NASHVILLE — The Belonging Co., growing church with Nashville-area musicians, singers, songwriters and engineers in its congregation, was looking for a professional-grade console to handle its audio mix for the church’s latest sound system upgrade. Forefront Productions’ Nick Burns helped guide the church’s lead pastor, Henry Seeley, toward a solution that included DiGiCo SD8 consoles at FOH and monitors.
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The Belonging Co. is a fast-growing church with broad appeal which has grown from just seven people in a home to in excess of 2,000 in a little over two years. Its Music City location has drawn in the surrounding population of musicians, singers, songwriters and engineers in the makeup of regular attendees. So when it came time to upgrade the audio consoles and associated systems, the church needed a pro system. They turned to Forefront Productions for help, ultimately selecting DiGiCo products.
Lead Pastor Henry Seeley explains the situation: “When we first started, we only had the budget for a smaller, cheaper console. As we grew, we added a monitor console, and then later a console for our broadcast mix… but the entire system was based on a ‘budget’ framework that was limited to a maximum of 32 channels. Two years in, we found ourselves in a place where we were maxing out our consoles and frustrated by the limitations of our current system.”
Having known Nick Burns from Forefront Productions for many years, Seeley reached out to see if he could design a system that would suit not just their current needs, but also give them room to expand in the future.
“One of the things I’ve always loved about Nick is that he understands the challenges of church production, and the fact that most churches run primarily on a volunteer production team – something that can quickly turn awry without the right systems in place. After several conversations, we both felt a DiGiCo infrastructure was going to be the best option, so we settled on SD8 consoles for FOH and monitors, and an S21 for our dedicated livestream/broadcast mix.”
Having a volunteer audio team whose experience varies widely from touring crew to studio engineers to college students, Seeley knew this would potentially be a stretch for some of the team.
“The install support and service we received from Forefront was second to none, and the time Nick spent training our team was absolutely invaluable. We also found the DiGiCo was especially appealing to our team, given its ability to load Waves plugins directly on the console – something that helped a lot of our guys feel right at home,” he says.
“The thing that is most impressive to me about Nick and the Forefront team is they’re not interested in selling a product – they are all about providing a service, and seeing the process right through to completion. Their knowledge of the products they install is extremely thorough, so you know you are getting the right gear for your specific scenario.
“ The fact that we were able to switch out our entire audio system – changing out three old consoles and stage racks for three completely new consoles and racks – all between our Sunday night and Tuesday night services is a testament to the exceptional service and support we received from Forefront.”
