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by Laura Laing     Added July 24, 2008

As published in Worship Facilities, Jul/Aug 2008

WFM: Your company was founded in 1976 and originally called His Sound. How did you get started?

Garrison: I was a youth and music pastor for five years, and while taking high school singing groups on tour, I ran across quite a few different scenarios with churches. Almost always they would say, ‘Gee, this portable system you brought in for your group is better than our church sound system.’ So with no money and no formal training, I just eventually responded to what I felt was the calling of the Lord to do this. It was more missional for me. It was not, I’d like to be a businessman and make money.

WFM: So this was a ministry for you.

Garrison: Yeah, I would say that it definitely started that way. This wasn’t a very responsible thing to do from a financial perspective, because we had no money and I had no training and I didn’t have a business plan. I started off custom fitting equipment into church buildings and being concerned about the aesthetics and, as a musician, I had some idea of how things should sound. Most churches were buying portable equipment with rubber bumpers, chrome corners, handles, and wheels. So my approach to building custom cabinets that had nice wood finishes was already a step ahead and got immediate interest from churches. So that’s how it started—not very sophisticated.

WFM: The needs of these churches have changed dramatically in 30 years.

Garrison: Oh absolutely. The first thing that churches were concerned about was sound systems. Over time, it became more and more important for the sound system to be more than just a PA system. But churches didn’t come to us and say, ‘Hey would you help us design the acoustics of our room?’ We would have to tell them acoustics is important.

WFM: And how have your services changed over time?

Garrison: Churches started off knowing that they needed sound systems, and then lighting began to be of some concern. So we added that expertise to our group. I learned fairly quickly that if you’re going to do two different systems, you’ve got to hit a home run with both of them or you strike out in the minds of the church you’re serving. We do it all in house, with a lighting guy not an audio guy doing lighting. As video became a big deal, we did the same thing. We actually brought on video experts.

WFM: Tell us about one of your recent projects, as well as the size and scope of your work.

Garrison: Our most recently completed project is Abundant Living Faith Center in El Paso, [Texas]. That’s about a 3,600-seat main auditorium. It also has about a 600-seat youth center.

We do what we call assembly space consulting and design, which has to do with stage layout and the back-stage spaces, green room, storage spaces, shops. Included in that is seating layout and sightlines. So we do that consultation along with the interior acoustics, image display, lighting, and video. We did all of that for Abundant Living. We got things up and running for the dedication service that happened on December 31, [2007].

WFM: How does the scope of the project impact the timeline?

Garrison: For MGA, about two-thirds of the work on an annual basis is new construction. We always hope to be brought in at the very beginning before the architect has made any progress at all, so he doesn’t have to back up and redo things. About one third of our work is what we would call room renovation and/or system upgrade. Those projects have much shorter lead times that can range in months. New construction depends on the size of the room. But the typical 1,000-seat to 3,000-seat room—we do a lot of those—typical start to finish time is 2-3 years.

WFM: How do you feel that MGA helps churches do their ministry better?

Garrison: The pastor, worship pastor, the youth minister, and technical people—all of these people have their normal job descriptions and duties for the church—you know, doing the work of the ministry. But the whole design construction industry is very different than the work of the ministry. So they’re adding work that is extremely stressful. One of our goals at MGA is to avoid bringing stress to the situation and to try to relieve stress when we can.

WFM: After everything is installed, what kinds of training and ongoing consultation do you offer your clients?

Garrison: We work with the church operators to familiarize them with the system and its capabilities. I would say one of the shortcomings of our industry is the ability to provide in-depth, long-term training for system operations. What is needed is for somebody who can do the training in a touring fashion, where you would go to a church repeatedly and train operators on their system and in their room. How to make that financially viable for the people that would provide this training, I’m not sure. It would be a great business to start.

WFM: What are the most significant movements or trends shaping the worship market going forward and how will you handle these?

Garrison: Integrating technical systems into the architecture in an aesthetically pleasing way is much less important. Churches just want to get very functional rooms that are very flexible. So all the technical systems are much more production oriented, not architecturally oriented. What that means is that when a church comes to us, we ask leading questions to try to help them be forward thinking.

WFM: Are there any new products or initiatives that you’re going to be launching in the near future?

Garrison: Churches want to put in line-array loudspeakers. Line arrays have some very beneficial uses and some unique qualities where when you need them, you really need them. But they don’t work in every situation, and we’ve just seen widespread misuse of line-array speakers. A new product is coming on the scene that will still give concert-level loudness and quality of sound but fit much more nicely in the room and serve that particular seating area.

WFM: What sets your company apart from your competitors, from other people in the field?

Garrison: We focus on getting the room to be designed as right as it can be, rather than simply focusing on designing technical systems and selling that equipment. If there’s a tight budget situation we will advise our clients to put the money into getting the building done right—because you can’t go back and fix that later. We’ll tell them to defer certain aspects of the technical systems, even when that’s taking money out of our pocket. We think in the end it results in a better product, a better tool for the church. If the building is wrong, it doesn’t matter how much you spend on the systems. So get the room right.

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