In the course of making audio happen in our worship environment, we invariably build up momentum. We develop plans, sort out our gear, ensure everything’s connected and deployed properly, and consistently deliver high-quality sound to our congregation. We do it week after week, but eventually, church leadership will approach our tech team and say something like this: “Hey guys and gals, we’re going to do a Major Event! We’re going to invite the community to come visit our church, and we’re going to have games for the kids, lots of great food, guest pastors, and it’s going to run all day Saturday and of course we’ll have our usual Sunday services, followed by more fun and frivolity on Sunday afternoon. We’re going to have our Major Event in a different location, and we will have special services for the teenagers aside from the other regular things we have planned. This is going to be much more complex than our usual services, but we know you’re all very good at what you do, and we’re confident that you’ll be able to make it all happen! Oh — and by the way — it’s scheduled for next Saturday.” I’m only half-kidding about the time-frame — but anybody who does worship tech wouldn’t be terribly surprised to have a hand grenade like this lobbed at them. Luckily, we usually have substantially more time to prepare for this type of thing… hopefully.
Prepare Ye the Way…
I included that time-frame swerve to bring up the most important factor in making sound for large events happen successfully — planning. Yes — we’ll need additional gear, additional personnel and we may even need permits and other stuff like that. But above all else, we’ll need time — time to plan and prepare. Sure, we can probably get it done on short notice, but I’d guess that anybody who’s been around church tech for a while would agree that short notice almost always produces mediocrity. We always seek to bring our best, and granting ourselves sufficient time should be a high priority — and the beauty of it is that time doesn’t cost us anything. All we have to do is think ahead a bit.
The end product will also be better if we have lots of details pertaining to the upcoming event, or as kids say these days: “the more you know!” Don’t be afraid to tell church leadership that large events require much planning and preparation, so please let us know as far in advance as humanly possible. Once the future event first appears on the calendar, ask leadership for a lot of detail. On a similar note, if the large event is periodic (every June, for instance), we can help ourselves immensely by taking notes and keeping track of what works and what does not. Then next time, we can avoid the pitfalls and build on the successes. Every time we do an annual event, it’s an opportunity to learn, and we can improve on a macro scale — not just our week-to-week micro scale. One other related thing — rehearsal. We hold weekly rehearsals for our weekly services, even though they all tend to unfold in the same way every time. When doing a large event that’s substantially different, rehearsal is even more important, so set aside time for it.
The term “large event” presumes we’ll depart the confines of our normal space, leaving two possible scenarios: indoor or outdoor. If indoors, the first question is whether our remote location has its own P.A. system? If so, is it sufficient for our purposes? Will it adequately cover the full spectrum of audio we wish to convey? Might it need subwoofers to provide the amount of low-end we want to present? Should we consider delay fills to augment a system that’s otherwise pretty solid? How about front fills? Of course, in a perfect world, we’d choose a remote venue with a quality system perfectly tuned for the space and have no worries about the P.A. component. But in the real world, our choices may be restricted by things like availability, location and budget, so we may have to consider using a space with a P.A. that will need to be augmented. If we select an indoor space with no P.A., then we need to rent one in. This costs additional money, of course, but it offers the advantage of letting us choose the specific details of the system. In fact, if we’re unable to find that venue with an excellent, perfectly-tuned P.A., hiring a P.A. into a space that has none can be appealing.
Another option is extracting our own P.A. and using it in our remote location. In most cases, this may be impossible. But for a smaller church, the “home” P.A. may be portable enough to haul somewhere else. Yet time and labor are considerations. We would need to extract the system, pack it up, transport it, set it up, tune it to the new space, use it, then reverse the process to get it back and functioning in our home location. In terms of time, this could be a tall order if our special large event is on a Thursday, for example, and we need the system for the following Sunday.
The Great Outdoors
Many of the same considerations pertaining to an indoor event also apply to outdoor functions. Can we move our indoor P.A. to the outdoors and get the job done that way? I would guess that a substantial number of large events done by churches are located on site — right at church — only outside instead of inside, particularly if the church is blessed to have a large space outdoors that’s suitable for such an event. If this is the case, using our own P.A. is at least somewhat easier, as it doesn’t need to be moved halfway across town. But don’t be lulled into a false sense of security — all that hardware must still be moved, located, connected, test-driven, tuned and rehearsed to ensure it will do what we want. Also, consider that a P.A. spec’d for indoor use may not be sufficient for our outdoor purposes — we need more SPL outdoors, and the P.A. that’s fine indoors may not manage outside. One alternative is to hire in a P.A. that will do the job outdoors. But just as with our own P.A., it must be set up, tuned and rehearsed so it will get the job done. Another outdoor consideration is AC power. Can we run power from our building(s), and is enough available? We may need to rent generators to augment our own power. And this all presumes we’re indeed on the grounds of our own church. We may be at a different location, where those same questions about AC must be addressed.
And whether indoors or out, local or remote — are there plans to live-stream the event? Churches frequently have a secondary mixer or DAW set up to mix live streams, and having such a system available for a large event could be a substantial challenge. In particular, outdoor events can pose some challenges. In our cozy church home, it’s easy to just grab signal from Dante and mix it in a DAW with a nice fader control surface, but outdoors, this can get a little dicey. Being anywhere away from the comfort and familiarity of our home location can make a livestream mix more difficult to pull off.
Don’t forget about wireless. Is our system up to the task if we move outside? We’ll certainly need to do a new round of wireless coordination, and we may discover that things outside look a bit different from the way they do inside. And if our large event entails additional musicians and/or vocalists, we may need to augment the number of wireless channels (and transmitters and receivers) we need to get it all done.
Final Thoughts
So far, we’ve completely focused on gear and technology, but there’s also a human component. Larger-than-usual events typically require larger-than-usual crews, so prepare for that eventuality. We may be able to add a few volunteers to our ranks, but if we go that way, we’ll need to ensure that they’re properly trained to handle what we ask of them. Even if we hire in professionals to work on the event, we’ll need to acclimatize them to our culture and bring them up to speed on the unique quirks of our operation and technology.
It’s a safe bet that eventually, we’ll be asked to make large events happen. With sufficient time and planning, there’s no reason why we can’t get the job done well.
John McJunkin is an adjunct professor at Grand Canyon University.
