Professional Audio. Video. Lighting

This time, we look at Showers of Blessing Apostolic Church, located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and presided over by Pastor Sylvester Taylor. The congregation is moderate in size but actively growing, with total membership of about 1000; the sanctuary itself accommodates 350 people. This, of course, necessitates several worship services being held: The “Divine Worship Service” is held Sunday at 10:30am, whereas “Evangelistic Worship” takes place at 6:00pm the same day. A “Youth Service” is convened Tuesdays from 7:30pm to 9:00pm. Principally known as a black gospel church—it has been described as “Kirk Franklin style”—Showers of Blessing has a considerable degree of diversity that crosses generational lines; although the majority of church staff is in their 20s and 30s, the congregation spans from the very young to senior citizens.

Turning to the integrator—and there is more to come with this story— the church contracted with Allstar Show Industries, headquartered in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and with offices in Calgary, Alberta and Richmond, British Columbia. Dwayne Plishka, System Consultant, was our source for details about the Showers of Blessing install. Allstar, created in 1979, started primarily as a rental and production house that specialized in sound but, as the years passed, the company began to grow its expertise in lighting; now quite adept in both areas, it is upping its facility with video. “We got a lot more involved in integration and design work,” Plishka explained. “I specialize in houses of worship, but we do a large amount of work in the education sector with colleges and universities.”

The project scope was an audio only technical renovation at Showers of Blessing’s existing 27-year-old building. However, to perform that renovation, Allstar had a hurdle to overcome. “Previous to this project,” Plishka began, “[an integration firm] did some work in there. It was handled by somebody who is no longer with the firm, but it was atrocious to the point that the facilities group at the church and the senior pastor were at odds about hiring the integrator for this project.” The back and forth gyrations continued for a considerable period until, finally, a phone call sealed the deal, enabling church leaders to invest their faith fully in Allstar and Plishka.

“I knew the system was going to perform and deliver the results we all wanted,” Plishka declared. “One of the church leaders phoned me and boiled it all down to a very simple question. He said, ‘Dwayne, I want to go with you. Is the system going to be good or great?’ I responded, ‘If you go with us, the system is going to be great.’ He went back to the board, told them that and sold it.” According to Plishka, church leaders kept that phrase—“The system is going to be great”—in mind for the duration of the project, fully intending to hold Allstar to that promise.

Looking at the project timeline, discussion commenced at the beginning of 2010 and continued in earnest for six months. “The church was somewhat budget-driven and, at the end of the day, I could not meet what they wanted on the budget that was originally laid out,” commented Plishka. “So, it kept going back and forth.” The system design was approved and accepted in the middle of July, with installation beginning in mid-September. The project moved at quite a rapid pace once installation was underway, with completion achieved on September 24 to allow the first service to be held September 26. The project’s final budget was between $70,000 and $80,000, which, according to Plishka, represents a medium sized job for Allstar; for the church, however, it was a major undertaking.

Given that the Showers of Blessing project was a renovation, Allstar had to deal with the acoustics of the facility, leading to use of GeoSoft software. “We took measurements, put everything into GeoSoft and just played around with some of the speaker lines,” remarked Plishka. “GeoSoft’s measurement and prediction is pretty right on.” The speaker system is entirely a combination of Yamaha and NEXO. There are two Yamaha SW218V sub-basses positioned left and right and, on top of those, there are two NEXO PSU 8s present for front fill. They, too, are left and right, and are ground supported.

“We have six additional NEXO speaker boxes in a flown center cluster,” Plishka elaborated. “There are five NEXO Geo S805s and one NEXO Geo S830. All the power is sent from NEXO NXAMP 4x1 amplifiers. Then, the single pass goes all the way back to the console.” White speakers were selected because of white walls and the white ceiling. “It was very important to them that the center line be white, so it could blend in with the facility as much as possible,” he continued. “The other speakers were less important, in that they were ground supported.” Monitoring is entirely through Aviom and Sennheiser. There are seven stations of Aviom A-16II mixers on the platform. Additionally, there are two channels of wireless in-ear monitors that are configured for belt packs for the worship team’s singers.

Referencing his speaker choices, Plishka said, “I’m a big NEXO fan, and it all goes back to the GeoSoft software. Every time I've used the NEXO Geo S speakers and used the software for them, it has been extremely accurate. When I went to tune the rig, I didn't really have to work too hard. There were one or two points I had to cut out but, other than that, the system’s flat.”

For the console, the choice was Yamaha’s M7CL-48. “We demoed it and they loved it, so that became the heart of the system,” Plishka said. It helped to eliminate a lot of Showers of Blessing’s old outboard gear, cleaning the system up. “Now, it’s a front of house board and a couple of lines back right into the amplifiers,” he added, “so it’s very simple.”

Plishka’s experience as a technical operator at another church helped him zero in on the M7CL. “The board is easy to navigate around,especially with the use of the touchscreen,” he said. “It’s single layer, so they don’t have to flip through layers.” Apart from ease of use, Allstar did not want any external processing, which represents another check mark for the digital board. Finally, another church rents the facility on Wednesday nights. Showers of Blessing required the capability to lock out certain aspects of the system. With the digital board, Allstar set up some presets for the client and only gave them access, essentially, to faders.

Showers of Blessing’s previous system did not have many microphones: what has been described as three or four channels of some really old-style wireless mics. “Upon proposing the system, we thought there’s no sense in putting all these speakers and this infrastructure in place unless we start to mic up everything,” Plishka explained. “One of the considerations brought forth was that, to go to personal monitoring on stage, it would require mic'ing up everything on the stage. That’s when we introduced multi-mic'ing the drums, guitars and bass guitars.” Every instrument on stage is mic'ed or inputted into the board. The overall mic complement includes two Sennheiser EW 112 G3s, two Audio-Technica AT892 Micro- Sets, two Shure SM57s, five Shure Beta 58s, one Sennheiser ew 135 and four Sennheiser e 604s, among several others.

Even though, prior to the contract being signed, Showers of Blessing needed considerable reassurance that, if it put its trust in Allstar, it would not be disappointed and, in fact, would be thrilled with the results, a closeness developed between client and integrator over the course of the project that led to a fruitful and successful partnership. In fact, toward the end, church members lent a hand with final installation.

And nothing bespeaks an effective collaboration like planning to work together again in the future. According to Plishka, “They’re already starting to talk about adding to their current facility, putting a video link in the foyer, as well as distributed audio. That means we’d have to put a camera within the main hall and we would have to get the IMAG out into the foyer and into the basement.”

Because, after several months of groundwork, this project really began with a fateful phone call, it is only appropriate that this story conclude with another. “After the first service following the installation, one of the church leaders phoned me,” began Plishka. “He said, ‘Dwayne, you told us the system was going to be great.’ I thought, ‘Oh boy…where are we going with this?’ But then he continued, ‘Dwayne, it was awesome. They were just blown away’.” And so, for Showers of Blessing Church, its audiovisual integration experience went from, in the previous job, being very negative to, this time, the client being ecstatic with the results that Allstar delivered.