Conquering Through Prayer Ministries International in Durban is a church that has grown considerably since its inception and so has the mechanism by which the church faithfully disseminates its message to its congregation. Founded by pastors Clive and Sandra Gopaul in 2000, the ministry now caters for three churches with a membership of over 5 000 people.

Of course, as a House of Worship (HoW) congregation grows, so do its requirements for technology. This is 2014, after all, and unless you’re an unabashedly austere organisation that relies purely on voice and air to broadcast the message, you’re going to need all manner of AV and public address equipment.

On a recent trip the United States, Pastor Clive noticed an installation during one of his church visits that sparked his interest: a curved screen spanning the length of the stage backdrop. Feeling this was something he would like to bring to CTPMI’s World Prayer Centre in Durban, he contacted Johannesburg-based distributors and installers Stage Audio Works for a local solution and they happily obliged.

The initial contact and sales work was done by Stage Audio Works Durban-based representative Alan Barry with design support from the Johannesburg office. Technical support specialist Nathan Ihlenfeldt was commissioned to coordinate the installation and the installation team was headed by Marius Erasmus.

The installation

Instead of going the LED route, projection was the preferred method. Three Christie HD14K-M projectors were installed, each offering 13 500 centre lumens for a total of 40 500 and a maximum resolution of 1920 x 1 080 HD. Due to the nature of the desired projection surface and the dimensions of the stage, a bespoke Da-Lite series 200 screen was installed.

“We chose Christie M-series 3 chip DLP projectors,’ says Ihlenfeldt, “due to the mercury lamps – which are quite economical in the long term – onboard Twist geometry correction and excellent black level performance necessary for edge blending.’

For media playback a Dataton Watchout media server and DVIGear DVI extenders were supplied. The Watchout server came pre-installed with Blackmagic Decklink SDI capture cards.

Ihlenfeldt comments: “There are many media server products around on the market but none are as user-friendly as Watchout. Along with the cost of the system, it is the most viable option for a House of Worship installation. We also have a very good supply chain in the IT sector, which makes sourcing the necessary hardware to construct Watchout servers a breeze.’

All projectors were connected via fibre optic and live inputs were ingested via HD-SDI.

When asked about whether there were any bugs to work out after the system was installed, Ihlenfeldt said: “None, I guess. We have a very experienced installation team headed by Marius Erasmus and everything worked first time. In fact, we finished the commissioning a day early.’

One of the key points of a successful HoW installation is that it is user-friendly due to the fact that most, if not all, of the people who will be operating the equipment are volunteers. Ihlenfeldt comments: “A church is a challenging environment to execute this (kind of) installation because volunteers need to be trained to programme and use the system so a user-friendly interface is a must. I think our vast experience in the HoW segment allowed us to select the best products with this in mind.’

The wrap

Given that the projector, screen and media server installation at Conquering Through Prayer Ministries International went off without a hitch and was delivered one day ahead of schedule, says a lot about what can be accomplished by careful planning and a knowledgeable crew. Stage Audio Works, along with the products under their umbrella, certainly seem to bring a fantastically streamlined solution to the table.
“I think this project is a prime example of our multidiscipline technical capacity,’ says Ihlenfeldt, “that we can deliver world-class audio, video and lighting solutions under one roof.’