Don't think of it as church. Instead, think of it as a media center with the ultimate, eternal, all-access laminate. Any sarcasm here is tempered by a very serious reality: houses of worship have become big business in the U.S. and increasingly around the world. The American Christian fundamentalist movement has been the prime force behind the trend, the epitome of which are mega-churches, such as the now-famous tabernacle of Joel Osteen and his evangelical and highly telegenic family, who broadcast weekly from what used to be the Houston Rockets arena in Houston, where they fill the seats more consistently than most NBA teams can. (See the FOH Interview with Lakewood audio chief Reed Hall) The mega-church has become the anchor of an entertainment media infrastructure that has, in essence, created a kind of closed circuit touring circuit. A friend of mine, a singer named Javen, tours constantly and rarely leaves the domain of church venues. And one of the things he's been reporting back from the road to heaven is that the sound is getting better. The Rockets had music at their games, but they didn't have a JBL VerTec line array powered by 80 Crown I-Tech amps running through four (!) Euphonix consoles. The church's audio and video post suites may not make the BBC envious, but after spending $3.3 million on the church's media technology package–including a 34- foot main video screen–it would make many other venues covet their neighbor's facility.
But really that's just the tip of a much larger entertainment media iceberg. Americans bought over $70 million dollars' worth of Christian music in 2004–six percent of the entire $12 billion U.S. prerecorded music market at the time, according to the RIAA. But over the last decade and a half, and under the radars of the mainstream music business, Contemporary Christian music (CCM) has burgeoned into its own universe, one as diverse as the rest of music. Add in the rest of the Christian media infrastructure, including video, gaming and, of course, cinema, and you're looking at an entertainment sandbox that any mogul would love to play in.
Ah, but as with any technology-driven entertainment format, you need a good hand on the wheel. "The technical talent can often not be the best, not if you're used to working with veteran touring engineers," says Dick McCalley, owner of American Pro Audio, a touring sound and installed sound systems provider in Minnesota. McCalley says there's a disconnect growing between the caliber of the technology and that of the operator. "More than a few churches are now able to put in these huge Yamaha PM1D consoles, which are the Cadillacs of mixers," he says. "Even the Yamaha M7CL mixers are very sophisticated. But it takes more experience than you're going to get on Sunday to really learn how to use them."
Hector La Torre, who founded Fits & Starts Productions, a traveling pro audio educational troupe that increasingly markets itself to worship organizations, has seen how the church market has changed the live and installed audio landscape. "The growth of today's worship market has effectively changed sales and installations of sound systems with many manufacturers saying they are selling 60 to 70 percent of their product to houses of worship," La Torre states.
Dale Sandberg, senior product manager at dbx, says he's seen church-related entertainment become more complex and increasingly reliant on more advanced technology. "And it's not just mega-churches doing this," he says. "We're seeing even 500- to 1,000-seat churches upgrading their A/V systems."
dbx and other companies have recognized the market, often staging or participating in instructional symposiums held at churches. The type of live entertainment is also ranging wider: the Christmas and Easter pageants that churches traditionally held seasonally have blossomed into weeks-long runs of original and classic theatrical productions.
However, the technical talent still lags behind the technology in the religious market. A sound system installer in a southern state who preferred to remain anonymous lauds the church media market for its enthusiasm but gives them generally dismal marks for competency. "What we often do is program macros– a program for spoken word, one for music, one for vocals, and so on–into the systems, then lock the system so their A/V guys can't 'adjust' it," he says.
Thus, the seasoned FOH mixer could become a human hub for the continued technological expansion of the worship circuit. "FOH mixers are doing the same job but learning that miking and mixing choirs, pipe organs and electric instruments all at the same time requires a new set of skills," says La Torre.
The job description for church media techs is also changing. "Once you reach a certain point in terms of the level and number of productions your church is mounting, you have to make that transition from a volunteer technical staff to a professional one," Sandberg cautions. "That's a budget issue for the churches; but for the technician, it's about flexibility: an FOH mixer may be called upon to do other media-related work, like burning CDs right after a service, or even doing postproduction work on the recording before it's broadcast later." In other words, churchbased entertainment needs a broader array of skills as it becomes more complex, but it can't–or at least, it's not used to–paying people to specialize.
Sandberg pointed up another aspect that contrasts secular music concerts with religious ones. "In Christian concerts, you have to mix for a combination of music and spoken word," he explains. At its heart, a Christian music concert is an extension of a ministry; it's more like opera than rock 'n' roll, no matter how loud the drums are. Intelligibility has to be high in order to convey a message more sublime than "Yo, Cleveland!"
The words "church" and "venue" in the same sentence can be jarring to some ears, but at its base, it's all sound and signal–and worth keeping on the economic radar.
Dan Daley can be reached at ddaley@fohonline.com.
