East Sunshine Church of Christ

NOV / DEC • 2016

H E L P I N G L E A D E R S B E C O M E B E T T E R S T E WA R D S .

East Sunshine Church of Christ: Achieving true “sound” stewardship

Presented by: Renkus-Heinz

ON THE COVER

RANDY WRAY / WORSHIP PASTOR / EAST SUNSHINE CHURCH OF CHRIST / SPRINGFIELD, MO

Achieving harmony through “sound ” stewardship How a uniquely shaped, acapellaloving worship space (finally!) struck the perfect audio balance At East Sunshine Church of Christ in Springfield, MO, four-part acapella harmonies are a worship staple. It’s been that way for more than 180 years since the church was established. This approach to worship music is unique, beautiful — and challenging.

Built in 2002, the sanctuary at East Sunshine is all those things, too. That meant, until recently, it was a source of disharmony with the church’s signature musical style.

Pictured, from left to right: Myron Mizell, Barbara Smith, Jeff Broussard, Randy Wray, Sophia Broussard, Josh Parnell, Toria Smith, Rick Schnake

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ON THE COVER

W

ith a 60-foot-high peaked ceiling; a wide, 1,500-seat, fan-shaped was a speaker installed 60 feet in the air, at the peak of the roof. “That — worship space; and a very large — read: acoustically reverberant plus the fact that the side speakers bounced off the walls because there — rear wall, East Sunshine’s hard-to-achieve harmonies often was no control — meant that no matter where you sat, there was either fell on deaf ears. That’s a shame (not to mention, a big problem!) when a reflection issue, a coverage issue, or a sound pressure level (SPL) issue,” singing along is such a big part of the worship experience.

Smith points out.

“We rely on people in the congregation being able to hear their part,” It’s no surprise, then, that when a new, smaller line of digitally steerable explains Worship Pastor Randy Wray. “When it’s muddled and there’s no cluster-type line arrays hit his radar, Smith was eager to give them a try. distinction, it’s very hard to sing and appreciate the four-part harmony.”

The product was the IC2 loudspeaker from Renkus-Heinz.

This wasn’t news for church leaders. On Sundays, people had long had One IC2 can deliver as many as four individually controllable beams of difficulty hearing the music, as well as the spoken word. sound. Arraying multiple IC2 loudspeakers delivers a truly steerable line During special events featuring East Sunshine’s and several other local array — all suspended from a single point. churches’ music ministries, it was similarly difficult to make out the After trying so many different demos (primarily other line arrays) in acapella tunes and instrumentals. the space without achieving the coverage needed, it turns out the “magic “Our system wasn’t even close to capable,” recalls Darren Smith, a 36- combination” was a dual IC2 in the middle of the stage — cut into the year member of East Sunshine and consultant / installer for Springfield, proscenium overhead — and an IC Live Loudspeaker from RenkusMO-based Sensory Integration.

Heinz on either side of the wide worship space.

For five years, Smith and his team sought a solution.

In most large spaces, he says, a fix requires much larger-format speakers than what East Sunshine had in place. Though there were 10 speakers in a distributed audio system, none was large enough to truly deliver.

“I think the largest driver in any of them was an 8-inch speaker,” Smith says. “They actually blew one of the speakers trying to deliver speech intelligibility and accommodate instrumentals.”

Even so, larger-format speakers weren’t an option, aesthetically. “In that building, there was no place to hang anything,” he points out. “And they didn’t want line arrays; they didn’t want big J-hooks coming down.”

Still, Smith and his team conducted a variety of demos with some well-known manufacturers’ products.

Though they tried a variety of line arrays, they could never achieve the coverage they were looking for.

Darren Smith, consultant / installer for Sensory Integration and a member of East Sunshine Church Suffice it to say, then, church leaders weren’t ignoring of Christ for 36 years, was instrumental in helping the church find just the right sound solution. the problem — but they had, effectively exhausted their audio system options. For a long time, they learned to live with decidedly less-than-stellar intelligibility ... until things reached Designed with high-output performance in mind, IC Live delivers a a breaking point. full-range musical performance while maintaining the beam control that As Wray recalls, it happened during a benefit for a local outreach group. keeps the sound off the room and only on the audience. Described by the A comedian was hired to entertain a crowd of 1,000. manufacturer as “the intelligent evolution of the small-format line array,” “The intelligibility was so awful!” he says. “He would tell a joke, and IC Live was ideally suited to delivering intelligible speech in a reverberant his voice would get quiet, and it was, like, ‘Uh…’ I mean, talk about a space, like East Sunshine. tough crowd!”

Smith, for one, was thrilled.

“We were finally able to cover the auditorium!” he recalls. “Before, we Cautiously optimistic: a (possible) solution emerges could never cover it properly without putting so much sound onto the Smith and his team went back to the drawing board, eager to rectify stage that it caused issues.” once and for all the intelligibility problems plaguing the worship space.

It works, he says, because the center cluster is louder by a minute “If someone sat very close to the preacher, they would get the natural amount. “So, when you’re listening in that auditorium, your ear is drawn sound, and they could see his lips move. So, those people felt like they to the center of the stage, even though you’re listening to the speaker that’s heard him well,” Smith recalls. “But the speech intelligibility in the rest of to the far left,” Smith explains. “We didn’t take the audience and send them the space was really difficult, muffled — especially if you had any type of left or right. We wanted to draw them to the speaker and the singers in the hearing loss at all, even if it was minor. middle. Essentially, we ‘tricked’ the congregation to be looking at the stage For worshippers in the front several pews (but not close enough to the by using the line array, its steerability, time delays and phase shift across preacher to hear him naturally), the audio was often “too loud.” As Smith the auditorium.” explains, there was too much reflection from the monitors on the stage, It wasn’t the church’s first introduction to Renkus-Heinz’s though they’re key to the four-part acapella harmony. loudspeakers. Before, they’d tried out a 12-foot version of the same type of “It was loud because [worshipers] would hear more than one reflection,” loudspeaker technology in the challenging space. “But, we had no place to he says. “In my opinion, the loudness was more distortion. People can listen put that,” Smith says. “So, we tried to do an offset.” to loud music if it’s crystal clear; but, if it’s distorted, it’s annoying.”

Though the team installed the unit upfront, there was so much feedback Overall, Smith estimates half the congregation was listening to on the stage that the singers couldn’t hear themselves. reflected sound; the other half was probably listening to direct sound.

Amazingly, when IC2 was introduced, Smith and his team discovered it “Everything was an echo.” could deliver exactly the same level of control as the tall line array, but in A big part of the problem: The sound source for many parishioners a height of just 18 inches. churchexecutive.com

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ON THE COVER

Pictured here, a discrete dual IC2 loudspeaker in the middle of the stage — cut into the proscenium overhead — was part of the “magic solution” in this challenging space.

Practicing “sound” stewardship With a workable solution finally in hand, Smith and his team were excited to share it with the church leadership, including more than a dozen elders. The only problem? A healthy dose of hesitance.

“Initially, they said, ‘Well, we’ve signed off on this kind of thing before,” Smith recalls. “’It sounds good when the room’s empty — but let’s see how it sounds on Sunday.’”

He was happy to oblige. For two full Sundays, Smith and his team demoed the new setup at worship services. To demonstrate its versatility, they used it for a Sunday morning service and then turned around and used it in the evenings for community-wide services. “It did both perfectly,” Smith recalls.

As the Worship Pastor, Randy Wray was, of course, involved in the decision. He and Senior Pastor Deron Smith had heard the results for themselves; now, they needed to get buy-in from a group of 12 church elders. They came to the church one night and were shown what the system could do.

Their excitement was immediate. “[Smith] had a proposal ready,” Wray recalls. “We met that night, said yes, and put it into play.”

A problem solved — and another created Months later, church leaders are still receiving praise for having solved the “mystery” of great sound in the challenging worship space at East Sunshine. Wray says the feedback has been “all positive.”

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And even though he doesn’t understand all the technical aspects behind why this particular combination delivers so well, Wray says the coverage in the room is “really something else.”

“It doesn’t matter where you sit in the auditorium now, there’s no issue with intelligibility — especially the spoken word,” he says. “It’s been a world of difference.”

The only drawback? Now, his acapella harmonies have to be spot-on.

“With the previous system, we could actually get away with weaker singers onstage!” he laughs. “As soon as I heard the new system, my first thought was: We need to get better, because people are going to hear everything.”

— Reporting by RaeAnn Slaybaugh

QUICK FACTS ABOUT EAST SUNSHINE CHURCH OF CHRIST Year Established: 1834 Location: Springfield, MO Number of full-time staff: 5 Combined weekend attendance: 450 2016 budget: $700,000 churchexecutive.com