The Bible has a lot to say about how a modern church should be designed. Solomon’s Temple was not just a house for God to dwell in, it was also meant to be a tool to help preach and spread the Gospel in the present.
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This article is the most comprehensive study of King Solomon’s Temple I have ever written. If you believe John 1:3, then you know who really designed Solomon’s Temple. King David only penned the details of the new temple. King David told his son Solomon that it was the hand of God that guided his hand. What was so important for God to design the temple rather than letting a man design in with whatever came into his thought?
This article gives a stronger case for what the “Inspired Word of God” means.
Winning people to Christ is not a game or something given to chance. We need all the tools possible to have an impact on this world. Jesus is Lord, and if your church is dedicated to God, Jesus is Lord over your church building too.
Late last year, Kevin Young, freelance music and tech writer, professional musician, and composer ask to write up a profile article on JdB Sound Acoustics. After several interviews, he submitting the article to Church Sound Magazine which is part of Pro Sound Web. Pro Sound Web has published a number of my projects over the years and they are a great resource for churches for all things about church sound, lighting, and AV.
Is the performance of your worship space a priority? Is the message always crystal clear in every seating position, and over 60% of the congregation is singing all the time? If you say no to either or both questions, and you want your church to sound right for speech and music, the biggest obstacle is often the acoustics. The second is money. The third is aesthetics.
Fix the room! How? Follow what the Bible says, and you will not be disappointed. After all, it is God’s plan, not man’s idea. Do you think that the results will be less than perfect if you follow His plan completely? Isn’t the Bible the Living Bible? Since when did the Bible stop teaching us new things about science? Check out Solomon’s Temple, and the answers are there. They always have been. It’s just taken a while to join the dots.
But it costs too much! Oh, you mean the cost of a few floor monitors or a couple of wireless microphones considered too much? That is often the cost of the Bible’s way of fixing the acoustics or about $3.50USD per seat for a 300 seat church. (Not including the price for the knowledge of knowing what to do.) Replacing a mixer costs about $15.00-21.00 per seat. Replacing pews for chairs cost about $75.00 per seat. Buying 10 Shure SM58 mics with cables and mic stands – costs about $1,500.00. Fixing the acoustics of a church is cheaper than you think.
If the look of any acoustical treatment is a concern, ask yourself this. Are you there to worship God or the building? Fixing the acoustics is like saying you are more interested in hearing what God has to say through your minister. Putting up with acoustical problems, poor quality congregational singing, and accepting a sound system with limited performance is like saying the building is more important than the message and having fellowship with other believers.
It all comes down to priorities. The primary purpose of any building that is a dedicated House of God is the preaching of the Gospel. A place where the Gospel message can be spoken without distortion or interface. That includes making the room behave as God would want us to have it. The second priority is the breaking of bread and drinking of wine in remembrance of what Jesus did for all of us. The worship space has to support this event as often as each church chooses to remember. The next priority is congregational singing. There isn’t any other experience that can replace the joy and excitement of a room where more than 75% of the audience is singing. Songs that tell stories of Jesus, his atonement of our sins, and of people who follow Jesus are powerful in bringing people together. It takes the same quality of acoustics to hear clear speech as well as great congregational singing. These are the things that matter when you are a part of the Kingdom of God.
While I do have a business about church acoustics and sound, there is no possible way for one person or one company to fix all of the churches out there that need help. By making this public, it means that no one can patent it and force churches to pay a license fee. It means that no one can control it and inflate the cost of fixing existing and new churches. Churches should use the Bible’s methods with confidence, to apply in faith what God teaches, even without expert help. When churches take such a leap of faith, in most cases, the results are outstanding.
This information is being shared because I care more about winning people for Christ through better sound than creating a business empire. By revealing what the Bible teaches, by showing that science backs it up, that it is affordable for every church to have excellent acoustics, this is all part of the Great Commission. If more people with a passion and skills like mine, were to apply what the Bible teaches about sound, we could make a difference. Mat-7:15. Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. (KJV) If you have the chance, read the rest of what Jesus said in Mathews 7:15-20. Don’t trust me. Trust the Bible.
What would you prefer? A church were you can have the best worship experience or a church that looks amazing?
The organist of this church pulled every stop, pushed the peddles all the way down and the he had trouble hearing the organ just 20 feet away. At the back of the church at the sound booth, the organ was barely audible. I used a SPL meter, put it about 3 feet over my head at the back of the church and the congregational singing peaked at 105dB several time during a familiar hymn. There was no one behind us. There have been other times at other church where I designed or upgraded their acoustics were the congregation is singing acapella and they were peaking at 106dB. The good news is, singing like that doesn’t hurt your hearing.
The goal of any worship space and the church sound system is not about loudness, gain before feedback, intelligibility, special sound effects for the organ or choir, having the most talented performers in the worship team, how many wireless mics, number of channels the mixer has or the name brand of equipment you have. The goal of a church worship space and the sound system is to be a safe place where the Gospel can be presented clearly and with little to no blemishes. Where every person within the worship space can hear and understand the Gospel as clearly as when having a conversation with someone only 4 feet away and sharing the Gospel. Anything less than that goal means that the spoken word can be corrupted in the journey between the minister’s mouth and ears of all those who are listening. The Gospel needs to be broadcasted and understood as clearly as reading God’s written words.
If your church has hot spots, dead spots, good sound in these seats and poor sound in those seats, then the Gospel is not being presented equally to everyone. If your sound system has technical problems during worship often, then it is a distraction, and it can make the difference of understanding something important.
The chart below shows tangible results when your worship and sound system are tested. There should be three tests.
The first is with a test speaker. It is a point source speaker that is small enough to mimic a person’s voice.
The next test is feeding a signal directly into the sound system and test those results. This test is just about the playback quality of your sound system.
The third test is to use the test speaker 30 inches from an open microphone such as a pulpit or any microphone on a stand and test the combined results of the worship space’s acoustics direct interaction of the sound system and open mics. You can also do a second version of this test and place the test speaker 4 inches from a microphone where the microphone is 45 degrees off axis.
If all three tests are not in the Yellow section, the results will let you know if it is your sound system, the acoustics or all of the above. This is also a better indication predicting if upgrading your sound system will improve the results you are looking for. This is also a strong indicator that your worship space needs some kind of an acoustical management system
You can get your church tested. It doesn’t cost much, and the results can save a life or many lives, depending on your point of view. As an independent consulting company, we offer church testing and results with no obligation to use our services in the future.
Churches use a lot of Cardboard Tubes in acoustical room fixes because they are very effective in getting the room performance they want and need. Cardboard Tube not only outperform all other acoustical products in churches but they are also the most affordable. There is nothing that can do what half-round tubes can do, even at 40 times the cost.
Ok then, what if you don’t like the look of cardboard tubes around your worship space. Here is an option some churches have been willing to spend a little extra for.
These look like standard 5 inch deep absorbing panels. They are not. These are Sono Tubes mounted in a wooden frame and covered with cloth.
The cloth was an added expense and it was worth it. The fire rated cloth is expensive and before covering the panels, you want to make sure the acoustical system is going to work and work it did. The church is very happy with the results and they are enjoying the room.
This is what the installation looked like before it was covered. The wooden frame has no effect on the performance of the half round tubes. The cloth only affects frequencies above 10,000 Hertz which means they have no effect on speech or music. In this installation, three sizes of tubes were used.
At the bottom is a huge video wall screen. On the wall are the Sono Tubes. Yes, the tubes will work behind a vinyl screen. If you notice the pattern of the diffusers on the wall. that pattern was needed to control lower mids and bass sound energy. This pattern was pretested in our test room.
Here is the finished installation of the video system. It takes three projectors for each screen. The center screen is a video wall.
Photos courtesy of Frederic Lachance of Northside Church in Coquitlam BC, 2017.
The simple answer is as follows. Half, quart or third round devices or objects individually just scatter sound. A single barrel diffuser or tube radiator as I often call them just create a very uneven distribution of sound. As single units, it gives about the same amount of performance as placing a flat object of the same size and placing at a 15 to 35 degree angle on a wall.
When using barrel diffusers in various sizes and/or in spacing varying from 0 to 30 inches and apply them to all of the walls in a confined space, you are creating a diffusive field. You’re turning the church walls into a phase coherent sound field – like churches of yester year built between the 1400’s to 1700’s. When barrel tubes are used as a system you can program them to only manage the acoustical problems you want to get rid of and at the same time create a more desirable sound field like real reverberation that is musical and supportive to congregational singing.
Barrel tubes spaced too far apart just scatter the sound and reduces some bass but does nothing much else. Instead, you can program the diffusers to manage standing waves, bass buildup, notch a frequency or two and equalize a room. You can also program them to lower stage noise, manage monitor spill into the audience and improve congregational singing. They can also be programs to make the sound system perform better.
The software to program barrel diffusers is still in development. In the meantime, a test room, and a data base of real world testing is the best way to predict the final outcomes. Try and program a digital EQ to cut 350 hertz 40dB. It can be done but it sounds awful. When you program tube radiators to cut 40dB, it sounds sweet.
Would you know if the best person to do a job was a person from your church or church community? What if that person was one of the most skilled persons in the world for that service? Would you know it and would you hire them? Would you rather hire someone who is worldly, charges huge fees, who give the best sales pitch over someone who is better skilled, who charge less because they want their work to be accessible to any church, not just churches who can afford the big buck and the hype? Is it possible for a Christian to be the best in world at something else other than being a Christian? Hope you enjoy the true story of a Stone Mason.
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