A Do-It-Yourself Success

Experience Church in Puyallup, Washington, recently overhauled their main sanctuary with a total McCauley solution built on the IN.LINE installation line array technology. Dennis Cummins, senior pastor, and Dave Richards, media music pastor, researched their decision extensively, visiting worship technology conferences and participating in several demos from a range of manufacturers before making the decision to work with McCauley Sound, www.mccauleysound.com.   

The pastors knew the old system wasn’t getting their message across and needed a serious upgrade. At the same time, they were hoping to be able to save some budget by doing the much of the installation labor on their own. 

Working closely with both local installation guru Tim Nole of Audio 21 and McCauley Sound's in-house support staff, Experience Church went forward with a total system overhaul built around 4 IN.LINE N120’s, 4 IN.LINE N60’s, 8 IN.LINE N90’s in two hangs. Additionally four NS1’s were suspended to fill in low frequencies to the balcony, while two M88 subwoofers covered the main floor.

“We strive to provide our congregation the word of God in a way that isn’t boring, but interesting,” said Cummins. “Not only that, but it’s about feeling the message, not just going through the motions of attending church every Sunday. It’s all about the experience!” 
 
Since the installation’s completion in December, the response from the congregation has gone from “complaints to complements, overnight,” according to Richards. 

“We don’t have people moving chairs around to try and hit the sweet sound spot during sermons, and that’s a nice change,” he said.

Both pastors had support finding exactly what they needed at the right price point from Tim Nole at Audio 21.

“When we began looking for a system in November,” said Cummins, “we started off looking at a lot of other speaker manufacturers, because I know of other churches that have had them installed. But, when it came down to the demo, they just weren’t as impressive as McCauley Sound. Tim made it very easy for us to choose McCauley because the price was precisely where we needed it to be. Our budget was limited, but we didn’t want our system to sound that way.  Audio 21 did a great job in getting the pricing right for us with the equipment we needed.”

The experience was mutually beneficial. According to Jason Farris, vice president of McCauley Sound, “Working with Experience Church was fun. It was one of the few cases where we were able to interface with an end-user and installer both right in our backyard... literally down the street."

Farris worked closely with both pastors to make sure the church’s system requirements were met while maintaining the best price point possible. 

“Even though Experience Church is in McCauley's zip code, we still provide the same world-class system design support as we would for a partner located halfway around the globe,” said Farris. “All of the guys at the factory, even Tom McCauley, got a real kick out of being able to pop in and see the installation as it was happening, to see all the ‘little things’ fall into place in real-time.”

Richards is passionate about involving the people who come to the church, and before the choice to go with IN.LINE, he was actually apprehensive whether a new system would do any better job reaching the congregation than the existing one. 

 “We’re in the people business, and I knew the old system wasn’t getting the word across to everyone, but I didn’t realize how much room for improvement we really had,” he said.

He is clearly excited about getting to work in the newly revitalized space.

“When we did turn on the system, I was blown away, impressed beyond belief,” Richards said. “You would have never guessed that I was the one who was skeptical about needing a new system. Now, we ROCK for Jesus.”

During the design process, Cummins was very impressed with how McCauley’s internal System Design Group took all of the speculation out of the installation. 

“It was discouraging for us to see how the other guys would send their reps or installers out with protractors and basically just estimate where to put in a system,” he said. “They would say things like, ‘we could put x amount of boxes in here with coverage here, here and here, but that’s just the starting guess.’ I didn’t want to spend our budget on a guess.”

Cummins continued, “One of the major reasons we were so comfortable going with the McCauley concept is just the sheer attention to detail and pre-planning that these guys brought to the table, before we ever spent a dime. Their program gave us a ton of specifics about how to save money while still getting the best possible sound out of the McCauley line."

Daniel Casado, System Design Group chief, was impressed at how smoothly everything went with the church's in-house staff taking on a big portion of the elbow grease.

“Dennis and his team decided they wanted to do a lot of their own labor on the installation, and I have to say I was really impressed with how Dennis rolled up his sleeves and jumped right in,” he said. “He hopped into the man-lift and was drilling holes in the ceiling, right in the thick of it.  Dennis wasn’t the kind of guy to stand out of the way and let everyone else do it; he was in there with the best of us getting his hands dirty. That’s always great to see.”

The experience was a win-win for all parties involved.

“The support and information provided from McCauley Sound’s staff was fantastic,” said Cummins. “At Experience Church.tv, we’re focused on consistency, and we received that and more from the McCauley staff. I feel like we really got the best.” 

Continuing to say that most churches have a reputation for sub-par systems, he said, “We didn’t want that for our community. Now, I feel as though we are providing the best services possible to our congregation. When people go to a concert, they pay to get the best live sound they can get; we wanted our free audience to receive the same thing. I’m confident in saying now that’s exactly what we’re providing.”