The 2,000-Seat Sanctuary Now Includes an All-LED Lighting System
Redemption to the Nations church in Chattanooga, TN, located on the site of the former Highland Park Baptist Church and Tennessee Temple University in Chattanooga, TN, recently renovated their 2,000-seat sanctuary and outfitted the space with a new Elation intelligent lighting system spec’d and installed by intyde.
The Renovation
The leadership of this fast-growing congregation acquired the 55-acre Highland Park/TTU site in 2014, seeking to gather the entire ministry onto one campus. As many of the campus buildings were outdated with antiquated lighting and audio systems, Redemption to the Nations began to renovate a number of buildings, including the 2,000-capacity worship auditorium.
intyde, a Franklin, TN-based creative systems integration company that specializes in designing scalable audio, video and lighting systems, is Redemption to the Nations’ vendor of choice for many of the campus renovations and was tasked with completing the in-house design build for the sanctuary, a project that included new lighting, video and audio systems for the large space.
For intyde, the project began with the full system design in April 2017. The sanctuary building, which hadn’t been updated since sometime in the 1980’s, needed to be completely gutted and rebuilt. “There was no cohesive lighting concept before, just a mix of static and older automated lights and other discharge fixtures,” says intyde integration sales manager Nathan Tomberlin. “Most of the previous lighting was discharge fixtures, and the power draw was huge. That was something we wanted to address. It also made for a very warm platform.”
All-LED Lighting Solution
Although the client didn’t specifically request LED lighting, according to Tomberlin, their desire to lessen the power draw, eliminate a large circuit count and save on the power bill naturally led intyde to an all-LED lighting solution. “They also save on maintenance costs, upkeep is down and they saved by not having to invest in dimmers and additional transformers,” Tomberlin continues. “We wanted to give them tools to create great moments and with the Elation lighting system. I think we’ve done that.”
The new LED lighting system was installed relatively quickly, from start to finish, in less than two week – from Oct. 9 to Oct. 21, 2017. The impressive new system includes a variety of Elation LED moving heads — Satura Profile, Platinum Seven, Platinum Spot III and ACL 360i fixtures — along with Colour 5 Profile ellipsoidals and SixBar 500 battens.
Merging Church and Theatrical Lighting
At 124 feet deep and extremely wide at 253 feet, the worship auditorium required an even front wash of light across a roomy stage. The previous system, which relied on 50 feet of a single truss layer in an attempt at a 120-foot-wide wash, was deemed inadequate for the vast space, Tomberlin says.
“Instead of filling up a front truss with ellipsoidals, we started the design by identifying each position on stage and on the house floor, and designed a tri-truss layered (upstage, downstage, altar) three-point focus on front wash with Colour 5 Profiles supplemented with Satura Profiles with their 20,000 lumens of power and framing shutters.”
The design merges church lighting with theatrical lighting. Each fixture group, when used alone, demonstrates a unique but complete look in the design while allowing ample room for creativity.
“There should always be a balance between design and function, and each fixture should serve a purpose,” Tomberlin says. “We needed to provide a powerful back-lighting solution and decided the Platinum Seven with its multi-zones and dynamic zoom range was the best choice for cost/function. The Platinum Spot LED III was the obvious pairing to the Platinum Seven for the rear spot position with its zoom-able spot with frost and changeable gobos.”
Powerful ACL 360i single-beam moving effects are used to complement the vertical LED display columns by creating stacked beams with a full range of motion. intyde added the SixBar 500s and its individual LED control to supplement the LED wall for a minimal static color look.
Lumen output of all the LED luminaires had to be sufficient enough to power through the 1200nit LED wall, and because much of the lighting is on motors, full design changes and reconfiguration of the LED wall and lighting are uncomplicated. To underline the system’s adaptability, Tomberlin says that any of the lighting equipment can be motored down and moved elsewhere on campus if required.
With an all new infrastructure and state-of-the-art entertainment technology systems, the Redemption to the Nations sanctuary operates as a full functioning theatre or touring house that effectively serves the wide variety of applications the sanctuary space is used for — conferences, plays, concerts, live broadcasting and special events, as well as the ministry’s many weekly services. It’s no wonder that Tomberlin calls it “the best venue in Chattanooga.”
Redemption to the Nations Church
Gear
- 7 Elation Satura Profile fixtures
- 14 Elation Platinum Sevens
- 21 Elation Platinum Spot III’s
- 18 Elation ACL360i’s
- 27 Elation Colour 5 Profiles (26° lens)
- 6 Elation Colour 5 Profiles (36° lens)
- 12 Elation SixBar 500’s
