The Meet Hope Podcast
The Meet Hope Podcast
114: Hope in Motion: An LED Wall and How Technology Helps Tell God's Story
What happens when centuries-old traditions of visual storytelling meet cutting-edge digital technology? At Hope Church, the answer comes in the form of an LED wall that promises to transform the worship experience.
Join some of HOPE's staff and future staff as they discuss one of the three initiatives connected to the Hope in Motion campaign, exploring not just what an LED wall is, but how it can impact a faith community.
Learn more and be a part of HOPE in Motion at meethope.org/motion
Thanks for being a part of the HOPE community as we continue conversations about faith and hope! You can learn more at meethope.org or find us on socials @meethopechurch. Join in for worship on Sundays at meethope.online.church! Have a question? Contact us at podcast@meethope.org.
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Welcome to the Meet Hope podcast, where we have conversations about faith and hope. Hope is one church made of people living out their faith through two expressions in person and online. We believe a hybrid faith experience can lead to a growing influence in our community and our world for the sake of others. Welcome to Hope.
Jeff Bills:Hey friends, our world for the sake of others. Welcome to Hope. Hey friends, welcome to the Meet Hope podcast. I'm Jeff Bills and I am being joined today by a very august group of members of our staff, or soon to be members of our staff, starting with our next lead pastor, James Lee. James, how you doing.
James Lee:I'm doing well.
Jeff Bills:Excellent. Next to James we've got Pastor Rick Court hey, good to be here and next to Rick, andrew Barber, our Director of Worship Arts. How's it going, andrew? It's going good, thanks. So we're here. Today. We're talking about the Hope in Motion campaign and, as you know, there's three priorities for the campaign, and today I want to focus on the LED wall and what that's about, why this is a priority for us and what is an LED?
James Lee:wall.
Jeff Bills:So, to get started, there's a history here, and, rick, you were probably the most involved with the history, so give us a little backstory on when this all started.
Rick Court:Sure, somewhere around I guess 2020 or even before 2020, we were looking at our you know, we used to have a projector that projected the images up onto a screen and we were transitioning to something different and we didn't know what that was. So we were looking before COVID. Then, when COVID happened, we went into this digital phase. We kind of changed the things that we did in the space and the platform. That's when we did those most recent upgrades to improve our digital experience. So, with the lighting and all those things, we looked at a screen. Then, again, it wasn't affordable, the technology wasn't there, so that someone it wasn't accessible to a church really, or at least a church our size. So we went with three monitors that are 83 inches and diagonal and they seemed really big.
Rick Court:Remember, when they arrived and we put them in the space, we thought they were really big until they got hung on the truss and then they looked a lot smaller. So we always knew there'd be a stopgap until we could do something else. And I think we're at that space now where we're going to do something else. Yeah, that's really what we're talking about. Is this, uh, moving from that which was it worked, but it's not.
Jeff Bills:It's it's kind of, I would say, in a sense, hold us back now yeah, yeah, so we're, we're now moving to this led wall and, uh, so, andrew, describe what is an LED wall.
Andrew Barber:It's a really big TV screen more or less.
Andrew Barber:So ours is going to be a 28 by 10 foot large screen that is going to sit on stage, essentially behind and around where the singer stands or where the pastor stands. It's going to be behind that, and what makes it so cool because it's such a large screen and it's going to be even taller than kind of where the bottom of the TVs sit. Now it'll sort of end there. It will be sort of this backdrop for when the pastors are speaking or when the worshipers are leading worship. So it's this great piece of technology that's not only a great video screen where you can watch videos, see images, but it's going to sort of become part of the design of the stage, which I think is really cool.
Jeff Bills:James, you are a video guy, so your background, for those who don't know, james had a video production company. Is that accurate? Yeah, and I still do on the side, although it takes most of my time, so you were doing videos for weddings.
James Lee:Yeah, For a while I was a wedding video producer.
Jeff Bills:So you're conversant in this stuff and I know you're excited about the LED wall.
James Lee:Why are you? I'm really excited because I know that even in our own tradition of talking about the Bible, talking about stories, we see storytelling, visual storytelling, as a big part of our tradition.
James Lee:So I think about Jesus instead of just saying, hey, god loves you, like a father who misses his son, he went into this story. He drew a picture, with his words, of the prodigal son. He would speak in parables. I think about even the Israelites really investing in the design of the tabernacle and the design of the ark and all of these elements that are visual, and making sure that it's beautiful and telling a story to remind people of where they were and who they are and where they're headed. And so I think visual storytelling is a part of our faith, and so I believe that this tool can be used to continue that tradition, to continue that part of our faith.
Jeff Bills:Love that. Yeah, you know you think about worship spaces that maybe folks grew up attending Stained glass right Stained glass windows. Yeah, that was an earlier centuries version of telling the story.
Rick Court:Oh, absolutely, yeah.
Jeff Bills:So, with Hope, we did have these projectors for years. And what was the problem with the projectors? The projectors.
Rick Court:Well, we never again. Because of the ambient light in our space, because we're, you know, we've got this giant wall of glass where the sun shines in and it's beautiful and it looks great it really wreaks havoc on technology, especially light technology, and so that screen was being, or the image was being, forced, you know, 40 feet across the room onto a screen and then reflect it back to us, and so it never had the immersive experience that an LED wall could have, in that it didn't have the bright colors, it didn't have the high density or the high imagery that would be possible with this LED technology. And so, just like we did with those screens, we hung them on the truss. When we would get a projector, we'd go eh, that's nice, but it never was. Wow, that's amazing. Only at night, exactly, yeah. So if we only did church at night, we were fine, exactly yeah.
James Lee:So if we only did church at night.
Rick Court:we were fine so yeah, so it just never had the impact that it could have had because of the light that we have in our space.
Jeff Bills:Yes, so this will overcome. The ambient light won't be an issue.
Rick Court:Right these applications are. As I think Andrew mentioned is that these are applications are used outside all the time. Every stadium are using LED screens and it's the same technology that we'll be using.
Jeff Bills:Where else would you?
Andrew Barber:see these, I mean. So I drove stadiums. I mean there's hundreds of them in the stadiums. When you're driving down the road and you see a billboard that changes like, you see a different image. That's an LED wall, essentially Malls. You see them Anytime. You see a large screen, we'll say bigger than 80 inches, it's an LED wall, because making a television larger than 80, 90 inches is really not cost effective. Yeah, um, so they're. They're everywhere and you probably see them listening or I'm talking to specific you probably see them all the time and you don't even know it.
Andrew Barber:Um, it's just, they are a part of our world.
Jeff Bills:So just to get in some of the geeky tech stuff um it's not actually just a solid TV screen, right, it's something else.
Andrew Barber:It's multiple panels. So ours is going to be comprised of 40 smaller panels that are, I think, about two feet wide and they work together. They're connected, networked together to create the one large screen.
Rick Court:And each panel has thousands of little tiny light bulbs, and those little tiny light bulbs all emit light source.
Jeff Bills:That's the LE yeah.
Andrew Barber:Light emitting diode, which is? It's literally just a little.
Rick Court:So instead of one projector bulb projecting 40 feet across and reflecting off a screen, thousands of little bulbs will be projected right out towards the congregation.
Jeff Bills:And my understanding and correct me if I'm wrong on this one. There could be multiple images on these screens. So it's like there could be something happening on the right and left and something different in the center all at the same time, yep and that's what's so nice because of the size of it, we have a lot of flexibility.
Andrew Barber:And then one, one question I get asked all the time is you're going to have this wall here, but the worship leaders stand in front of them. We're not going to be able to see. Well, the screen is big enough that, first of all, like lyrics, for example, which are an important part, they're going to be above the, above the singer. So anywhere you sit in the room, you're going to be able to see the lyrics and you're going to be able to see them with clarity, and they're going to be larger than what we have now, which is, um, with the TVs above. So, yeah, it's really because of the size of the screen. There's so much more flexibility that we have in the way we put together a service and the way you experience the service.
Jeff Bills:Are there things that we're not doing currently because of the fact that the screens aren't sufficient?
Andrew Barber:A thousand percent. I think we always have conversations about. This is the simplest one. Here's a video. It's really great, but at the end there's these words that are scrolling on the screen and in the room. You can't read them. So we don't use that video because it limits us, because the screen isn't big enough, or sometimes when you hear someone talking and when you're in the room it's like okay, you can hear them, but you really can't quite, maybe, see the emotion on the face. So I think sometimes we don't use videos as much as we could because we feel like the people in the room are missing out.
Rick Court:And this is where, yeah, I think this technology is going to help our in-person crowd catch up to the digital crowd, exactly Because our digital congregation sees those images and they look great. So, to your point of the scrolling words on a video, they look fine when you're watching online or watching at your home on your television, but in our in-person space you can't see them because they're too small because of the screens that we currently have. So it allows our in-person crowd to catch up, in a sense, to our digital crowd, which I think is a neat experience.
Jeff Bills:Yeah, Well, here's a scary question. So currently, when Rick, you or I are preaching, or Andrew, you guys are doing your thing on the worship team, guys are doing your thing on the worship team. The images are up on the small screen. So when I'm preaching live in the room, people in the room can also see the image on the screen. Is it going to be a gigantic image of the preacher on the screen?
Rick Court:I hope not.
Andrew Barber:As long as you're nice to the tech team in the back, you'll never have to worry about that. No, it'll be for when the band is coming. I imagine there'll be some, and we have some videos already like motion videos that maybe kind of are synced to the song, or just the kind of moving, gentle moving, just things that I wouldn't say are distracting but enhance the experience. Just the word we've been using a lot is immersive and I know that sometimes people go. What does that mean? And it's just more different things that we can do to kind of just create different ambiances. And you know, right now we have these beautiful doors that are on the backdrop and they've been the backdrop for a long time, but that's all we just have that we. You know those doors are not light. It's not quick change to change them to something else. So this is a. We can have any backdrop we want at any point with this wall.
James Lee:I don't want to, yeah, I don't want to underplay the word immersive. I think immersive is really important. I remember when I was in Ireland I walked into a very old medieval church with beautiful stained glass windows that told all different kinds of stories. It was very colorful, the sun was coming in and when you walk into a space like that, you go wow, yeah, it is immersive in that it is inviting you into the presence of God. The LED wall is really the modern stained glass window.
James Lee:I know the stained glass must have been a new technology at a certain point and this is relatively still new, especially to churches. But what it will give us a capacity to do is visually create a space, using different images, different videos, to bring people, draw people closer to God in worship. And because now it is a screen and we could create images, there's so many possibilities with that. I know a church that actually put up stained glass windows on their led wall and newcomers came in they said, wow, what beautiful stained glass windows you have in this church. And the pastor had to explain no, this, that's a screen.
James Lee:But, but those are the possibilities, right, it is truly immersive, the images are very vivid, and so we can create all kinds of spaces to tell God's story.
Jeff Bills:So, beyond worship, because we do more than worship. It's primarily a worship space, but we do other things. How else would you envision us using that LED wall?
Andrew Barber:Yeah, I'm really excited about these. There's two specifically. So one we do a vacation Bible school here every year and there's about 75 to 100 kids that come into the worship space and they're going to be able, to the curriculum that we use, create these amazing music videos for the kids to dance, and there's motions and it's just, it's it's. There's nothing more fun than to have these kids watch these videos and as the week goes on, they get more familiar with it. Now, when we have a much larger screen, it is a going to be so much clearer. The kids are going to be able to see the motions, but everyone in the room it was kind of like we could only really get them kind of close up front so that they could see the TV screen above, um, the worship space. But this is, it's going to be any point in the room. You're going to be able to see it and it's going to. It's going to look great. And then the next one that I'm really excited, even more excited I think we do a drama camp here every summer and now we used to spend or we every year we spend so much time just painting sets and the kids would paint sets and they'd say this is boring after a while, and now we can instead find the image that we want, put that as our backdrop and now we'll spend more time making their, making their props, because usually we just we just have a lot of props.
Andrew Barber:So there's, we're going to be able to take the tech work out of painting and more building and doing other things. So it frees up their time, but also it's more flexible and there can be different images for each scene. So I just think it's just a really great thing for kids to see and be like oh, we're in a baseball field and there's a gigantic baseball field behind me. It's so much more real to the kids and it's going to be such a great experience.
Rick Court:And I think there are applications for so many other things too. I know you mentioned those too, but, like you know, ash Wednesday services or our Reflections at Christmastime services just to be able to provide you know if we're talking about. Well, what's it look like in the temple right To be able to put that image as a 30-foot image up on the screen and have people walk through almost an experience like that, to even even as something as simple as just showing a movie on movie night, right, that kind of experience is gonna be like you would have going to a movie theater. So there's so many ways that our ministries will use this beyond just Sunday morning. Yeah, that's yeah.
Jeff Bills:Now, I really want it.
James Lee:There are a few practical plus sides too. I just want to share talk about so. Part of my job as a director of communications, I often get asked by different churches to come into their space and help them discern how to make the worship space better. We want to get a projector or a TV screen, which is it? And oftentimes the balance is do you want a bigger image, but maybe you can't see as well because of glares and dim lighting? Or do you want a TV which is very vivid and clear, but unfortunately it's going to be pretty small?
intro:But this is the best of both worlds, and there's a huge accessibility plus too.
James Lee:A projector you may not be able to see well, but for folks who, like they'll be able to see the colors very vividly, uh, texts, things like that. Um, I think about the flexibility too. So these are all like single panels. They're about a foot by foot, roughly panels that are being put together so we could create, actually detach them if we want to yes and again create very creative spaces. So there's a lot of possibility there. It's also environmentally friendly people don't talk about this like.
James Lee:Projectors take up a lot of energy. You have to replace bulbs they die give off a lot of heat give off a lot of heat, but this is very. It's a lot less energy a a lot less waste, so there's also an environmental friendliness to this as well.
Jeff Bills:Well, so to my fellow boomers who are listening to this, so we didn't grow up with screens. They came into our lives when we were young. Of course, tv was a new technology, rick, you're Gen X, and so you guys were around. It was color TVs and so forth. You other two guys, you're millennials, yep, right, and now we have two generations behind you, yep, two generations behind you.
Jeff Bills:And so part of this idea, this technology, is we want to speak to generations that are younger generations that screens are so important for, and generations yet to come that won't have any concept of a life outside of screens, and so this is something for now, and it's something that we think is going to serve the church well in the future.
Jeff Bills:And so this is an opportunity for us as a church to take this important step and hopefully you have a better idea. If you weren't sure about what this wall was about or why this wall, you have a little better idea, but you may still have questions. So please talk to Andrew, talk to Rick, talk to me, james. We'd love to talk to you more about it Anytime? And what's the goal? To get this installed, assuming the funding is there?
Jeff Bills:Well, if you're asking me tomorrow, All right, let me ask Neil no we are hoping for.
Rick Court:As Andrew mentioned, we won the Hitch Bible School and Drama Camp this summer, so we would love to have this installed by mid-June. That would be great if we could have it done by then.
Andrew Barber:And I think they would be such a cool highlight. Those are the first two big things that we're doing. It speaks to again your future generations. Yeah, I love that. That's great.
Jeff Bills:So how are we going to get there? We're going to get there because you're generous, and one of the things I'm suggesting is in terms of thinking about your own gift. If everybody in the congregation gave 10% more than they gave the year before, we would cover the cost for the entire Hope in Motion campaign and so, if that's possible for you, I would encourage you to prayerfully do that. If you can do more, obviously we'd love you to do more, because I know there's going to be some folks who can't do that. We'd love you to do more because I know there's going to be some folks who can't do that. So that's part of our Hope in Motion campaign and thanks so much for tuning in and listening, and we'll be talking more about this going forward. Have a great day.
intro:Thanks for being a part of the Hope Community as we continue our conversations about faith and hope. If you don't already, please join us for worship on Sundays or on demand. You can learn more at meethopeorg or find us on socials at meethopechurch.