Just a few decades ago, building a new worship center or sanctuary likely involved a lot of planning for the choir loft and the pipe organ. As older architecture forces church staffs to figure out creative ways to add sound, projection, and screens to their facilities, new worship spaces can be built with media integration in mind from the beginning.
I’m currently involved in my fifth construction project for a new worship facility (pictured below). One thing I know for sure is that you learn a ton each time you tackle a building project. The lessons you learn are very expensive and they last for many years. For most churches, a new facility may come around only once in a lifetime. It’s a rare window of opportunity that shapes the communication and worship experience of every person who attends your church for years to come.
Each of the lessons I’ve learned could be books by themselves, with a war story attached. But the challenging work of designing a media-friendly facility is worth all the time invested and challenges faced because of what will happen in this new building. Communicating truth that transforms hearts forever is worth the journey.
Process Is Everything
Paramount to everything else, you must know why your building is being built. The need for more space might be your first assumption, but hopefully, in your heart there is a driving desire to create an environment where people encounter truth. Whether your decision-makers are church elders, lay leaders, or you alone (God forbid), be sure to remind your team often of the unifying reason you are creating this space—write it at the top of every document related to the project if you have to. That might seem basic, but losing sight of a building’s greater purpose is precisely why many facilities turn out to be a huge disappointment and ultimately fail to fulfill their potential.
Choosing Your Team
Most construction and design teams are not assembled because of their connection to media and communication. They are, however, chosen for their skill as financial managers and their construction experience. This does not mean they will fail at incorporating media and technology into your space, but it does mean that consultants are crucial in helping the team understand what success in terms of media integration really entails. Of course, you have to hit your budget. But in the end, if that building fails to achieve the purpose for which it was designed, then it represents a wasted opportunity for your church.
I have been incredibly blessed to serve with leaders who have embraced the grand purpose of our projects while simultaneously utilizing their years of organizational and financial experience so we could make the most of our opportunities. Regardless of life experience, it is important to choose team members who get the purpose of His church. Ignore that criteria and you will pay a steep price. However, when godly men and women humbly serve Christ’s Church, the result is exciting synergism and a resource that inspires others to know their God.
Architects and AVL
Many architects complete their list of desired outcomes and then ask the audio/video guy to find a way to hang his stuff. This is the principal flaw of most bad design—people who don’t understand or don’t care about the importance of media integration. As a result, they simply copy other underachieving facilities. These types of project managers and architects find the interaction with great Audio/Video/Lighting (AVL) consulting to be intrusive to their normal process, and therefore wait too late in the game for AVL involvement. One has to assume that these architects would prefer minimal involvement from AVL design consultants or they have never worked with a great AVL consultant. Job one is to find an architectural firm that is creative, but most of all enamored with the possibility of designing in an interactive environment. The design should be shaped by all the desired outcomes for the space.
Get True Consulting
Hire guys who are a lot smarter than you. Guys who know gear, but also have made mistakes on someone else’s job. Their expert team ought to have a variety of members who have real world experience and expertise that constantly reminds you you’re not the smartest guy in the room. Look at where each team member has worked and what each team member has worked on—hopefully, a list of stellar outcomes follows.
This is especially important because these days it seems easy for AVL equipment companies to add “consulting” to their list of services. But in truth, many companies that offer AVL consulting are really just companies that know how to make gear work and get it installed, but fall short of knowing the complexity of construction design. They have little experience in how things such as air-conditioning, electrical systems, and structural design have to work together. If you don’t know, it’s important to have someone on your construction team who does.
As we established earlier, outcome should drive the hierarchy of decision-making. If the space is being built as a communication environment, then everyone should be on board to support the achievement of that outcome. When a barrier arises during detail design (and a few will), then the whole team should work together to find a creative solution. It might mean the rerouting of an air duct or the structural engineers placing steel support at a different interval so that the design objectives can be fulfilled.
I am convinced many churches try to save money on consulting and end up paying the highest price of all: a weak and uninspiring design.
Don’t Be Afraid
Look at other great spaces when designing your space, but let everyone dream crazy dreams of what the experience could be in your space. Encourage the architect and AVL consultant to dream along with you. These initial meetings produce some really goofy, expensive, and, ultimately, bad ideas, but somewhere in those talks is a gift idea. It will emerge and create energy that leads to solutions.
Our current room at Watermark Community Church is a room we wanted to be flexible, authentic, inspiring, dynamic, and easy to program. During our concept sessions, we eventually decided to leave the proscenium walls white so they could be treated with scenic projections for beauty and theme. We added an upstage cyc (or cyclorama) and two floating IMAG screens. This design gives us five surfaces on which to display content (or art) throughout the experience. This is a very powerful tool in helping us create an environment to worship and communicate each week. These simple but powerful solutions came from our dreaming together as a team. Then technology was applied in order to make these dreams reality.
Money
It’s all about money. The worst-case scenario is that your consulting and planning were poor and now you find yourself only midway through construction and over budget. In other words, the dream was bigger than the plan. The next step is always value engineering or cutting cost. Something has got to go, and you can’t take the bricks off the building. So you go to the only area left—get rid of lighting, cut projectors, drop lumens on existing projectors, etc., and the very reason you built this building gets squashed.
My least favorite phrase is, “We can always add it later.” That usually does not happen. Value engineering is necessary, but before you start building. Be sure the contingency fund is adequate for cost increases in major areas such as steel so that these cost increases don’t strip the building of its media tools. In other words, don’t forget the principle outcome for your new facility.
Buy What Shows
When selecting your media equipment, make sure your infrastructure and equipment will impact the audience you are serving. You may want the latest and greatest, but if the audience cannot see what you’re projecting, is it really a strategic purchase? Make sure you buy equipment you can staff and regularly use. In other words, don’t fall in love with gear. Get excited about what will impact the worshiper in the building.
I remember a construction team member (not a tech-savvy guy) asking, “Is this a Ford Explorer or an Escalade?” He was trying to get his head around the sticker shock of a large audio/video installation. I told him a better analogy is that an A/C window unit works well for a two-room apartment, but not for a shopping mall. We were getting the best system for our space at fair market value.
Be patient with leaders who don’t live in the tech world. Speak in language they can understand. Remember, they want to serve the church and have a responsibility to use each dollar for maximum impact. Show them budgets from comparable AVL installations at other facilities to give them perspective on the standard cost for a project of your size and scope. At the end of the day, this building is a tool, so use it well!
Gary Stroope is Senior Director of Arts at Watermark Community Church. Gary was highly involved in the design process of a temporary new worship facility that opened in September 2007, while concurrently planning for and working on the final-phase worship facility, which broke ground in early 2008.