Planning Conversation for Sanctuary Tech and Audio Upgrades

Meeting Notes from 3/15/2023

Attendees: Pastor Garret, Jean LaCrosse, Neil Satterly, Dianna Bopp, Larry Bopp, Mark Watson, Walt Cogswell.

Purpose:

To reflect on our values for worship, talk about challenges, and imagine what faithful, vibrant, relevant worship in our sanctuary could look like. Design Team: Vibrant, Dynamic, Relevant worship experiences that encourage congregational participation.

Recapping the Past 1.5 years

  • Conversations started in Fall of 2021 about our worship and music ministry

    • The goal of these conversations was to name where our music ministry was at and discern the direction. 

    • In the end we discerned we wished to widen and deepen our music ministry

  • Outcomes of those conversations:

    • Created a worship band. 

      • Set aside a $10k gift from a congregant to jumpstart the worship band with the purchase of electronic drums and other equipment. 

      • Installed different monitoring system for musicians as well as mixing equipment to facilitate different audiences (people in pews, people at home, musicians needing to hear themselves)

    • Shifted the role of the Music Director by giving Jean charge over the worship band

    • Started using cloud based software (Planning Center) to schedule musicians and songs. 

    • Created a balance between worship styles, songs, and instrumentation.

    • Prioritized worship band and choir for services, creating space to feature the organ once a month (this is hampered by the state of the organ)

Pitfalls and Growth Areas

  • What other challenges did we face or are we working through?  

    • People said they have not been able to hear well while playing instruments, people at home notice that the music mix is unbalanced, and people in the sanctuary sometimes cannot hear certain instruments. Sometimes the mix in the service is great but not great online/at home.

    • The configuration for Sunday mornings is not ideal and musicians find it difficult to hear each other/play together. Spacing issues

    • Acoustics in the space make for challenges all around

    • The sound mixing work each week and within each worship service is highly dynamic.  Volunteers working the mixing board and other tech positions are dedicated, but they are not professionals. During our period of growth and learning, patience is appreciated.

  • Where have we grown and what do we celebrate? 

    • The joining choir and worship band services we have had

    • Addition of instrumentalists to enhance our worship music ministry

    • Participation from a lot of different people and a diversity of music being played

    • The tech 

Overall, there have been strides of success and frustrating pitfalls along the way. But, as in previous decades we are living into our vision of providing faithful, vibrant, relevant worship. There is good music done in the past and there is good music now. The important thing is that a church’s life and worship ministry is dynamic, taking shape as life moves along. I believe we are doing a great job of carrying the past in one hand and the present in the other as we move forward. 

Present Moment: Where does this leave us now?

Neil Satterly described our current reality and asked how we should approach changes and upgrades.

Question for the group: What do we envision? What do we want our future worship to look like?  What tools might we use? How might we change this space in order to fit our present ministry and expand as it changes? 

  • The full solutions to our challenges need to include more than equipment and hardware purchases. Locating hardware and wiring will be decided after other considerations. 

  • We want to find a space that makes sense for musicians and choir to be during the service that makes sense. 

  • We want to maintain the integrity of the space, but also not be afraid to move around the furniture 

  • We want to clear clutter from the platform up front and move it off to the side to make it look better

  • Choir

    • The choir is moved around alot and we would like for them to have a spot where they can be, and also see jean. 

  • We would like to have instrumentalists to help lead the congregation to worship God and not for the leaders to be the people we worship

  • We could potentially use the upstairs balcony to house our musicians. There are several logistical issues to confront while exploring this option.

Wants: 

  • We want to figure out how much space we need off to the left as you come in (currently where the drums, piano, and choir are). 

    • We need to figure out how much space is needed to comfortably allow for all the instruments, vocalists, and choir.

    • We want to designate this as the space for musicians which clears things up front. 

  • We want an adaptable space

    • We would like to create an extension to the platform

    • We would like to build platforms that could create more horizontal space to the platform, but also vertical in that we could make risers out of. 

  • Lighting

    • We would like to put in lighting to change the ambient light in the space, which would fix a lot of issues we are having with cameras

    • We would like to put in lighting that can show different colors, enhancing what we can do in worship

  • Acoustics

    • We need to be smart and do a gradual approach to how we tailor the sound in the space. There is not a cookie cutter solution to the sound issues we have. It is about bringing acoustic balance. 

    • Acoustic wall treatments have been very strongly endorsed by three outside sound professionals. 

  •  A stage manager who actively plans and advises worship participants before and during worship would help smooth the worship experience by avoiding delays, distractions and awkward movements, both for in-person congregation and audio/video for online congregation.

Next Steps:

  • We need to draw up a schematic of the space and how we would carve out space for the worship team.

  • Garret will also communicate with the Design Team to ensure coordination and cooperation in planning.

Our next team meeting is Monday, April 17th at 2pm. 

Submitted by Pastor Garret on March 16th, 2023