In 2015, Trader’s Point Christian Church in Whitestown, Indiana, northwest of Indianapolis, partnered with Portable Church© Industries (PCI) when they made the decision to open a satellite campus instead of increasing the size of their first campus.
Brent Whetstine, production manager for Trader’s Point Christian Church, explained how the congregation decided on going multisite. “Opening a satellite campus in another location where a pocket of your congregation is currently commuting from just makes sense.”
Trader’s Point chose to open their satellite campus ten miles away from the main campus, in Carmel, utilizing Creekside Middle School as its Sunday morning meeting venue.
Effective churches experience growth, and that growth brings the blessing of challenges as well.
“You eventually run out of space, and the church gets so big it can be intimidating. You can only grow so large.”
With access only on Sunday mornings, many things need to be brought in each week for children’s and youth ministry spaces, not to mention all the audio, media and lighting support for the service itself. Trader’s Point turned to PCI for help in making this new campus a reality.
“Everything you need to conduct your worship service and associated ministries is packaged in a way that’s easy to set up for volunteers. It was a good value as well. It didn’t make sense for us to try and re-invent the portable church concept on our own. Everything we need for all ministries is configured to fit into four trailers.”
Signage and way-finding materials were created that both direct people to where they need to be as well as match the church’s existing branding via logos and color choices. “This really helps make the Carmel campus feel like ‘us’.”
PCI consultants met with the church early in the process to determine needs, and suggest material and equipment options. For Whetstine and his team, PCI took on the bulk of the concepts and implementation. “Outside of a few equipment decisions, I really didn’t need to be involved much. They already had scalable solutions that would work for us.”
For Trader’s Point, a D&B line array system with an Allen & Heath Qu-32 digital mixer was selected for front-of-house audio, a 21-foot screen with Barco projectors to provide media support and a large canvas for the “virtual pastor” teaching portion of the service – to stream live in HD from the Whitestown campus. Forty feet of truss was set up on stage, pre-configured with moving lights and LED washes, to be operated from front-of-house via a Jands Vista lighting controller.
All systems were wired into self-contained rolling racks. Lighting was pre-hung on the truss, to be merely rolled in and flown into position. Cable interconnections were designed to be minimal for fast setup.
Whetstine and a team of volunteers were then trained by PCI staff.
“It only takes eight volunteers to unload the tech trailer and have everything ready to go in about 45 minutes. PCI was there with us for that first weekend, and by the end of that weekend our volunteers walked away trained on how to do the setup and teardown. I didn’t need to do that training myself, which was awesome.”
Part of PCI’s objective with providing custom solutions is to help churches save on time and on funds.
“I realize as production director, I’m spending someone else’s offering. The idea of stewardship is a big deal to me. The Portable Church Industries solution helped us get the best equipment for both our budget and the volunteer’s capabilities.”
