The Our Savior Lutheran Church Story

What began as a discussion about upgrading their lighting and adding environmental projection quickly turned into a full room renovation and AVL replacement after vandals snuck into Our Savior Lutheran Church overnight and set multiple fires inside the Sanctuary.  The 24 year-old Tacoma, WA home of Our Savior Lutheran Church was no longer safe to occupy, so the church began meeting in a local middle school doing portable church while they formed a team to bring beauty from ashes to their worship space.  For both their temporary portable church needs, and for their new permanent audio, video, and lighting solutions for the redeemed worship space, the church turned to Olympia, WA based CCI Solutions.

Homeless and having to dive into a major building renovation, decisions had to move fast and furious to get the church back into their home over the next 6 months.  Matt Kees, Minister of Media and Technical Arts, said, “We basically entrusted all of the audio, video and lighting equipment selection to CCI Solutions, other than the PreSonus equipment, which I selected, because I have a long working relationship with them.”  Since there were no drawings or plans by the church for this project, and the church needed to get back into their worship venue fast, they relied on veteran Project Lead Todd Gathany for drawings and to make sure all the contractors were on the same page from day one.  “The entire worship center being down to its studs and outer walls, we relied on plans from CCI that they coordinated with the electricians, to ensure that everything we needed was in place,” says Kees.

The Technology

Even before arson struck the church, creating a highly dynamic, visual worship space was a key goal for the church.  Environmental projection played a huge role, and (4) 10,000 lumen Hitachi CPX-9111 XGA projectors handle all the video delivery to the Sanctuary walls.  Driving the video content to the 4 projectors, including picture-in-picture capabilities on the walls for video playback and IMAG capabilities, took a more sophisticated video processor than you see in basic projection systems.  Dataton’s Watchout product gave structure and delivery to the visual canvas created by the Hitachi projectors.  In addition, a 4,200 lumen Hitachi CP-WUX645N projector handles the confidence monitor duties on the back wall of the worship space.

Working with the environmental projection to deliver a dynamic worship space was a brand-new lighting system, which all started with Chroma Q Inspire house light fixtures. The Inspires which deliver the ability to bring the amazing scenic designs on the walls out into the audience.  More color is delivered to the stage with an assortment of Chauvet Professional lighting fixtures, including (18) COLORado 1 Solos, (6) Ovation E-910FC19, and Rogue R1 spot moving lights.  (6) Ovation F-95ww Fresnel fixtures provide a bright, even, warm wash of white light to ensure those leading worship and the message are clearly seen, even in the midst of such a beautiful canvas.  Control is handled by the High-End System HedgeHog 4 lighting console with built-in 12” multi-touch monitor, paired with Interactive Technologies Cue Server , making programming a breeze in a compact controller.

While the room had to be dynamically engaging from a visual perspective, having consistent audio throughout the room that sounded full and rich, engaging the audience in worship, was also critical.  CCI Solutions installed a L-Acoustics ARCS WIFO speaker system consisting of (1) ARCS wide and (1) ARCS Focus arrayed together per side, and (2) SB18i subwoofers.  Mixing duties are handled by a pair of PreSonus RML32AI’s partnered with a CS18AI control surface, offering 64 channels of digital mixing with full processing available on every channel.

The audio, video, and lighting systems all exceeded the expectations of the church, with many truly being blown away with what their new and improved worship space could do.  Incorporating environmental projection with a fully immersive lighting system is really powerful, truly creating beauty from ashes. “We had some people who had been (originally) opposed to it,” Kees adds, “but then came up to us to tell us how it helped enforce the emotional connection during worship.”