What! Are Churches supposed to be better than concert halls? That’s a joke, isn’t it? No, this is not a joke.
The world is at war with the church and followers of Christ. Like the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11:1-9, where the people scattered when they were given different languages, the same thing happens when attending a church where the acoustics and sound get in the way of hearing clear and unaltered speech and music. In studying an abundance of existing churches, it becomes clear that there is a direct correlation between acoustics, sound quality, congregational health, and attendance. It would be fair to say that this correlation is throughout church history.
Just as the serpent deceived Eve, the serpent has been using houses of worship as a battlefield in waging that war ever since. Throughout the Bible, there are hundreds of warnings of deception, liars, false teachers, gods, Baal, and other worship idols. Satan, the great deceiver, will do anything to keep people out of heaven and build up his own kingdom. Any person tricked or deceived out of choosing Jesus and the salvation message is being added to Satan’s domain. With Satan and all his forces against us, we need every tool possible to properly preach the full Gospel message.
Throughout the New Testament, there are many warnings and declarations of the importance of everyone understanding the full Gospel message. Here are some examples. 1 Corinthians 1:10-11, Now I urge you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be made complete in the same mind and in the same judgment. For I have been informed concerning you, my brothers and sisters, by Chloe’s people, that there are quarrels among you. 1 Corinthians 11:17-19, Now in giving this next instruction I do not praise you, because you come together not for the better, but for the worse. For, in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that divisions exist among you; and in part I believe it. For there also have to be factions among you, so that those who are approved may become evident among you. 2 Peter 2:1-2, But false prophets also appeared among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. Many will follow their indecent behavior, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned;
In the past, churches have split because of issues such as the color of the pew Bibles, Hymnals, and whether to have wine or grape juice for communion. Likewise, a misunderstood word or phrase caused by sub-quality sound, regardless of being acoustical or amplified, can set people off as well, which has led to church splits. Just as words can bring people together, they can also set people against each other. To that end, a church building is supposed to be a tool that doesn’t get in the way of hearing clear and unaltered speech. It is meant to be a safe place for the followers of Christ. It must have the right characteristics for the engagement of His people, to be participants in the whole worship, and for the preaching of the Gospel. For this reason, a church must outperform any secular concert and recital hall and all entertainment facilities at every level, period. However, it is not in the way most church people think.
The following is a walk-through explaining the differences between concert halls and entertainment facilities and how worship spaces are supposed to be unique in how they are to perform. It also includes a church sound standard lifted directly from the Bible. A standard about church acoustics, building design, and function, with a splash of the science that supports the scriptures. In studying and working with hundreds of churches over the last 40 years, the impact of upgrading a church Biblically has been a consistent result of increasing church attendance. These attendance increases have been consistent at every upgraded church from 5 to 25%, years later. Who knew that the Bible has so much to say about science, acoustics, human anatomy, and how it all works together.
Excellent Acoustics on the first day of worship and every day after that!
Most acoustics treatments applied to churches fail to improve congregational singing. Yes, adding enough of any acoustical product to a worship space will change how the room sounds, but in most cases, the change is exchanging one set of acoustics problems for another set of problems. As a result, there is no real improvement in the overall quality of worship.
When using the Biblical method of treating the acoustics of a worship space, not only is there an improvement, congregational singing is significantly enhanced. In most churches that upgraded their sound the Biblical way, the audience participation often goes from less than 30% of the congregation signing to over 70% of the congregation singing within a few weeks after the worship space is upgraded. This realizes a church attendance from 5 to 25% within the first year and higher attendance for years to come. This improvement in attendance comes from making the room friendlier to anyone with hearing issues, which affects 8 to 25% of any population group.
Shantz Mennonite Church
Having any worship space enhanced with Biblical acoustics makes the room more accessible for everyone rather than just for younger people. Here is an example of a brand new church where the song leader asked everyone to sing acapella during their first worship service. Few churches begin with good sound on the first day and every following worship service. Whether a new or existing church, bringing the sound performance level up to Biblical standards makes the performance of the worship space a room where people will want to worship in, rather than a place where people wonder if they can understand the whole message without playing it back later electronically.
If you want to experience a great-sounding worship space, visit Shantz Mennonite Church in Baden, Ontario, Canada. This is just the latest of the hundreds of churches that have managed their sound according to what the Bible teaches. Sound in a worship space managed any other way comes up short of meeting the needs of any congregation.
Affects a church’s reputation within a local community?
Affects how people respond to the Gospel message?
Affects what a minister preaches the Gospel?
Affects how a minister preaches?
Affects people emotionally?
Myths vs Facts:
According to various hearing organizations such as the American or Canadian Hearing Societies and other health organizations, 8 to 25% of people will have hearing loss or impairment within any community. For some people, the hearing loss is in one ear or both ears. For other people, using a hearing aid does make up the difference so those people can interact socially with others without needing to use sign language. The bottom line is, if a person can have a normal conversation in a living room but has trouble hearing and being engaged in conversations in larger rooms, these people are less likely to attend a church with less-than-ideal acoustics and amplified sound. Hearing loss, the invisible disability, does make social gatherings awkward for many. Numerous people with hearing loss resort to the practice of self-isolation from social events, including weekly worship services. Sound does have an impact on church attendance for those who have any kind of loss or impairment.
Good acoustics and sound system design in a church make the worship space much more accessible and appealing for those with hearing loss within any community. That is why churches that follow the Bible, when it comes to worship space acoustics, experienced a consistent and sustained 10% attendance increase on average 6 to 18 months after upgrading, while churches that just upgrade their sound system and not the acoustics realize a short-term increase of 5% and 2% over long-term follow-ups. Churches that upgraded both the acoustics and sound system saw no significant attendance changes when compared to churches that just upgraded the acoustics. (However, some churches did reinstalling the existing speaker system to take advantage of the better acoustical conditions and expand the performance of the sound system.)
These facts have been consistent with churches where the pastor, church leadership, and local economies had not changed from 3 years before to 5 years after upgrading the acoustics. The conclusion is, no matter how good or popular your pastor is as a preacher and leader, if the acoustics and sound system are not up to Biblical standards, there are many people who are being excluded. Depending on your point of view, some people see this as a denial of service.
Another thing to consider is that an attendance change of 10% also adds up to a 10 – 15% annual increase in tithes and offerings. For a typical 400 seat church, that could represent an income difference of $208,000.00 over ten years or enough money to replace a church roof.
(Fact: Most churches will sell parts of their property, including their parking lot, to pay for building repairs such as roof replacement.)
Church Size
400 seating
Before average weekly church attendance
230 people
People returning to attending because of hearing improvements
10% or 23 people
Average giving per person (Health Research Funding Org. May 2020)
$17.00
Weekly giving increases
$390.00
Monthly increases
$1,564.00
Annual increases
$20,280.00
Over 10 years
$208,200.00
Stats are provided from client follow-ups of 5, 10, and 20 years which followed the Biblical method of managing church sound. The sample size is from 130 of the 400 churches that upgraded their acoustics between 1994-2019.
Not knowing if the acoustics of your church are up to Biblical standards could mean that your church is denying people from attending your church more frequently or from ever returning.
While there are many personal and spiritual reasons for people not attending a particular church, our records show that good acoustics combined with a quality designed and adjusted amplifying sound system constantly translates into higher attendance and tithing. For some churches, the better-quality sound translated into higher giving from people who did not have a hearing issue which was unexpected in our research. These were people who responded to a questionnaire where one of the questions asked, if they noticed the higher quality of sound and whether it affected their tithing. The most consistent response was that when the church board invested in its members by making the worship experience better with quality acoustics, then they felt it was worth investing in a church that took care of its own first, and out of the excess, they could better support others including missions. Church sound is not just an emotional experience; it is a physical experience that directly impacts church attendance and finances.
The Biblical standard for church sound comes from the Bible and specifically in the Story of Solomon’s Temple. In following the story literally, we find that what God designed through the hand of King David is a house of worship that makes it possible for modern sound systems to perform at their highest levels. This makes the room compatible for people with all ranges of hearing loss, and it provides ideal sightlines for people who start to learn lip-reading as their hearing declines with age. Solomon’s Temple is also compatible with ADA (access for Disabilities Act) and other similar laws around the world as the Temple had no steps in the sanctuary, making the worship space wheelchair friendly, even before wheelchairs were invented. Solomon’s Temple doesn’t just set the standard for church sound; it sets the standard for all aspects of church worship and building planning.
You should get your worship space assessed and know it’s acoustical score. If there is room for improvement, have a plan in place when your church can afford to upgrade. On the other hand, some churches have upgraded their acoustics as a last-ditch effort to remain relevant in a local community. All of the churches that made such a desperate move are still open, healthy and have expanded their status in their local community. The knowledge we now know about Solomon’s Temple can benefit your church today.
Then there is the issue of quality versus quantity or loudness. Do people want their sound louder or of better quality? Research suggests that most people choose quality over quantity, hands down. This is especially true for people with hearing problems. While those with hearing loss and using aids to help them hear, a loud sound with distortion renders their hearing aid less capable of help than a clean sound at a lower volume.
Sound systems that have too much distortion at any level are a turn-off because distortion can become painful as the sound levels increase at certain frequencies. Many expensive high-end sound systems are distorting long before reaching their maximum loudness levels. Young people who hear distortion tolerate it better than people over 25 years of age. They often have the mindset that if you turn up the sound system loud enough, the distortion goes away. What they are really doing is desensitizing their ears while damaging their equipment at the same time. Ears have a limited natural way to protect themselves by tightening muscles around the ear canal and drum for short-term excessive noises. For older people, these muscles are not as effective, and distortion becomes intolerable, assaulting the ears at lower volume levels as people age. On the other hand, when the sound quality is high and free of distortion, people of all ages enjoy the louder amplified music, considering that an unamplified congregation can sing over 100dB in a good room without complaints.
The quality of the acoustics, combined with a professionally designed sound system, does impact a church in many ways other than just attendance, tithes and offerings. That impact of sound quality can affect church attendance as little as 8% and some churches up to 18%, and that is just by attending to the physical needs of people. Unfortunately, we have no way of measuring how sound affects people emotionally and spiritually and whether that influences attendance. On the other hand, many movie theatres have upgraded their seating, installed higher-quality speaker systems, add substantial amounts of sound-deadening materials, and other details to enhance the movie viewing experience. Judging from the higher ticket prices people are willing to pay, there is little doubt of an emotional experience tied directly to sound quality.
The secular community has tested how sound affects people numerous times. By simply changing the quality of the sound, it affected how people judge the quality of the picture they saw on the screen. In one well-known test, two identical theaters were made to look the same in every detail. The projectors were the same as well as the popcorn and other items people do when watching a movie. While both theaters had carpeted floors and padded seating, one theatre had very visible acoustical panels and hardware on the walls and ceiling, the other theatre had fake panels that had no acoustical properties but looked identical. After having two groups of people listened to the same three movies over three days in both theatres, the majority of the listeners judged the theatre with the proper acoustical treatment to have a better picture and they remember much more details of the movies. Additionally, some thought the seating was more comfortable, the popcorn and drinks tasted better. Some also asked to see some of the movies again in the theatre where they found the seating more comfortable. As a caveat, the sound in the theatre without the acoustical treatment could not perform as loud, even though both sound systems were properly equalized, so the sound levels were set to a lower volume. The acoustically treated room with bass traps was able to perform to lower frequencies without any distortion which augmented the sound quality. This is a clear example of how sound quality affects people emotionally in a big way.
Finally, can the number of people responding to altar calls, faith healings, being slain in the spirit, speaking in tongues, and experiencing holy laughter be attributed to sound quality? For churches seating less than 400 people, that depends. Churches this size or smaller should have good enough acoustics without a sound system if the worship space meets the Bible’s acoustical standard. When the room cannot support quality sound acoustically, the church will resort to using sound systems to make up for the room’s failure to perform. At best, a typical professionally designed and installed sound system can raise the performance by a mere 10 to 15% of the room’s potential performance. When the room is acoustically upgraded, the room performance often improves 50 to 60%. In a bad room, at best, 1 or 2% of the people will respond to a worship service event. In a good room, you can add another 2 to 3% response to such church activities. Sound quality, along with uniformed sound coverage, will impact more people. Whether this translates into adding more people to the church, that is up to the church leadership and how supportive they are in helping people in understanding what just happened.
For larger churches, the sound system is very much part of the worship service all the time, and without the sound system, large churches cannot have worship, let alone get the responses that they may have. The larger the room, the more critical the acoustical management of the space becomes. In larger churches, sound quality has a larger impact on people responding to church events. The responses double between good and bad rooms.
When people like Billy Graham evangelized in outdoor stadiums, the sound was often fairly good everywhere because there were no surrounding room surfaces creating interfering reflections. Nothing was getting in the way of the spoken words. Even the echoes heard were not a problem because those effects were often 15 to 20dB lower in volume than the direct sounds from the sound system speakers. Seeing thousands of people responding at outdoor events is rarely duplicated percentagewise indoors, where the acoustics do not meet Bible standards. That also explains the higher response levels to outdoor events when no tent is used versus using a tent. When Jesus spoke to the multitudes, it was always outdoors. Except for when Jesus confronted the Pharisees, Sadducees, priests, and scribes in the Temple and Synagogues, almost all of the teachings to the crowds were done outside. Teaching the disciples and close followers was whenever Jesus knew they were ready to listen and save that knowledge for later when the Holy Spirit gave them understanding.
Church sound does have a huge, long-term impact on churches affecting their growth, health, unity, and support by members and the local community. What a church does after they have upgraded their sanctuary, is up to the leadership whether to promote the improvements or fall back and take sound for granted. From our experience, there has been no downside to making existing, and new worship spaces meet the Bible’s standard. True, no acoustics or sound system can save a person’s soul, but the quality of church sound can make a difference in reaching that soul.
In the end, upgrading the acoustics that will automatically get the best performance possible from the sound equipment of a church to help people with hearing issues alone. This should be enough reason for making such improvements. Upgrading to solve the congregational singing issue is another good reason. That solution is in the Bible too. The number one reason to upgrade is to have a church where no matter who walks through the doors in your worship space, when the person hears the Gospel message, there will be no doubts in what they have heard and no excuses in saying I didn’t understand the message. That said, no sound system or acoustics can remove the veil over someone’s eyes. That is the work of the Holy Spirit and whether the person’s heart has been opened to understanding and receiving the truth. When Jesus taught, people either fled away or were changed by His teaching. Those who were being changed stayed and kept following Him to learn more. Those who fled, Jesus knew that they would never change because they loved or believed in something they thought was better, believed in other false gods or a lie. When that Gospel message competes with unmanaged reflections of sound in a worship space, those bad reflections will interfere with the person’s ability to understand the Gospel message. That is something that no one can measure. The idea here is to remove any possibility of bad acoustics and sound from keeping someone from understanding the message as no one knows the battle that is going through a person’s heart and mind when they are hearing a sermon at church.
Many times, ministers had shared with me how their ministry changed before and after the acoustics were upgraded. Some ministers have said, knowing a certain person who was at a point in their lives that they needed a push to understand salvation, the minister would prepare a sermon to reach that person. Before the upgrade, such efforts often lead to some people going to other churches, where they became born again. Perhaps the sound was better over there, or the minister was better at preaching. Who knows? After the acoustics were upgraded, most of those efforts in tailoring the sermons not only reached the person the minister was praying and preaching for, but sometimes other people responded to the same message. Sound quality can impact the confidence in efforts of the minister and everything else that happens at the front of any church. Who would have ever thought that sound quality in a church could affect the confidence of a minister’s ability to teach?
Sound quality does impact every part of church worship more than what people realize. It affects people physically, emotionally and it impacts how they respond to the Gospel. It is time for churches to get their houses in order and follow what the Bible teaches in something that we should not take for granted. If your church is dedicated as houses of worship to God, shouldn’t it SOUND like it is dedicated to God?
Here is an updated flow chart from Old Testament to New Testament, to help lift churches out of limiting themselves to entertainment styles of worship.
I think many people would agree that there is no experience better than singing in a church, with a congregation, and where everyone wants to sing. Can you imagine singing in a church where 70% or more of the congregation sings all the time! What a concept to be singing in a room where you know that your voice is contributing along with everyone else’s. Singing in unison or in harmony sounds just as heavenly and exciting—singing in a church where it sounds just as good with or without musical instruments contributing or leading the worship. Many people dream of such a church sanctuary that performs like this. Do such worship spaces exist? Can a church be transformed into having such qualities?
When only 20 to 30% of a congregation is singing, and the rest are passively swaying to the music, some with hands in the air and others almost dancing on the spot, is that the kind of worship the Bible describes? Why don’t more people sing? Is it because of the music, the hymns, the sound system, or could it be because the room is not able to support the kind of congregational singing described in the Bible? If the room can’t support good congregational singing, that becomes an acoustics issue, and when most churches try to fix their worship spaces, they often kill the room to make the sound system perform better which makes the congregational singing worse – never better.
Evidence shows that it is easier for a church to resort to an entertainment style of worship because the secular community has not demonstrated any method of fixing the congregational singing issue in existing churches, and new churches opening these days are void of such performance qualities. That then begs the question, is the entertainment style of worship honoring God?
In the Bible, there are no examples of musical instruments leading the singing, rather, the instruments followed the singing of the people. When there is a worship team performing in most churches, the worship leader prompts the congregation to sing, and the performers who play instruments, follow the lead singers, not the congregation. Often it is because they can’t hear the congregation singing at all, and they use floor or IEM monitors to follow the lead singers. The reason the musicians and singings can’t hear the congregation is because of a room problem. This creates a room full of people passively worshiping rather than actively worshiping. That is not much different from going to a music concert. Is worship in music as long or longer than the sermon?
What does the Bible say about any of this? God designed a house of worship in the Old Testament. Why? Why didn’t God leave it up to David or Solomon to design something that they wanted? Why was God so heavy-handed and specific to its design. Was this house of worship to be a relic of the past, something for the future – and something for the present?
If the temple was to be a relic, then why are there so many specific details? Why were those details preserved for over 3500 years? What if in those details are solutions to many of the problems many churches have today – not just with sound problems, but other issues churches struggle with today?
Study the flow chart. See what happens when 3500 years of history collide with science. If there are any errors, let me know. This work is a result of 27 years of fixing and documenting over 300 churches with another 100 plus churches that copied from the 50 church examples posted who informed me of their successes and from studying over1400 churches since 1983. Visit my blog if you want to know more about the results in following God’s way to design churches and manage sound.
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.
After reading this article, please pass it on and make comments below.
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.
When sharing the Gospel, so many times, someone has said that they didn’t like what the minister said during a worship service, so they left the church. They thought the minister was preaching a false message. Some people have told me that they walked out of a worship service upon hearing the distorted message. I would ask them if other people left the service at the same time. In every case, they said no. That is when I try to retrieve the audio record of that specific service. As it turned out, on the recording, the minister said the right things, but why was it heard in the sanctuary as something else?
The next step was to play the recording over the sound system and sit in the same spot the person complained about what he heard. Sure enough, the same gibberish that got the person upset was heard in that spot. When you moved several feet over in any direction, the sound was clearer, yet in other places, different words were being twisted. With the recording on a loop, we found dozens of other places where the minister’s words were warped into something else. Doing this exercise did get one person to try church again, but in most cases, when something like this happens, most people will not return to a church where the Gospel is preached.
Sound quality matters. What good is excellent speech intelligibility in one spot and a failure in another? Sound quality can save people and their souls. I have never met a person who was saved by a song, but I had met many people who were saved when they heard the clear and undistorted message of Jesus Christ and become followers of the Messiah because the message was clearly understood.
I often wonder how many other people have experienced hearing something different than what the minister said in a sanctuary. For many ministers and church leaders, it would never occur to them that the sound system was the cause of some people not returning to church. The unfortunate truth is, many churches have questionable acoustics, and when a person sits in a spot where words, syllables, or the sound volume is too low, what was said and what is heard were not the same.
Sound systems cannot fix the acoustical problems of a church. Adding more speakers or applying the latest state of the art technology tricks are no match to Architectural failures in room design and unmanaged sound sequencing around a room. Absorptive panels are often the first weapon used to tame a room. Cutting down on the noise and reflections with absorption cannot fix deadspots or hotspots. Absorptive panels cannot change the path of sound reflections that causes uneven sound distribution. Absorptive panels have been known to make the sound harder to understand in those poor locations throughout the room, not better. What is needed is a different weapon to defeat poor sound.
To eliminate hotspots and deadspots, you need to be able to distribute sound more evenly. Scattering the sound is the most effective way to create a unified sound field throughout the whole sanctuary. When sound is managed in this way, not only does it eliminate deadspots and hotspots of any speech problems, but it makes congregational singing, praise and worship bands clearer, the stage sound is corrected, and for many churches, they bring back choral music because it sounds better than what a worship team could do before the room was fixed. In most cases, scattering the sound costs less to do than absorbing sound.
Acoustical solutions for churches that work should be common knowledge as these concepts have been around for years. Fixing a church can often be restricted by how a solution may look. It is high time that the aesthetic police take a back seat from preventing the Gospel message to be preached clearly. If aesthetics are a big deal, alternatives are always possible. In the end, it is all about priorities. You have to choose between hearing the Gospel or have a Church that looks good. What will your church do?
Welcome to the world of Church Acoustics & Sound Systems 