Coast Bible Church adds ADJ moving heads

Known locally as “the church on the hill”, Coast Bible Church has installed more than 30 ADJ moving head luminaires. Based in South Orange County, California, the HOW was founded in 1967 and has grown into a thriving local church. After investing in high-quality audio and video systems, the church leadership felt it was the right time to bring the lighting system up to the same high standards.

Bill Coblentz from Cinema Solutions called ADJ’s sales team for advice on who to bring on board for the project and they were quick to recommend ex-ADJ employee turned full-time freelance lighting designer and programmer, Edgar Gonzalez. After meeting with lead pastor, Tom Bennett, Gonzalez used the Capture software to create a design and produced still images and video clips of various lighting looks to present to the leadership team. “Their previous system was outdated and basic, consisting of static washes with single-diode RGB LEDs,” explained Gonzalez. “They told me that nice warm white light for streaming services was important to them and they’d like the flexibility of being able to change focuses from service to service and even for different sections of the same service as the people onstage moved to different areas.”

Gonzalez’s design uses 12 Par Z Moves, with six hung from a truss above the stage and six more positioned further back in the sanctuary (three on the left and three on the right). Six Vizi CMY300 fixtures are hung from the main front truss, which allows the church to project GOBO patterns down onto the stage as well as out over the heads of the congregation to generate aerial effects. A further six fixtures are positioned – three on each side – on narrow ledges that run down the side of the auditorium. Interspersed with the Vizi CMY300s, both on the front truss and side ledges, are nine Vizi Wash Z37 moving heads. Six Focus Beam LED fixtures shoot beams over the heads of the band during worship sets and five Allegro Z6s are positioned between the Focus Beams at the rear of the stage.

To fill the space with atmospheric haze, Gonzalez specified two Magma Prime haze machines from ADJ’s sister company, Magmatic. A total of five DMX universes were used, four for the ADJ lighting and a fifth to control house lighting and automated shades using Crestron integration. The DMX signal was transmitted around the large sanctuary using Cat-5 cable via Elation Professional eNode 4s, while control is provided by ADJ’s Compu Show software.

“The people at the church were amazed by the finished system,” concluded Gonzalez, “and the complements I got from the pastor were great. He couldn’t believe how good it looked and how much of an experience it could create in their facility. They wanted to bring more of a concert-style feel to their services and also to be able to do more with their youth, but they also wanted to keep their older members happy. So, it was important that the lighting didn’t distract from the existing feel of the space and from the worshipful nature of their services. I programmed some subtle looks that could be used to introduce lighting gradually to the main services, as well as some more full-on programs for concerts and youth events.”