Bushel Cloud-based Management for Mac
by Dana Sorenson DC Metro Church is about eight years old, having launched in a movie theatre in 2007. Pastor David Stine is our lead pastor, and his vision is …
Review: Bushel MDM
DC Metro Church is about eight years old, having launched in a movie theatre in 2007. Pastor David Stine is our lead pastor, and his vision is to rebuild the spiritual walls around the DC Metro area. We have a vision for 17 campuses around the DC Metro area (we currently have three) and three more in New York (pending). All of our sites are co-equal; there is no main site or main campus. We have a central staff and then campus staff separately. I am the IT guy for all our sites; we have one main audio person, one main lighting person, and eventually we will have more staff at the campus level, but for now keeping things centralized keeps things organized. We currently have 35 people on staff. Our average weekend attendance is roughly 3000; we run a contemporary non-denominational worship.
Yamaha’s TF3 Digital Mixing Console
Here at Celebration Church our Kids rooms are used as multipurpose rooms throughout the week. Sundays they are strictly used for our kids environments. That could include a full worship band all the way down to just a single vocal with a backing track. Mondays are for groups, which normally just use a couple microphones; the rest of the week sees student chapels and worship rehearsals and, of course, more groups!
With these rooms being used so much we knew we needed a console that was easy to use, one our volunteers could feel comfortable and confident when running, with an easy to understand layout. We’ve experimented with a few consoles in the past that just didn’t make any sense for us – we knew right away that they would only confuse new volunteers. However, with Yamaha’s new TF3 digital mixing consoles, we found everything we were looking for in a perfect fi t for our kids’ rooms.
Analog Way’s SmartMatriX Ultra
I started at Christ Church at Grove Farm (CCGF) in Sewickley, PA, as the Creative Services Director about 10 years ago. We are an evangelical non-denominational church with roots in the Anglican tradition. We had just dedicated our new, larger sanctuary that had been added to the existing building, which had effectively doubled our size. We currently run three services on Sunday, with two of the three services having a more modern, rock-driven, multimedia heavy feel.
We have a typical layout of three screens with a confidence monitor in the back, and the ability to send three independent sources to the screens (main screen; side screens; confidence monitor). We would run announcements on side screens, and church logos/images on middle screens. Worship songs would sometimes run on all three screens, or sometimes just on the side screens with some type of image/presentation on the middle. This works well with my own philosophy of doing live productions, as having three screens allowed us to open the stage and add great visuals. We were using Analog Way’s CentriX, but realized it was time to upgrade when, after ten years, the TripliX switcher controlling our three CentriX boxers, started freezing on us during service. Despite Analog Way’s excellent tech support, it was time to look for something new. We wanted to keep at least three outputs, and have the ability to run the image across all three screens (almost like edge-blending it) but also have the ability to run individual images as needed.
Yamaha CP4 Keyboard
by Pastor Lindsey Seals
NOW Church band recently had the opportunity to use Yamaha’s CP4 keyboard both at our church and at the Live Events Pavilion at Infocomm, where we were the featured performers on the Technologies for Worship stage. The culture of worship at NOW Church is very important to us, as it’s the music which tends to be the initial draw to bringing people to our church. Therefore, it’s very important to us that our music sounds good and our band remains on the cutting edge. Our team likes to do things musically that are sometimes difficult to pull off, and in order to get the sound we need we have to have quality instruments. I may see a top 40 song performed on television or take a current hit from secular radio, remix it and our band can pull it off on a Sunday! Take last Easter for example. We took a popular song with a dark and negative message, “Take Me To Church” by Hozier, totally rewrote the lyrics to fi t our theme for Easter and our band nailed it! NOW is a multi-generational, multi-cultural church, and the music we play reflects that – on any given Sunday, we offer a variety of music, from Gospel to rock to hip-hop to traditional hymns – and having the right instrumentation plays a big role in allowing us to accommodate the worship needs of as many different people as possible. The main piano keyboard is one of the foundational pieces for our music. We also incorporate bass guitar, two aux. keyboards, two electric guitars, two acoustics, a drummer, a percussionist and six front liners and the lead singer into the mix to create an atmosphere of worship that can truly impact our congregants. With the Yamaha CP4, there were two things I noticed and appreciated right away: touch sensitivity of the keys, and the weight of the board.
Hitachi CP-X8170 and CP-WX2865 Projectors
by Andrew Marko
At Evangel Church in Long Island City, New York, we are not only located in the heart of an ever-changing city; we are also at the epicenter of an ever-changing industry. As readers of this publication understand more than anyone, houses of worship today are challenged more than ever with leveraging advancements in technology to best engage their congregations. Evangel Church was founded in 1933, with our current sanctuary erected in 1999 in our 100,000-square-foot facility. Always looking to stay on the cutting edge to best serve our members, we recently decided environmental projection would be a great way to deliver dynamic services in the 1,300-seat sanctuary. We have found that technology makes a huge difference in the churchgoing experience. The word of God stays the same, what you’re trying to present stays the same, but the way that you present it really needs to constantly be changing with the times. We’ve made a strong effort to bring our services up to speed without turning them into “smoke and mirrors” rock concerts, which wouldn’t connect with our entire congregation.
Renkus-Heinz IC Live Loudspeakers
One of the oldest Conservative Jewish congregations in Chicago, Anshe Emet Synagogue was founded in 1873. The congregation moved to their current building in 1929. Sabbath Services feature performances by …
Highlite Laser Projector
by Chad Hess The Florida Hospital Seventh-day Adventist Church was started nearly 100 years ago by a group of hospital employees at what is now Florida Hospital Orlando. While we …
Tectonic PL-11 Flat Panel Speakers
by Randy Babb Shove Chapel was donated and built in 1930 at Colorado College, Colorado Springs, Colorado, to meet the religious needs of the students. This historical limestone chapel was …
Review: Bose RoomMatch™ Line Arrays and PowerMatch® Amps
by Joe Cichon
Bose RoomMatch™ Line Arrays and PowerMatch® Amps Exceed Expectations I can hardly believe that our building project at Black Rock Church, Fairfield, CT, (see Tech Spotlight, October 2014 issue) is done, and we’ve completed our fi rst year cycle. From well over 250 sermons, three major concerts, dozens of meetings, VBS and summer adventure and community events, our sanctuary has been working overtime. So? How did it stack up, according to the original building plan and dreams? A review of every tech aspect would be a book! So let’s focus on the most demanding and meaningful aspect of the project: our sound. After lots of research, I chose the new Bose Line Arrays with RoomMatch™, PowerMatch® Amps and a Bose distribution system, for our new sanctuary. So, just how well did it pan out? BOSE has always been known for their state of the art sound. We are all familiar with the BOSE Sound; refined, discrete and intelligible. It sets the standard for personal audio. Well, now it sets the standard for large format line array installation. The process was smooth and professional. After BOSE set the parameters, they focused on the installation, with AE Global as the integrator. Installation went incredibly well, with very few tweaks needed to their solid plan for the space.
