The History

In 2003, the congregation that has national recognition today began with only 200 members, hosting its weekly celebrations in a high school. Pastor James Merritt, the former president of the Southern Baptist Conference, came on-board to lead them, straight from the huge First Baptist Church of Snellville, Ga. Cross Pointe’s membership quickly outgrew its high school habitat before it decided to erect a magnanimous campus on 70 acres of a former warehouse park. A four-story education building – to house small-group meetings and non-worship events for children, youth and adults – accompanied the 1,400-seat worship center, which itself is equipped with heavy-duty AVL equipment to support Merritt’s media ministry, “Touching Lives.”

The student ministry at Cross Pointe, as with the rest of the church, has seen nothing but rapid growth. From its first meeting of seven people in a basement, the group has exploded to 225 middle- and high-schoolers, all of whom had to share and delineate a single room with a 90-person capacity in the original education building. Part of the growth came, in part, thanks to a Wednesday night ministry from the middle-school pastor, Gerrells reports. For a group that seeks to evangelize to the community and conducts its own full-fledged worship separate from the one in the worship center, that small space just wasn’t enough.

The Process

The project began two years ago at the planning stages, and just recently wrapped up, with the building dedication Sunday, April 13. From an AVL standpoint, Gerrells met with the architects 10 months earlier – in the middle of construction – when the 405-seat “Room A” was beginning to take shape. This is the point when he could begin to visualize what he wanted the AVL end product to look like.

“I’m real big about having a space that hinges to the performance of the room,” he says. “That’s when I get my ‘footprint.’” The architects drew up plans, which Gerrells took to the contractor who was going to install the system – Alpharetta, Ga.-based Clark ProMedia. He then let the architect and contractor work together to make adjustments, such as tilting a wall a few degrees or inserting a barrel somewhere. Because of this mid-construction collaboration, a builder easily can make structural adjustments to enhance acoustics and angles that can’t be made later.

“The bad thing is that a lot of people hire the architect and they’ll forget about the audio company until they feel like it’s time to get them involved,” Gerrells advises. “By then, it’s too late.

“Basically, we sat down in the room, and [Clark representatives] said, ‘Paint me a picture of what you want to accomplish in this room,’ and I told them how I wanted it to look, sound and feel.”

Before that, Gerrells met in the room with the church’s youth pastors, who may not have been able to identify specific AVL needs, but definitely had a vision for the building experience. The pastors relayed what they wanted their ideal Sunday and Wednesday worship to look like. “I translated that to performance – what they say they want and what it’s going to take to get it,” Gerrells explains. “Then I take that to the consultants and say ‘This is what the pastors want, this is the equipment we will need to obtain that goal and I need you guys to build me the infrastructure to support it all.’”

Clark operated with a team of eight people plus an installation crew, relays Matt Card, the company’s vice president. The team included a project manager, who oversaw everything; an infrastructure engineer, responsible for power and structure; an acoustician; three systems engineers; a commissioning engineer, to tune the room; and an implementation engineer, who supervised the installers.

The Product

Upon entering the 405-seat worship center, three large screens on the back wall demand attention. Each screen has its own independent feed, allowing up to three different video clips to play at the same time. Gerrells says the room is “not doing cameras yet,” but when he and his team are ready, the projectors and screens are in place for it. Also notable is the room’s “intelligent lighting,” which varies from the standard, fixed theatrical light. “An intelligent light can accomplish what eight regular lights accomplish,” Gerrells says of the smart luminary that can pan 270 degrees and tilt 520 degrees. Each light contains a prism of 12 colors. These “intelligent” Martin 250 Krypton lights that Gerrells acquired are pricey, though, ranging from $2,500 to $5,000 per light. Consequently, Cross Pointe went with a blend of these and $300 standard lights. Above all, the design of the room is intimate – the farthest corner of the room is 75 feet away from center stage – so the experience of the light and sound is sure to be gripping.

Room A, which houses the worship band and the large gatherings, is only one part of the AVL challenge. They also developed Room B, a multipurpose classroom complemented with a large projection screen and cable, which will work well for groups within the church that want to have meetings or parties. The hallway is a gaming area containing pool tables, air hockey, table tennis and six Xbox game systems connected to 32-inch plasma screen TVs. “It will give kids something to do before the worship experience begins, but we don’t want a kid off somewhere playing a game by himself,” Gerrells asserts. “We designed these spaces so that people had to be together because everything is about relationships. If the kids aren’t connecting to somebody, they’re not going to come back.”

With a powerful AVL system in place, Gerrells hopes that students who file into the new building won’t “lose themselves,” as the Eminem song suggests. Instead, it will be a place where young people can find themselves, friends, and most importantly, the Spirit.

“It’s very important that the student that walks through the door feels like they can connect, not to a philosophy but to the relationships that are here.”