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Back to the Future

    Added February 08, 2010

As published in Worship Facilities, Jan/Feb 2010

Newport, R.I., has a long history, with stately architecture reflecting the city’s past. Many buildings are well over 100 years old, including one stone-constructed Episcopal church that went up for sale in 2008. And like most cities where real estate is in short supply, it wasn’t long before this empty building, once filled with the sound of voices lifted in worship through hymns and liturgy, would find its new owner: CrossPoint Church, planted in 1999 by Pastor Stephen A. Robinson and his wife, Mary.

CrossPoint is a contemporary church using modern music and technologies for worship. But its newly acquired 120-year-old home hadn’t been updated in decades. The seating had issues, lighting was sparse and dark, and the front of the church was designed to hold the minister and an altar, not a contemporary praise and worship band. Serious renovations were required, and this small congregation would need to roll up its sleeves and do much of the work itself. Thankfully, Robinson and his congregation were no strangers to hard work.

Prior to this new home, CrossPoint resided in a former synagogue, vacant for 20 years, that the church had acquired four years earlier. “Everything needed to be renovated,” states Robinson. “Floors, ceilings, paint, holes in the wall…. I’m not sure if we were filled with faith or just dumb, but we said, ‘We can do this.’ At that time our congregation had grown from five people to about 50. So we rolled up our sleeves and went to work. At the conclusion of the renovation we could comfortably seat about 145 people.”

But that space wasn’t to contain them for long. Within four years they were out of space, and the search commenced for a new facility that the church could call home—the search that would eventually lead them to the former Episcopal church building. And just like the former synagogue space, there was work to be done.

“The pews were original and were in such bad shape that there was a 2x4 under each row keeping them from collapsing,” Robinson describes. “The Rector told me they had put the pieces of wood under each pew to stabilize them after some parishioners fell through one of them during [a] service. The pews were old; the heating system was old; the electrical was old. Everything had to be replaced.”

Audio System Planning

One thing that was clear from the start was that the ancient audio system, intended to only support speech, needed to go. Since Robinson has a background in audio, he was well aware of the importance of bringing on an audio system consultant who could outfit the facility to meet their ministry needs.

Fortunately, one of Robinson’s neighbors was an A/V consultant, and with that personal relationship already in place, Robinson brought Designer/Engineer Cliff Christian of Matrix Production Associates in Middletown, R.I., on board to work on the renovation.

They began the project by ripping out the pews and constricting structures at the front of the church, making way for a larger platform that could support a worship team. Once that was done, A/V planning took precedence. Christian explains that they planned out camera positions for their anticipated expansion into image magnification (IMAG)—or showing live video of those on the platform on their projection screens—to ensure that camera angles would not be obstructed. Without such a plan in place, renovations done now would potentially need to be redone in the future, wasting valuable financial resources.

As carpenters began their work in building out the platform and sound booth, located at the rear of the sanctuary, Christian started testing the acoustics of the room. Acoustics play a major role in the ability of the congregation to hear the message, and as “faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Rom 10:17), church leadership realized that it couldn’t afford to ignore the acoustics of its space.

Initial measurements showed that the room’s RT-60 time (the time it takes a sound to fade away to 1/32 of its original loudness) to be around 2.5 seconds—nice for a pipe organ, but very bad for a contemporary worship band and the spoken word. Imagine trying to pay attention to a sermon when, at any given time, you can still hear the sound of what was said more than two seconds earlier?

"We knew we needed to incorporate acoustic treatments to shorten the RT-60 time,” Christian says. “The heavy carpeting and foam-padded chairs that were installed addressed some of this issue; the rest was handled with sound-absorbing panels from Acoustical Solutions Inc. [Richmond, Va.], placed strategically on the walls of the room. We also started evaluating whether we should go with a center cluster [one group of speakers in the center over the pulpit], or a left-right configuration [which provides stereo sound with speakers in the corners]."

The church settled on using a center cluster configuration using loudspeakers by ISP Technologies Inc. based in Waterford, Mich., chosen for their natural sound and warmth. Once speaker selection was made, another hurdle needed to be crossed.

“As all of these physical demands came together for video, audio and lighting,” Christian reports, “we realized we would need new hanging points [structurally safe places to support equipment] put in to accommodate the load of the equipment as well as to correctly position the loudspeakers.” They considered using standard aluminum trussing, but it would negatively impact the elegant look of the 100+-year-old architecture and woodwork.

“One of the congregation members is a structural engineer,” Christian explains, which enabled the church to implement the new structural members themselves. “We opened up some of the structural roof members and tied in additional beams where we needed them, including two new load-bearing beams that cross the space in the ceiling for hanging equipment.”

To control its audio system, CrossPoint chose the new Roland M-400 mixing console for its flexibility and ability to add full audio recording by simply adding a PC—so new, they were the third order placed with Roland for this model. Christian reports that the volunteers at the church had no problem adjusting to the digital mixer and, in fact, solved some regularly occurring problems. “When other groups would use our old analog mixer, we would have to manually reconfigure the console back to our original settings for Sunday services,” Christian says. “But that never worked well. Now, those settings are recallable at the push of a button.”

Lighting

Church staff and A/V designers had similar considerations when deciding how to light the new platform. Traditional theatrical lighting fixtures were too heavy and bulky for hanging over the platform, and would also affect the aesthetics of the space.

“We had to have units that were small enough to work with a 9- to 15-inch recess behind the mahogany woodwork that caps out the stucco and rock lathe that the altar area has,” Christian says. They chose to use LED fixtures from Chauvet for their low profile, low power requirements, as well as color mixing capabilities. “All the primary and secondary colors seem to be very authentic—I particularly love the lavenders that we're able to get,” Christian adds.

For lighting the downstage area of the platform, traditional theatrical fixtures from Electronic Theatre Controls (ETC) were used. All theatrical fixtures are powered by dimmers from Leviton, and controlled by lighting consoles from Chauvet.

For lighting over the seating areas, the original pendant lighting fixtures were re-lamped with more efficient, brighter lamps.

Video

CrossPoint also makes use of video during its services, for displaying lyrics and video clips. So planning for this was also needed at the beginning.

The CrossPoint team installed three video screens across the front of the church, all of them motorized to raise them up and out of the way when not in use. Sony and Panasonic projectors were installed, as well as a Mac computer running Renewed Vision’s ProPresenter presentation software. A Kramer switcher enables the church to efficiently and reliably switch the projectors between multiple input sources.

Other Renovations

In addition to the new audio, video and lighting systems, numerous additional upgrades were required to make the building suitable.

The pews were replaced with more comfortable seating from Bertolini Sanctuary Seating. Likewise, new carpeting from Dalton Carpet was installed.

“We painted the entire building,” Robinson describes. “I don’t know if it had ever been painted. 35 feet in the air with scaffolding, we painted and we painted and we painted. The guy at Sherwin Williams loved seeing us. We also widened the main inside door to the sanctuary for handicap access.”

Work also needed to be done in other parts of the new church home. “The multi-purpose room was redone,” Robinson explains. “We added a 52-inch Sony LCD TV and powered speakers by QSC. A large mural depicting the city was painted in the multi-purpose room. We redid the children’s church area and put in a 50-inch plasma TV and a small portable audio system along with a Blu-Ray player.”

Throughout the renovation, Robinson considered aesthetics and the historical features of the building when approaching each decision. “We tried to blend some of the original character and architecture of the building with our needs for a contemporary presentation. We tried to match the existing wood stains with any new material being used, so as to blend it with the original,” he adds

As with the rest of the building, the HVAC system was archaic. “We removed two old boilers and replaced them with three new boilers and went from five zones to six. The installation of the heating made the building more energy efficient, but also removing the old big radiators allow for more aisle space. We realize a savings of over 2,000 gallons of oil the first year,” Robinson says

Wrapping Up

The renovations to the facility were extensive, but with the exception of work that required highly skilled tradesmen, the church saved significant money through sweat equity.

“We spent about $200,000 on renovating the facility,” Robinson says. “Professional volunteers did a lot of the work. The project was funded by our church members, friends and family members who wanted to partner with us. We did not use any outside consultants. Our CPA estimated the donated volunteer hours at about $300,000.”

So, was all the work worth it? One result was that the church facility was chosen to be a host site for the 2009 Newport Music Festival, affording them more exposure to the community.

“One of the things I really like about our building is that from the outside it looks like a traditional stone Episcopal Church built in 1886,” Robinson states, “but once you enter the sanctuary it is like stepping into the future. A recent comment from a women who was looking for a contemporary church with praise and worship music thought that by looking at the outside of the building she had picked the wrong church to visit. She was blown away when she entered into the building.”

At a Glance

Location: Newport, R.I.

Denomination: Non-denominational

Seating capacity: 300-350

Style of Services: Contemporary

Weekly Experiences: One worship service Sunday morning; Monday evening prayer meeting; Tuesday morning intercessory prayer meeting; Tuesday evening Bible study; Wednesday evening youth meeting; Thursday morning intercessory prayer

You Are Here

Newport is a city on Aquidneck Island in Newport County, R.I., about 30 miles south of Providence. Known as a New England summer resort and for the famous Newport Mansions, it is the home of Salve Regina University and Naval Station Newport which houses the United States Naval War College, the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, and a major United States Navy training center. (Source: Wikipedia.)

Population: 1,050,788 (Source: 2008 U.S. Census Bureau)

Households in 2000: 408,424 (Source: U.S. Census Bureau)

Churches: approx. 41 (Source: www.destinationnewport.com)

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