Every growing church hits the same wall.
The worship space is getting busier. The tech team is overwhelmed. And somebody on the board says, “We need to upgrade our sound system.” Maybe. But probably not yet.
I just wrapped an onsite consultation at Bethesda Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan — a growing church that moved into a former data center about six months ago and built out a 300-seat auditorium. They called us because their AV setup wasn’t keeping up with their growth.
[Watch the full walkthrough on YouTube]
Here’s the thing — after spending the morning with their pastoral staff, worship team, and production volunteers, the biggest wins I recommended weren’t equipment upgrades. They were process and environment fixes that will cost a fraction of new gear and make a massive difference this Sunday.
1. Implement a Line Check Every Single Sunday
Bethesda’s mix engineer was getting slammed during rehearsal — troubleshooting multiple problems at once while the band waited. Sound familiar?
Most of those problems disappear with one simple habit: a thorough line check before rehearsal starts.
Take each channel one at a time. Kick drum. Snare. Toms. Every vocal mic. Verify the signal path is working and the gain staging is set. It takes 15 minutes and saves you an hour of chaos.
Without it, here’s what happens: the electric guitarist doesn’t realize his gain is too low until the full band kicks in. Now he can’t hear himself. Meanwhile, a vocalist is drowning in drums. The sound engineer is putting out fires instead of mixing. Nobody’s having fun.
A line check eliminates all of that before rehearsal even starts.
2. Create a Sunday Morning Startup Checklist
Your lead production person should arrive 45 minutes to an hour before the band — minimum. And they should be working from a documented checklist, not memory.
Write it out. Put it in Google Docs or whatever app your team uses. Include everything: unlock doors, turn on lights, power up the AV system (in the right order), verify wireless mic batteries, confirm the stage plot, make sure all DIs and inputs are ready.
Add checkboxes. Make it so anyone on your team can follow it and get the same result every time.
This matters most when you’re trying to grow your team beyond one person who knows how everything works. If the process only lives in someone’s head, you’ve got a single point of failure — and that person never gets a Sunday off.
3. Treat the Room Before You Replace the Speakers
Bethesda’s space has a metal roof, drywall walls, and exposed HVAC everywhere. Zero acoustic treatment.
That means every sound from the speakers is bouncing off the back wall, the side walls, and the ceiling — all hitting the congregation’s ears from multiple directions at different times. The result? Muddy, unclear audio no matter how good your speakers are.
Acoustic treatment was my number one recommendation for this space. Panels on the walls, panels hung from the ceiling. It’s not super labor-intensive to install, and it’s future-proof — when they do upgrade the PA down the road, they’ll have a properly treated room to put it in.
I also noticed their drum shield had gaps in the back panels. Quick fix: fully enclose the drummer so no sound escapes. That alone will clean up stage volume significantly.
4. Fix Your Monitor Situation with Crowd Mics
Several vocalists at Bethesda were pulling out one ear during worship because they couldn’t hear the congregation through their in-ear monitors. I get it — it’s isolating up there when you can’t hear the room responding.
But pulling an ear out is bad for your hearing and kills your mix.
The fix is simple: hang a couple of crowd mics in the room and route them only to the in-ear monitor mix — not the main PA. Your musicians hear the energy of the room without compromising their ear health or their personal mix.
5. Mix from the Floor, Not the Booth
Bethesda’s sound position is in the back of the room — outside the coverage pattern of the nearest speaker. The engineer literally can’t hear what the congregation is hearing.
If that’s your situation, grab the iPad, connect to your console wirelessly, and mix from the floor where the people actually sit. You’ll make better decisions because you’re hearing what everyone else hears.
The Bottom Line
Bethesda Church is doing a lot of things right. They’re growing, they’re investing in their space, and they were smart enough to bring in outside help before spending money on the wrong upgrades.
The most expensive AV mistake churches make isn’t buying the wrong equipment — it’s buying the right equipment before fixing the fundamentals. Acoustic treatment, standard operating procedures, proper gain staging, and a better monitoring setup will transform your Sunday mornings for a fraction of what a new PA costs.
Want us to visit your church and identify your quick wins? Go to churchfront.com and reach out — myself, Sean, or Luke will come do an onsite assessment and give you a clear plan for what to fix first.
