“Adapt or Die.” That was everyone’s mantra over the past two years, but it’s likely that no segment of the market adapted faster than Houses of Worship (HOW). Though generally not considered the most tech-heavy in application, HOWs took to Facebook Live faster than any other segment of the market took to any other messaging […]

By: Richard Honeycutt SynAudCon Recently I overheard a discussion between a couple of church AV techs about booths and desks. Both seemed uncertain about several issues: Is an enclosed booth a good idea? If an enclosed booth is used, how big should the opening be for sound to enter? How big should the desk be, […]

Budgets are a bummer, and coming out of a global pandemic means they are tight. When your HOW customers could use an upgrade on six or seven key pieces to their system but only have the budget for three, which do you recommend and why? Here are the first three — in order of most […]

As you may recall from previous columns, I serve on the overall planning committee for a regional faith-based event in North Carolina. Pilgrimage, a large-scale event for United Methodist youth and their adult leaders, traditionally takes place in person during the second weekend in November each year. As you can imagine, that was not the […]

I had the pleasure of providing live coverage for the first-ever LAVNCH WEEK, an all-digital event put on by THE rAVe Agency in partnership with Zoom last week. After five full days of education sessions, product launches and thought-leadership, I wanted to write a wrap-up story of my favorite moments, broken down by vertical: ProAV, […]

During our live LAVNCH WEEK Tech Talk, Paul Richards of PTZOptics shared that, these last few months, “connected churches” are discovering just how large their communities really are. And once social distancing is relaxed, many houses of worship won’t be going back to the way things were in their AV systems. For bigger houses of […]

One, in case you missed HoW Day for LAVNCH WEEK today and, two, in case you missed Steph Beckett’s videocast with Paul Richards here, here’s a THIRD chance for you to learn about how to stream for houses of worship, as told by Paul Richards. Because, here at rAVe, we like to give you thorough […]

It’s day four out of five for LAVNCH WEEK — the industry’s first all-digital launch event we’ve been putting on with Zoom and our partners this week — and today was House of Worship (HoW) day. This day was created specifically for two audiences: house of worship integrators and AV/IT providers (maybe even volunteers) who […]

2019 was the year of the message if audiovisual (AV) ads aimed at churches were the litmus test. In our annual roundup of advertising dos and don’ts targeting the house of worship (HOW) market, no single persona-specific word was used more frequently than “message” as the key driver for capturing the attention of church AV buyers or, […]

In the first two parts of this series (part one, part two) we broke down the information regarding who is involved in the decision tree, who should be what did the congregation/facility/staff/leadership say they wanted? More importantly what did you hear and finally, what do they really need? As we strongly emphasized in part one, […]

The house of worship (HoW) market has a unique consistency: Sunday comes every seven days for church services. This regularity is both a boon and a challenge for the women and men providing ProAV production to congregants conditioned to the high production values of stage and screen outside of their churches. It is because of […]

As multi-site churches expand their reach with additional locations into retail areas and school buildings to accommodate a larger attendance at these remote ‘satellite’ campuses, the needs for AVL shift away from so-called ‘big box’ venues with high ceilings and ample room to venues with lower ceilings and limited sightlines. The opportunity for audiovisual (AV) […]

What did they say they wanted? More importantly what did you hear and finally, what do they really need? The answers to these key questions are the roadmap to winning the job, but more often than not, just finding the map is a huge issue in and of itself. As was discussed in the first […]

With churches continuing to add multi-site campuses to extend their geographic reach and influence, how can the pro AV market serve this market with solutions equal to the scale of church multi-site expansion? The answer is church multi-site now with face-to-face live pro AV support — that’s a game changer for the industry. The answer […]

There are well in excess of a quarter of a million small houses of worship in North America, according to the latest data from the National Congregations Study, conducted through Duke University. (For additional information about the National Congregations Study, go here.) For reference, the generally accepted definition of a small congregation is characterized by […]

Of all the various issues that generate the most questions from potential and current clients in the HOW markets, creating and managing the musical aspects of a service are definitely at the top of the list. It matters not whether it’s a simple guitar and piano accompaniment to a traditional service or a full-on praise-band […]

Cobalt Digital will debut card-based terminal equipment for the openGear platform to address the broadcast, webcast and campus video transport needs of worship media professionals. For sharing video across campus or between different campuses, the new RIST (Reliable Internet Stream Transport) protocol can be used for low latency and high fidelity transport of video and […]

Your business may have the coolest AVL product or service on the market, but amassing more emails in your prospect’s Inbox isn’t helping you sell even one of those great new products. Why? As decision-makers and consumers, we’re inundated and overloaded with information and emails. We’re deluged by data. What we don’t need to know is […]

How much budget should AV industry companies allocate towards marketing to the house of worship vertical? The answer is likely a surprise for any company that’s not spending on this >$1B annual spend segment of the overall AV industry. In 2018, the American Marketing Association, in partnership with Deloitte and Duke University, published the bi-annual […]

Five years of highlighting the best, touching on the worst and recommending some serious advertising changes for the audiovisual industry around the House of Worship (HoW) market has a few companies embracing the church market, but most manufacturers and systems integrators still have a lot to learn about reaching church buyers. The top House of […]

Pastors don’t need high-pressure sales, slick marketing or churchy language. In fact, these three are red flag warnings to a vertical market used to being sold what they do not need. Instead, the three essential soft skills for selling AV to churches are a helpful challenger, intentional communication and value-as-a-service. All three of these lean […]

Vinten’s Vantage is a lightweight robotic camera head that offers houses of worship and in-house production suites broadcast-quality movement and control at the same price point as a traditional pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) camera head. Vantage enables HOW production teams to choose the camera and lens so they can match manual camera positions, work over long distances […]

THIS IS A PROMOTED POST FROM MVIX By Lillyan Wamaitha Marketing Manager, Mvix Digital signage is becoming a popular option for many ministries. These churches understand the benefits of digital signage and how they can use the technology to increase the reach of their message and communicate with their congregation. Below are three ways churches […]

AmpliVox just launched a wireless personal PA dubbed the S208 Digital Belt Blaster. It’s a 2.4 GHz headset microphone with a belt-pack speaker to amplify speech for teachers, coaches, tour guides, product demonstrators and other presenters. The Digital Belt Blaster weighs less than a pound using three-inch speaker pairs with the wireless headset for sound […]

After a week-long intensive at the National Association of Broadcasters Convention (NAB), it may feel too soon to start thinking about another conference. Then again, a major reason your firm goes to these conferences is to connect with potential buyers, reconnect with existing clients and see for yourself what others in the audio, video and […]

The future of reaching each vertical, including the House of Worship (HOW) market, has a big stake in social media advertising, engagement and user-generated stories. Like the social media landscape, the audiovisual space often looks like a nascent, promising industry on the verge of something significant. Unlike the social media brands, the audiovisual industry is […]

It’s all in the fine print. Most people won’t open up new gear and grab the owner’s manual and warranty information and spend the next two hours pouring over that fascinating documentation. For those of us who do, we will find myriad legal terms that outline our options should we need technical support or have […]

Your brand is not what you say it is. Your brand is what others say about you. For the audiovisual industry, identifying what others say about your organization is easier to know now than it has ever been thanks in large part to social media and online comment streams. In each vertical market, there exist groups […]

“Can you come and fix our church AV?” This singular question is rife with implications for the audio, video and lighting (AVL) industry and one that needs to be addressed by manufacturers, systems integrators and rep firms serving the $1 billion (annual) church AVL market so that the pain experienced by all involved is properly […]

A couple weeks ago I wrote a blog that relayed the top 5 reasons that you, as an AV professional, should go to NAB. The first of those five reasons was end user attendance. In case you missed that piece and didn’t feel like clicking the link above, in 2016 the NAB Show had over 102,000 […]

A note from the author: Having been involved in several hundred HOW sound system projects, across many denominations, over the last three decades, I hope what I have learned as discussed below, will help you avoid the classic mistakes and poor choices I have seen far too often. Remember a worship space with bad acoustics […]

Manufacturers want to help systems integrators sell their products so they provide funds to help co-promote the equipment with the vendor. It’s been this way for as long as I can remember, whether it is called “co-op funds” or “market development funds” (MDF) or “channel funding,” the idea is to influence the sale towards the […]