Building a Church......Don't take it from me

I was taking a class at the 2010 WFX expo called "Master planning for technical systems". They recommended bringing your Pastor but hardly any of them attended. The room was packed with technical directors and volunteers running the Sunday morning production. I've found in my own personal walk that its not always the easiest task to get your Pastor involved in technical training or future development of systems. However, they do tend to trust your judgment so soak up everything you can and make sure your making equipment decisions on what you need and not what the next church has or what you can afford today. There is a difference between a $800 & $15k mixing console. Will the congregation notice a difference? YES THEY WILL. Your not going to reproduce the same result with cheap gear.

I wanted to give you some highlights of the class. There were some key speakers from all over the Country giving testimony to how they did it....and what key points they would give. This is good information that we've all heard but now its coming from facility managers who have 10,000 members.

Jeff Vandergiessen: Technical Director of Mars Hill Church. Over10,000 members

1. Plan where your Church in going to be when selecting your AVL. The cost of changing later down the road cost way more. In the same token, overkill for bragging rights is just a waist of money.

Greg Bacus: Lifechurch, 13 Campus 130 Network churches.

1. Design your systems for the volunteer to run. We started with staff engineers and changed to volunteers. There was a huge learning curve after switching.

Daryl Cripe: Grace Community Church 13 separate auditoriums in one location

1. Technical AVL needs to be a part of the design process from day one. Not after the arch & engineers are done.....day one!

2. Your AVL company should be at every planning meeting

Those are a few key points they wanted to make.

Now, I would agree with all of them. Yes, design your church budget for AVL around who is going to be running the systems. Yes, you get what you pay for. Yes, the design team needs to be in place way in advance and be at every meeting.

If you have any questions about new facility design or how to get started visit www.creativesoundsolution.com or call 239-458-3408