in a phased fashion, avoiding congregational whiplash while upping worship effectiveness.
by Andy McDonough
Valley Christian Church recently opened a satellite campus at a movie theater in nearby Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
Video at the main location in Hopewell, N.Y., is recorded using three Panasonic AW-HE120 PTZ cameras, a Vaddio ProductionView HD multi-camera control system and recorded to a Blackmagic Design Intensity Shuttle with Thunderbolt technology.
The church's phased technology upgrade has brought new video and lighting systems to the main, Hopewell, N.Y., location. An aging audio system is next on the list.
Valley Christian Church's lead pastor, Greg Williamson, has a relaxed preaching style that is welcoming to everyone. "Our Sunday message is like a conversation," he says, which is not surprising since the church has grown from a Bible study group started in the Williamson home back in 1975. Today, the pastor addresses worshipers, coffee in hand, in the 350-seat sanctuary seated at the same style table and stool as is used in the church's cafe area. "People tell me that we make it personal," he says, "and they respond to it." With Sunday services at 8:30, 10:15 and noon reaching capacity and upgrades needed for old lighting, video and audio systems, the church has created a phased plan to upgrade the technology that won't violate their style. The approach is not only proving to be financially prudent, but beneficial in other important ways, as well.
Two Pastors on a Mission
Williamson is the worship leader and visionary at Valley Christian Church. At his side is executive pastor, Josh Brossia, who fell into the role of technical director as the church grew. Brossia joined the church nine years ago when he and his wife relocated from Toledo, Ohio. He had earned an undergraduate degree in business administration and an MBA from the University of Toledo, but had little experience with production or technology. "My background was business, but I began serving anywhere I was needed." As a volunteer, desperately needing information and without a mentor, Brossia began digging on his own. "With the Internet," Brossia says, "so much information is just a click away." He came to better understand production technology by reading blogs, articles and listening to podcasts. Brossia officially started on staff five years ago with a good feel for the old systems and determined to improve technology at the church.
"We had several serious problems that just kept getting worse," Brossia recalls. "In addition to sound being unclear in areas of the sanctuary, our lighting system was so bad we were just waiting for the next thing to break." Brossia and Williamson recall receiving compliments from the congregation one Sunday about the atmosphere they had created with the sanctuary lighting. "What the congregation thought was 'mood lighting,'" Brossia says, "was really the only lights that were left working. It was past time for us to upgrade."
Finding the Right Partner
"Finding the right partner to help us upgrade was critical," says Brossia. "We wanted someone who would take the time to understand both our mission and community." After being disappointed by several church technology specialists, they reached out to Scott Carman and his company, Flexstage, of Irvine, Calif. Carman immediately identified with their needs. "A lot of churches that size need to maximize what they have and carefully plan moves. To help, you need to sit and talk with them and listen," he says. "It's important that their unique story is captured, understood and presented cohesively throughout the project."
Carman came to church technology with a history of problem solving. He had experience in retail marketing and advertising before working with advertisers for the Los Angeles Times. He went on to develop a successful software product that helped Hollywood studios to market films, but it was when he sold the software company in 2007 and was looking for other opportunities that he became intrigued by the unique problems of small- to mid-sized churches. Carman's mother being a pastor and his years of volunteer experience helped him to understand the need for a set design resource and, in 2009, he started Flexstage to provide churches with an easy way to have professional looking sets. Soon, projects with experienced technology integrators led to a merger with Visioneering Studios that has enabled Carman to handle any technology or design challenge a small to medium church might face.
Carman and his head of project management, Mike Sessler, an audio and video expert with 25 years as a church technical director, encourage small churches to have big dreams, but emphasize the benefits of being patient and proceeding in phases. "You don't have to do it all at once. You can accomplish what you want in one area and move on," Carman says. An additional benefit of a phased approach that he has observed is how people get excited when they see change as progress. "People respond," he notes, "when they see what the church has done with their dollar."
"Now we have systems that don't just light up the stage, but help to connect us. All technology should help us this way."
Greg Williamson
Lead Pastor, Valley Christian Church, Hopewell Junction, NY.
Carman worked on the immediate needs of Valley Christian Church with pastors Williamson and Brossia, as well as to get an understanding of their aspirations for future expansion. The decision was made to divide the much-needed work into three phases. Lighting, having the most severe issues, would be first. Next, an upgrade to HD video would allow the church to not only improve the experience in the sanctuary and at its website, but hopefully facilitate the expansion. Improving sound in the sanctuary would be last.
Flexible LED House Lighting
To provide reliable and controllable house lighting, aging halogen work lights were replaced with 12 Chroma-Q Inspire RGBW LED fixtures. These pendant-style house lights worked well with the sanctuary's 35-foot ceilings, making the space more modern without diminishing the beauty of the room's architectural space. "These versatile fixtures are lensed well," Carman points out. "That made it easy to get an even wash with accurate color output to match the theatrical lighting—an important feature for pastor Williamson's preaching style." Available with different beam widths, the 65-degree version allowed Carman to specify fewer fixtures to evenly cover the sanctuary. Having DMX support allows both control from the lighting console, as well as a choice of preset "looks" for mid-week events controlled by any one of three Doug Fleenor Preset 10 lighting control wall panels. "The Fleenor panels make the house lights easy for anyone to control," Carman notes. To prevent unwanted changes, the system provides an override when the console is turned on that locks out the wall controls.
Saving on Better Stage Lighting
Valley Christian Church's two-tier stage features the band on the upper tier and the pastor on the lower tier. To better cover the stage and to alleviate the stark appearance and glare of "head-on lighting," front lights were relocated to a more advantageous, higher angle at the middle of the room. Seven FlexAray static white LED elipsoidal replacements with 19- to 26-degree lenses were installed to replace the incandescent fixtures. "With FlexAray we were able to repurpose the lens barrel and shutters from existing fixtures to provide LED replacements for under $1,000 each," says Carman. Having a variety of color temperature options allowed him to choose replacements that most closely replicated the look the church was accustomed to, but with the efficiency and value of LED. An additional feature of FlexAray lighting fixtures is their hexagonal shape and interlocking hardware that allows lighting designers to attach housings to build configurations of up to 10 lights.
In addition to creating a more appealing look, this lighting design prepared the church to produce better video and expand the usable stage area. Four FlexAray 75 3,200k static white fixtures with lens and shutters were added for side-fill lighting, and an RGBaW version was implemented as back lighting adding depth and color to the stage. Four Elation ELED QW Strips, two Elation LED 36 Tri Bricks and three Elation ELED TW Strip fixtures were also added. For lighting control, Carman specified the Jands Stage CL console to take advantage of what Carman describes as an intuitive, volunteer-friendly user interface. "Since we converted the entire room to LED," says Carman, "we installed this easy-to-use, LED-exclusive console that made the introduction and training quick and simple."
"The room was an ideal size to consider bright flat screen monitors over maintenance-intensive projectors."
Scott Carman
Co-Founder, Flexstage, Irvine, CA.
An additional concern for effective lighting was the excessive light coming from the stained glass windows behind the stage. Being an attractive feature of the room, using drapery or other coverings was quickly ruled out. To solve the problem, a local sign company, Sign Language Inc., owned by Tom Walsh, a member of the congregation, was engaged to box in the windows from the outside, and LED fixtures were installed to control the light while preserving the look of the windows. "An important feature of the lighting design in our sanctuary is that it doesn't isolate us," says Williamson of Carman's complimentary house and stage lighting designs. "Now, we have systems that don't just light up the stage, but help to connect us. All technology should help us this way."
Video Upgrade to Aid Expansion
Pastors Williamson and Brossia agree that quality video helps connect with people and make regular use of it on the church website, but they also envisioned video technology as a way to help them expand. Instead of incurring the cost of remodeling the current structure or a new building, the pastors found a recently remodeled movie theater just 15 miles north in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., eager to rent space. Utilizing the theater as a satellite campus doubled the church's capacity and introduced the ministry to a new part of town. "The theater's 54-foot screen made our upgrade to HD critical," recalls Brossia. Williamson's weekly message will be prerecorded for playback at both locations on Sunday morning with Williamson presiding in the main sanctuary and Brossia at the theater.
To prepare for the video-based expansion, a Da-Lite- Fast Fold 69 x120RP-inch projection screen was added as a center screen to the sanctuary along with a Panasonic PT-DZ770UK 7000,-lumen WUXGA single-DLP projector. Two Sharp LC-90LE657U 90-inch LED Aquos HD panels are featured at each side of the stage, mounted with Chief TS318TU dual-arm articulating mounts. "The room was an ideal size to consider bright flat screen monitors over maintenance-intensive projectors," Carman says. Three Panasonic AW-HE120 cameras at the center of the sanctuary and forward at stage left and stage right capture all the action. "We chose the Panasonic AW-HE120 cameras because they are some of the best-looking, affordable HD PTZ cameras on the market right now," says Carman. In addition to the 20x zoom range, Carman likes the outstanding low-light capability and tri-synchronous movement (the ability to pan, tilt and zoom all at the same time). The church uses an Apple 15-inch MacBook Pro to run ProPresenter software and an iMac 21-inch for production and to capture video directly using a Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle Thunderbolt. Ten Sharp LED TVs were specified for video distribution around the building fed by Atlona high-speed HDMI extenders over Cat5 (HDBaseT).
Central to the video system is a Vaddio ProductionView HD multi-camera control system with Vaddio TeleTouch 18.5-inch HD touch screen LCD. The touchscreen allows simple operation, since all presets and camera positions are displayed and activated by a simple touch. According to Flexstage's Sessler, "We added the Teletouch monitor to the system for further ease of use. It's very visual, intuitive and above all, easy." Sessler says volunteers were trained to control video in a matter of minutes.
Next up: Upgrading Audio and Expanding
With lighting and video upgrades complete, improving the church's audio will be next. At the same time, Carman will be working with Valley Christian Church's new, full-time technical director, Mike Tallerico, and strategic partner, Portable Church Industries of Troy, Mich., to design portable systems for the movie theater expansion.
While clearly pleased with the new lighting and video design strategies, pastor Williamson cautions against moving too quickly with upgrades. "We didn't even use the color abilities for our house lighting right away," he recalls, having preferred to "ease" the congregation into it with small changes each week. The phased approach of the upgrades is not only helping the church to achieve its financial goals, but also helps by involving the congregation in the changes, safeguarding against what some might see as radical change. "There is such a thing as 'congregational whiplash,'" claims Carman. "That's too much change at once and should be avoided at all cost."
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