As youngsters, we’re all reminded that “church is not a building — it’s the people who gather there.” And indeed, there are numerous modalities in terms of structures and real estate — some meet in multi-million-dollar buildings that are owned by the church, some meet in tents that move across the fruited plain, and yet others meet in rented locations, ranging from tiny little strip mall spaces to movie theaters to school gymnasiums. The mobile church is pretty common, a flexible, mobile paradigm that facilitates worship in multiple locations. In my experience, most mobile churches aspire to grow their congregations large enough to warrant building a permanent location, but en route to achieving that goal, these churches will want to do the mobile church thing as well as possible. Let’s take a look at it — hardware, software, anywhere.
Lightening the Load-in
Typically, a church that doesn’t yet have the budget to purchase or build a structure in which to meet probably also lacks paid staff — they tend to run on volunteer power. Most volunteers are thrilled to have the opportunity to serve, but hard, back-breaking labor every week is likely to become tiresome at some point. Loading seemingly tons of stuff in and out every Sunday morning can cause burnout in even the most enthusiastic volunteers. In terms of hardware, there are two things we can do to reduce the physical burden on our beloved volunteers: reduce the actual physical weight of our hardware, and reduce the time necessary for load-in, setup, strike and load-out. Traditionally, we brought in a bunch of heavy analog gear — huge mixers, racks full of amps and processors, and bulky loudspeakers. And once the gear was in place, we had connections to make — a lot of connections. Then we did a line check, followed by a sound check, and if enough time remained, we’d even get in a rehearsal before services started. Unfortunately, there was no easy or fool-proof way of doing snapshot recall of our mixer (which is one of the reasons for the line check, sound check, and rehearsal — to put together a reasonable initial mix). Then after services we would gather all the bulky, heavy gear, load it out, and then eat a handful of aspirin to dull the muscle and joint pain resulting from all the hard manual labor.
This all looks to me like a recipe for volunteer burn-out. So let’s fast-forward to the current day. Now almost all of our gear is smaller, lighter, easier to deploy and use, and generally every bit as effective as our old gear was. Our old 48-input mixer is now the size of a typewriter through the magic of bank switching. And inside of it are all the rack-mounted processors that caused such pain in the past. And even our loudspeakers are smaller and more efficient, with amps built right in, and delivering good quality audio at solid SPLs. And remember all the time we spent connecting the mixer with all the outboard and running a big, heavy analog snake? Now we connect to our (internal) processors via a virtual patchbay that resides in our mixer. And the snake? It’s a Cat-6 cable that’s lightweight enough to even pass overhead, which eliminates a trip hazard. Of course, we still have stuff to load in, set up, strike, and load out, but it’s generally smaller, lighter, and more efficient. Good times!
The Case for Road Cases
Another advantage that results from reduction in weight and bulk lies in the domain of storage and transportation. If the gear is large in terms of the sheer volume of space it occupies, we need a larger (and more expensive) storage space. And the trailer (or box truck) that gets it where it’s going on Sunday morning must be larger as well. The benefits of lightweight compactness should be pretty obvious here. In my experience, the gear used by most mobile churches arrives in a trailer towed behind a volunteer’s big ‘ol pickup truck. This works pretty well, but there are a couple of ideas I’d toss out here. One is to employ road cases. Here’s why: there aren’t many things worse than a massive array of stuff tossed haphazardly into the trailer. It makes every week a completely new adventure in finding the stuff we need and getting it where it should go. It also increases the likelihood of damage to fragile items — if they’re not properly packed and loaded, they will get knocked around by bumps in the road, hard braking, and other such roadway rigors. My second recommendation is to put the aforementioned road cases in the trailer the exact same way every single week. If we do, the load-in and load-out processes will be standardized — precisely the same every week. It’s much easier for untrained volunteers to understand a checklist-driven standardized process than to try to guess. A second benefit is that rolling road cases can be labeled in such a way as to indicate to volunteers where they’re supposed to go (in the venue and on the truck). We can load the trailer in a way that makes our load-in happen in a certain sequence — just the way we want it (and likely faster and more efficiently). Wow — this is almost like the way we’d do a national tour with a secular band!
Safeguarding the Gear
I have seen churches use a trailer for both transportation and for storage. This can be a clever way to kill two birds with one stone, but care must be taken. A trailer can be a very convenient way for a thief to easily drive off with all of your gear in one fell swoop. Security is of utmost importance. Fortunately, I’ve never known a church to lose its stuff this way, but I recall countless local secular bands posting “our trailer was stolen last night” in the socials. One solution is to only use the trailer for transportation — unloading it at our storage location every week. This is a bit more labor intensive, but is likely more secure, and can be made easier by use of our aforementioned road cases. Or maybe it’s even possible to roll our locked-up trailer (or truck) into a locked-up garage or building where there are a couple of layers of protection. Either way, we’ll want to take care with the security aspects of mobile church gear.
When we bring audio equipment into a permanent church structure, we generally set it up the way we want it and leave it that way — at least semi-permanently. As a result, there are a few things we don’t have to think about (or think about as much as we would in a mobile church paradigm). The first of these is roadworthiness. We all know that loading in, loading out, and bouncing down the highway take a toll on hardware. Permanently installed gear doesn’t get beat up this way. If we know our gear will be moved at least once a week, we need to take care to choose brands and models that can withstand the rigors of the road. We also have to consider the logistics of setup and strike. The mobile church has to allow additional time before and after services, so call time is earlier (especially if there is to be line check, sound check, and rehearsal). We need to be cognizant of the additional challenges that are unique to the mobile church, but if we’re smart about it, we can do it well.
John McJunkin is an adjunct professor at Grand Canyon University.
