If your church is planning an AV renovation, it’s easy to jump straight to the exciting parts.

New speakers. Updated lighting. New stage design. Better-looking room. Cleaner front-of-house booth. A worship space that finally feels ready for the next season of ministry.

But before any of that gear can do its job, there’s a lot of construction work that has to happen first.

In this Rock Harbor Church renovation update, Jake walks through the current state of the project and shows why AV success depends on much more than choosing the right equipment.

At Rock Harbor, the stage framing is now complete. The team brought the front of the stage back, expanded the upstage area on both sides by removing old storage closets, and started renovating the walls above the stage. What used to be old organ fabric is being replaced with clean drywall that will be painted white.

That one change alone is already making the room feel brighter.

Even though the space has stained glass, not much natural light actually makes it into the room. Brightening the walls around the stage will help the space feel cleaner and more open, especially once the project is finished.

The lighting lives inside the space, not layered on top.

The team also had to make some decisions about lighting in the stage coves. Instead of mounting lighting pipe or adding more visible fixtures, the plan is to use recessed, DMX-controllable lights. These will provide strong downlight while keeping the installation clean.

That’s an important theme throughout this project: the best AV systems don’t just sound good or look good. They also integrate into the building in a way that feels intentional.

The coves will also help define practical stage zones. One side will likely become the drum area, supported by a Goblin enclosure to help manage drum volume and spill. The surrounding surfaces will be treated acoustically, and Jake is considering Prime Acoustic TeleScapes overhead so the treatment can blend into the architecture instead of looking like obvious panels.

Those details matter because acoustics, lighting, stage layout, and architecture all affect each other.

The team considered removing the cavities above the stage altogether, but those areas contain HVAC. Since this is Florida, keeping as much HVAC capacity as possible matters. In fact, part of the renovation includes getting the room’s full HVAC system functional again, since the space had been operating on only about half of what it was supposed to have.

That’s the reality of renovation work. Sometimes the ideal AV decision has to be balanced against building systems, comfort, budget, and long-term practicality.

The Electrical Rough-In Sets The Church Up For Long-Term Success

One of the biggest milestones in this update is that the electrical rough-in is complete.

The stage now has back boxes ready for floor pockets and connectivity locations. This is a critical step in a church AV renovation because it usually happens long before the final AV equipment gets installed.

Churchfront specified where the AV connectivity needed to go and what size boxes were required. Then that information had to be handed off to the electrical engineer so code-compliant drawings could be created. From there, the electrical contractor could bid the work, pull permits, install conduit, complete rough-in, and get the work inspected before the stage was closed in.

That sequence is easy to underestimate.

If you rebuild a stage without planning the AV infrastructure, you may miss the best opportunity to get power, conduit, low-voltage pathways, and floor boxes in the right locations. Once the stage is closed, correcting those misses becomes harder and more expensive.

At Rock Harbor, the team used the stage rebuild as the moment to think carefully about the AV design. Under the stage, there is now a large amount of low-voltage conduit and high-voltage infrastructure. Power is available at the right back boxes, and the platform is usable again while the renovation continues.

The stage is still plywood for now, but carpet will be added later. Jake expects a darker black carpet to contrast well with the white walls and stained glass.

This was also a meaningful ministry milestone for the church. Even though the room is still a construction site, the band now has a functioning platform again. The church is continuing to meet, worship, and move through the project while the work progresses.

Construction Disruption Is Real, But It’s Temporary.

Jake points out that many church leaders are understandably nervous about having construction happen in their worship space. But if the project is planned well, two to three months of inconvenience can set the church up for years of better ministry use.

You can always try to speed up the process, but that usually costs more. It also requires more planning, more due diligence, and often a general contractor coordinating the trades and subcontractors. Rock Harbor is trying to save money, so the team is accepting a less efficient process in order to stay within the broader project budget.

That budget reality also affected the PA design.

Originally, Jake wanted to use a line array. But the electrical feasibility work ended up being more expensive than expected. Supplying electrical feeders, adding service panels, and running the necessary conduit was pushing that electrical scope toward $80,000.

So the team made a trade-off.

Rather than spend more on a premium PA design, Jake decided it was more important to get the electrical infrastructure right. The project will still use Meyer Sound speakers, but instead of a line array, the main left and right speakers will be Meyer X80 point-source boxes. The existing X40s and X20s will still serve as side fills and front fills.

Will the project miss out on some line array benefits? Yes.

But for this room and this budget, those benefits were not worth the additional cost. That’s a smart AV design principle: the best system is not always the most premium option. The best system is the one that fits the room, the ministry goals, the infrastructure, and the budget.

What’s Next?

The next major milestone at Rock Harbor was trenching from the rack room to the front-of-house location and building the new tech booth. The team will also install low-voltage conduit and pull boxes along the back wall for AV devices.

A lot of the core AV gear is already in place or ready to assemble soon, including the mixing console, stage boxes, network switches, and rack equipment.

This project is a great reminder that church AV renovation is not just about gear. It’s about construction sequencing, electrical coordination, acoustic decisions, lighting integration, HVAC realities, budget tradeoffs, and long-term ministry usability.

If your church is planning a renovation or new construction project, don’t wait until the end to think about AV. The best time to plan your AV infrastructure is before the stage closes, before the conduit is finished, and before decisions become expensive to change.

If your church needs help planning an AV renovation or new construction project, reach out to the Churchfront team at https://churchfront.com/apply/.