Assembly of God Peckville’s new homeprovides room for its rapidly expandingcongregation.Dual fixed-frame screens sit to the leftand right of the podium on the stagewall, and arrays hang in a left-rightcenterconfiguration.That does not mean the marketisn’t wide open for integrators whoare willing to take the time to understandtheir client’s needs and explainhow systems work in easy-to-understand,jargon-free language. In fact,Hersch stressed that the technologicaltrend is toward contemporaryworship with high-tech systems,even in many formerly traditionalchurches. “The young contemporaryChristian movement is very big,” hestated. Referring to his recent projectat AG-Peckville, he added, “TheAssembly of God church has alwaysembraced their youth. That’s whythey flourish.”Hersch said he was fortunate towork with the media director atAG-Peckville, a flourishing churchthat puts great emphasis on its youthministry and the technical systemsthroughout the facility. “Fred is justwild about technology and what itcan accomplish,” Hersch said, callingCicilioni a media director whotruly thinks outside the box. “We ranconduit up to the highway becausehe hopes someday to put a digitalbillboard out there and broadcastservices on Sunday morning topeople driving by down in the valley.”For now, Cicilioni outlined threemain objectives for the new systems:AV in the main sanctuary that wouldattract big-name Christian performers,interconnectivity throughout thefacility and systems that would assistwith quality television production.Each goal, in some way, points backto the church’smission to createnew disciples.Cicilionistressed thatsystems werepresent in theirold sanctuaryto accomplishthese tasks, butthe sound, lightingand videowere unreliableand barelyadequate. “We’vebeen doing this for years, bringing ingroups, doing television production,”Cicilioni said. “But now we have theequipment to do it well. Everything’sreliable now; it does what we expectit to do.”Additionally, the church was runningout of room. “The old sanctuaryheld 250 people if we pushed it,”Cicilioni said. “And we were reallypushing it. We had people literallyturning around and leaving the parkinglot because there were no spacesavailable.”The new sanctuary has an extremelyflexible design that allowsthe church to fit anywhere from 400to 1000 people in the venue withoutit looking jam-packed or too empty.“We built the facility with the intentionof growth,” Cicilioni said.The main sanctuary floor seatsabout 450, and the balcony housesan additional 200 worshippers. Byturning off the lights in the balcony,the room looks full even if only thesanctuary floor is occupied. Beneaththe balcony sit classrooms with collapsiblewalls that open up, creatingspace for another 200 seats. Finally,movable seats can be brought in tobring the total capacity up to 1000.“No matter how many or how fewpeople are in the room, it can alwaysfeel full,” Cicilioni said. “We shoot for70% of capacity, because that statisticprovides the highest growth rate toattract new people to worship.”Wherever you sit in the sanctuary,Cicilioni emphasized, the systemssound equally good. Hersch and histeam, which included Project ManagerJoe Dobry and Systems TechniciansRob Bona and Dave Lanzone,installed Community Professionaltwo-way loudspeaker clusters flownhorizontally in a left-right-centerconfiguration. IHP1264 12-inch 60x40cabinets sit at the top to cover thebalcony, with an IHP1296 90x6024 <strong>Sound</strong> & <strong>Communications</strong>www.soundandcommunications.com
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