"The typical high school performing arts center is about a sophisticated as our basic small-to-mid-level church is now," says Gary Zandstra, the house of worship (HOW) specialist at Parkway Electric in Holland MI, which installs sound, lighting and projection systems in dozens of HOWs every year. "The technology in the larger churches is on a much higher scale and often is more sophisticated than you might find in the other performance halls in the area." The systems in HOW venues are more complicated because they need to cover a wider range of applications, Zandstra adds. "You'll go from a rock band to a 100-voice choir to a single talking head in the space of one day; in that same day, the church will hold a conventional worship service immediately followed by a contemporary service with bands and much more in the way of production values," he notes. "The staging needs numerous rigging points, multi-service power. It has to handle a wider array of performances than the typical 2,000-seat or less venue will in the course of a month."
Reported by Dan Daley, excerpted from "The Biz," PLSN, Nov. 2010.
