Among the furthest-reaching Christian organisations in Zimbabwe across Southern Africa, Celebration Ministries is headquartered in Borrowdale, Harare, at the Celebration Centre. Here, a recent audio systems upgrade included the installation of three Yamaha mixing consoles with Dante networking in the 3,800-seat sanctuary, and the first d&b PA system installation in Zimbabwe.
Founded in 1982, when Pastors Tom and Bonnie Deuschle gathered just six people in their living room, Celebration Ministries presently operates more than 80 churches worldwide. Opened in 2004 after a marathon 14-year build, the decision to upgrade the audio systems was taken in 2019 just before the coronavirus pandemic. Pastor Bonnie Deuschle, who leads the praise and worship teams, and is the driving force behind Celebration’s famed 300-voice choir, was becoming increasingly frustrated by the limitations of the old system. ‘If the voice of the word of God is not amplified, people won’t hear it,’ she says.
Consequently, the decision was made to upgrade. However, as Pastor Tom explains, the ‘who’ was every bit as important as the ‘what’.
‘We looked at three possible providers,’ he recalls. ‘Ultimately, we chose Stage Audio Works, not because of price – overall they were more expensive than the others – but because of their willingness to work with us and solve problems. If I could boil it down to one thing, it would be the relationship: the relationship was more important to Stage Audio Works than the transaction, and we really appreciate that.’
Relationships aside, the technology had to work and provide the experience that Celebration Church was looking for. ‘The brief was to provide a high-end audio system that covers all the seats in the main auditorium,’ says Stage Audio Works’ Technical Director, Nathan Ihlenfeldt. ‘One of the largest considerations was the choir which plays an extremely important part of the worship at Celebration Church. This informed a lot of our design decisions.
‘The main challenge was to provide sufficient gain before feedback for the choir, particularly as the music at Celebration is quite loud and contemporary, but with a significant choral element which is typically associated with softer musical genres.’
Ihlenfeldt dealt with this by specifying d&b Y-series as main LR arrays with an A-series centre array. All the subs were flown, with an end-fire sub array of 21Ss in the centre and flown arrays of 27As behind the main arrays.
‘We needed a centre array because during worship services there tend to be a lot of people gathering right in front of the stage, so the centre array acts as a flown down fill for that specific area. It also helps us gain more accurate vocal and speech localisation,’ he notes. ‘We opted for A-Series because we didn’t need to cover the same distance as the main arrays, and a traditional line array solution rather than the augmented array would have required more boxes to do the same job. A-Series offered us a visually discreet solution that sits just above the proscenium and doesn’t interfere with sight lines.’
The main system is supplemented with 44S front fills embedded into the stairs at the front of the stage, Y7P point source balcony delays and 5S under-balcony delays.
‘We were allowed to choose the right microphones for the choir, and we landed on high-quality Neumanns for this – the balance of microphones for the band are Sennheiser,’ Ihlenfeldt says. ‘The cardioid subs are flown to optimise the directivity of the PA system and keep energy off the stage and away from all of those highly sensitive microphones. We also initiated a move away from wedges to Livemix in-ear monitoring systems where possible to help keep bleed off the stage.’
Another key element of the upgrade was the provision of three Yamaha CL3 consoles for FOH, monitors and broadcast. ‘We especially wanted to provide a solution for Celebration to have a quality live stream,’ Ihlenfeldt explains. ‘Until now, they’d never had the infrastructure to support this, so we provided a dedicated broadcast console.’
Yamaha is the go-to console brand for Stage Audio Works, but not just because they are the local distributor. ‘Even if we didn’t distribute them, we’d use them anyway simply because they are absolutely rock-solid; even in remote areas with dubious power supply, they just work,’ Ihlenfeldt says. ‘For stability, reliability and ease of use, they tick all the boxes.’
‘The upgrade makes life easy both for the technical staff and the choir,’ reports Celebration Church Technical Manager, Harris Machingura. ‘Things flow effortlessly now. Without the worry of the issues they were facing previously, the technical staff have more creative space to explore new things. It’s made a big difference to our worship. We also know that we can rely on Stage Audio Works for excellent support which is very important.’
‘Stage Audio Works have outdone themselves, and we’re delighted with everything so far – their timeliness, their willingness to take responsibility and their desire to make our experience a good experience,’ Pastor Tom agrees. ‘I think that we now have the kind of sound that the building deserves, that the people deserve, and that brings honour to God the way we want it to.’
More: www.stageaudioworks.com
