Elation gives Tennessee church a fresh new look

Elation’s Fuze Pendant house downlights have helped transform The First Family/First Baptist Church’s sanctuary from a more ordinary space with uneven illumination to a modern-looking house of worship more reflective of today’s contemporary worship. Based in Columbia, Tennessee, the HOW has a growing ministry and was eager to get started on phase one of its lighting upgrade. Church tech director Brady Ratzlaff and worship pastor Tim Hammond met with Nathan Tomberlin of integration company S&L Integrated about replacing the incandescent pendant house lights with something more up to date.

“They were getting tired of changing bulbs – even when all the old incandescents were working there were dark spots everywhere in the sanctuary,” Tomberlin said. “It didn’t look good and they were ready to discuss ways to improve the space.” After a thorough review, Tomberlin suggested giving the room a more intimate feel by lowering and levelling the sanctuary’s tiered lighting to create a faux ceiling that reduced the height of the lighting from an apex of 12.5m to around 6.7m. He presented the church with two options: a system of low-voltage lighting with a static colour temperature of around 3,200K and a system of colour-changing LED Fuze Pendants with colour-temperature adjustment.

“The Elation option was superior because you can do more with it – you can adjust the colour temperature and it was also brighter,” Tomberlin continued. “The biggest reason for choosing the Fuze Pendant was the fact that they could select the colour temperature and make changes to that whenever they wished.”

Ratzlaff added: “With the Fuze Pendants, we can individually control each fixture, which we couldn’t do before. It allows us to add colour accents throughout the room as needed for special events. The fixtures have also helped the congregation to see significantly better in the sanctuary without worrying about sitting in a dark area in the room.”

Once the fixtures were installed, the HOW began experimenting with the Fuze Pendant’s different colour temperatures. They started at the 3,200K that they originally thought was their preferred temperature and the level at which the static lighting option would have been. “We looked at the room under the 3,200K light but they found that they preferred a higher colour temp, something more around 3,700K or 3,800K, a bridge between warm white and cool white,” continued Tomberlin. “They were thankful they went with the adjustable option and use it to change the feel of the room when needed.”