Christ Fellowship looks forward with Chauvet
- Details
Stepping inside the building, one of eleven Christ Fellowship campuses, worshippers encountered a sleek and spacious room with a curved thrust stage, two-tiered auditorium seating, three IMAG LED video panels, a larger wall centre stage and two smaller units to either side of it. Surrounding the larger panel and located at other positions around the stage was a collection of 161 Chauvet Professional LED fixtures, supplied by Mankin Media Systems.
Although the 161 lighting fixtures may not have been obvious to most people entering the worship centre on Easter Sunday, once services started they transformed the room, creating an immersive field of colour and light that engaged everyone on a deep level. For Christ Fellowship’s team, technical director Neil Zimmerman, production director Danny Dagher and lighting designer Joe Rizzo, the dynamic lighting package is part of a shared commitment to keeping the church’s services rewarding and relevant to contemporary worshippers.
“Lighting plays an integral part of our worship services. We are always re-evaluating how to make our services better and partnering with our audio and video teams to create a more engaging experience,” said Dagher. “Details like colour selection and position of a lighting fixture can have a major impact on the feel of a room.”
Having a powerful lighting system capable of creating this kind of impact was especially important to Christ Fellowship at its new Port St. Lucie worship centre, given the presence of the large video walls. “There are two video walls on either side of the stage and one large centre 3x1 surface,” said Zimmerman. “With the room having so many LED panels, which are so much brighter than projection, we knew that we had to spec fixtures that were bright enough to punch through and make a statement next to the walls.”
The Christ Fellowship team created this kind of system with their Chauvet Professional fixtures. They installed 76 ÉPIX Strip Tour and 11 Ovation B-565FC fixtures, as well as 48 Rogue R2 Wash, 14 Rogue R1 Wash and 12 Rogue R3 Wash fixtures. Flown on upstage and midstage truss, the R2 Wash units fill a variety of roles at the church, from key lighting and fill lighting to secondary colour washing and backlighting of vocalists and speakers.
“This lighting design has more total fixtures on stage than any other Christ Fellowship stage previously,” continued Corder. “This was done intentionally in order to advance the goal of having more creative ‘layers’ to use in designing the visual moments of each week’s service.”
(Jim Evans)
