I started off my house of worship technical career almost a decade ago as a FOH audio engineer at the same church I still work at today. At the time, there was a different technical director, and I would simply walk in on Sunday mornings, mix and go home. It was an enjoyable, low-stress gig.
Shortly after I started, the church was considering the idea of starting a satellite campus in an up-and-coming area of Orlando, FL, just west of our main campus. As those ideas turned into reality, I was tagged as the person who would lead the technical aspect of this new satellite campus. At the time, we were unsure where we’d even meet, but there were several schools in the area with suitable rooms that would fit the bill.
The Gear
There are a number of A/V integrators who specialize in mobile and portable churches. We were fortunate in the sense that we had a decent amount of funding to put together a nice system with the help of one of these companies. With our input, they designed the systems, as well as the cases that everything would live in. They even handled getting us a suitable trailer to transport the gear. The company did an excellent job of designing custom cases to house our specific equipment and ensuring that all of the cases could fit through a standard size door. The inside of each case had a picture or diagram of how that case should be packed, so it was easy for volunteers to help setup/tear down each week. Many of the cases that we spec’ed at the time are still in use today in various areas around our facility. We also made sure to purchase equipment that was durable and easy to transport. In retrospect, one thing we could have done better was to consider how the equipment would integrate into a more permanent facility later down the road. Ultimately, the goal of most mobile or portable ministries is to land in a permanent home, and that was exactly our situation. Unfortunately, not all of our equipment ended up working well in a permanent facility, and we had to replace or augment some gear in order to make that transition work.
Site Surveys
We considered several sites to house our new remote campus. Each one was a school in our target area, and we were mostly looking at their cafétorium spaces that had a stage and doubled as a performance space. We visited each site in advance to do a site survey, which was one of the most important parts of the planning phase. There were a number of different things we looked at for each site, some of which were production related, and others just involved the logistics of bringing our small but growing congregation into a temporary worship space.
Transportation and Safety
The most important aspect of doing mobile ministry is transportation. We used a trailer to haul all of our equipment to the school each week, pulled by a dedicated volunteer with his own pickup truck. If at all possible, try to use a trailer that includes E Track for strapping down your equipment while in transit. Pulling a trailer full of equipment can be very dangerous if the load is not properly secured. By strapping your equipment inside of the trailer, you’ll prevent the load from shifting and potentially causing a catastrophic accident. If you have a trailer that doesn’t have E Track, you can have yours retrofitted for relatively little money, and the added safety and security is well worth the additional cost.
Keep in mind that not all of your church volunteers will be used to packing and pulling a trailer like this, so safety and training are of the utmost importance. Have a plan on paper for how the trailer is packed each week. This will not only ensure that the load is properly secured, but also that you haven’t forgotten anything when you leave each week.
Vince Lepore is the technical director at St. Luke’s United Methodist Church in Orlando and teaches live production at Full Sail University. Contact him at vlepore@fohonline.com.
Site Considerations for a Mobile Ministry
- What does load-in look like? Where can the trailer be parked for best access?
- Are load-in doors double or standard-sized?
- Where is the AC power located? How many circuits are available? Are the circuits 15A or 20A, and how many receptacles are available for each circuit?
- Is anything else connected to the electrical circuits that might trip circuit breakers or inject noise into our systems?
- Where can we place speakers to properly cover the listening area? Would any front fill or outfill systems be required?
- What do the cable runs look like? How long is the cable run to FOH, and what path would the snake take?
- Are there areas where our cable runs could create tripping hazards, and do we need cable ramps to protect the cables and people walking around them?
- How long would it take to load-in and set up?
