Consulting
Know what your church actually needs
Independent, on-site consulting for churches deciding what to do about audio, video and lighting. You end up with a written plan, a real number, and the confidence to take both to your board.
Why this exists
Most churches start by researching, and end up with more information rather than more clarity.
You watch the videos. You ask three other churches what they bought. You get bids from three integrators, and they come back with three different price tags and three different solutions to what you thought was one problem.
Without a diagnosis there is no way to tell whether you are being undersold, oversold, or sold the wrong thing entirely. Sometimes the answer is not new equipment at all. Sometimes the system you own is fine and it has never been configured properly, or the room is working against it, or the team was never trained on it. You cannot know until someone comes and looks.
How we work with churches
Two ways to bring us in
Consulting and pre-design
For churches deciding what to build and what it will cost.
A consultant spends a day in your building, leads a structured discovery session with your leadership, and surveys every venue in scope. You get a Program Report: system-by-system recommendations with an opinion of probable cost you can plan against.
How pre-design worksChurchfront Pro
For churches who want a consultant on call all year.
Ongoing coaching from our consulting team. Unlimited one-on-one calls during business hours, group sessions twice a week, your whole team in the course library, and on-site visits added where the work calls for it.
What Pro includesConsulting and pre-design
We start with
questions, not
products.
Churches usually arrive with a shopping list already in mind. A new console. Better cameras. More speakers. Often, once we have spent real time in the room and with the people who run it, the answer turns out to be somewhere else entirely: acoustic treatment rather than a mixer, stage lighting rather than cameras, or a proper tune of the system already hanging in the building.
So pre-design is a diagnosis, not a proposal. We are not trying to reach a number we can quote. We are trying to understand your ministry, your space, your team and your budget well enough to recommend something right-sized: not over-engineered, not under-delivered, and not shaped by what happens to be easy for us to install.
Step one
A full day in your building
A Churchfront consultant travels to you for a single-day engagement. It is three distinct blocks, and they are additive rather than overlapping.
Arrival walkthrough
15 to 20 minutes
An informal orientation walk of the worship center and the auxiliary spaces, to establish the general layout before the formal session starts.
Discovery session
Three hours minimum
A structured working meeting with leadership and stakeholders: ministry mission and philosophy, how each venue is actually used week to week, current pain points, growth plans, and systems needs. Part of the session is educational. The consultant walks your team through each AVL subsystem so the people making the decision understand what they are deciding.
Survey and data collection
Three hours minimum
Uninterrupted access to the venues to capture the technical data the report depends on. This is not a walkthrough conducted alongside the meeting. It is its own block, because the measurements are what make the recommendations defensible.
What we capture
- Interior and exterior photography of the facility, the existing equipment, the racks, the cable pathways and the infrastructure
- Laser measurement of room and stage dimensions, throw distances and sightlines
- A 3D Matterport scan of every venue in scope, kept unlisted for our design reference
- Acoustic impulse-response measurement, which is exactly what it sounds like: we pop a balloon in the room and record it with a measurement microphone, then use it for reverberation analysis and system modeling
- An inventory of existing equipment makes and models
- Assessment of the electrical infrastructure and the structural conditions relevant to future AVL work
- A radio-frequency spectrum scan where local congestion warrants one
One thing we ask of you: the right people in the discovery session. The senior or executive pastor with decision-making authority, and the worship and production leaders who will actually run the systems. For new construction or a major renovation, the architect, the owner’s representative and the general contractor too. A discovery session without the decision-makers produces a report nobody owns.
Step two
The programming meeting
Within seven to fourteen days of the visit we get back on a video call, usually for 45 to 60 minutes. We present the needs we found, organized by the groups the systems serve, so you can confirm or correct them before a single recommendation is written down.
Then leadership ranks the scope by priority and we put an early order-of-magnitude range against the recommended work. If the full scope is more than you are prepared to commit to, phasing gets decided here, in a meeting, rather than after a report has been written around the wrong assumption. A written summary follows with the confirmed priorities, the phasing decision and the range as presented.
The person with authority to approve the budget needs to be on this call. The operators are welcome, and their input is useful, but this meeting is where money and priority meet.
Step three
The Program Report
A consultant-level assessment written to AVIXA standards, delivered within 14 to 30 days of the programming meeting. Not a quote. Not an equipment list.
Executive summary
The challenge in front of the ministry, the opportunity ahead, and our recommended approach for the venues in scope. Written so you can hand it to a board without translating it first.
What success looks like
The practical outcome for each group affected: the congregation, the worship team, the volunteers who operate the systems, and leadership.
System-by-system recommendations
Infrastructure, audio, video, lighting, control, software and stage. Each one covers where you are now, what we recommend, why in ministry terms, and a budget range for that category.
Opinion of probable cost
A consolidated budget by system category, professional services and total project investment. Equipment figures carry a tight range against current dealer pricing. Labor carries a wider one, because field labor is not final until design.
Owner’s contingency
A buffer sized to the risk profile of your project, held by the church. We never bill against it.
Alternatives and growth paths
Where a step up is worth seeing, we price it, so leadership can decide with the number in front of them rather than wondering later.
Timeline and coordination
An estimated schedule through design, procurement, installation, commissioning and stabilization, plus what you need to provide and which other trades we will work alongside.
Next steps
The scope, deliverables, pricing and process for Design and Engineering, so the decision after this one is already quoted.
The report goes to you two or three days before a 60 to 90 minute presentation call, so your stakeholders can read it and come with questions. One round of revisions is included after that call.
Worth being clear about
What this is
A consulting engagement whose purpose is to establish the scope and budget of the solutions your ministry needs, so leadership can plan with confidence. The Program Report is valuable on its own. Plenty of churches use it to plan, to fundraise, or to go out to other integrators. Nothing in it obligates you to build with us.
What this is not
It is not a bid, a quote or a proposal, and no design or engineering work happens under it. That means no 3D models or renderings, no equipment plots, plan sets, rack elevations, schematics, signal flow diagrams, or acoustic and photometric modeling. Those are Design and Engineering, under a separate agreement.
The report also names adjacent costs we neither perform nor price: electrical engineering, structural remediation, general construction, millwork, acoustic construction, HVAC modification, permitting. We describe them in enough detail for you to plan around, and point you toward people who can quote them. Putting a number on another trade’s work would be a guess presented as a fact.
The investment
A modest cost up front so a far larger one lands in the right place.
Consulting and pre-design is custom quoted against your location and the number and size of the venues in scope. Travel, the on-site day and the report are all inside that quote, with no add-ons afterward.
Most churches are weighing an AVL investment that will shape their ministry for the next ten to fifteen years. Our fee is typically a small percentage of that total, and it exists to protect the rest of it.
Churchfront Pro
A consultant on call, all year
A plan is worth something only if somebody keeps working it. Churchfront Pro is ongoing consulting for churches who want our team reachable when the question comes up on a Tuesday rather than six months later.
What is included
- Unlimited one-on-one coaching calls during business hours, 45 minutes each, booked when you need them rather than rationed
- Group coaching sessions twice a week alongside other church tech leaders
- A Growth Plan at the start: one call to map where you are, where you are aiming and how to get there, with the written plan back inside 24 hours
- Team access to the full Churchfront course library
- On-site visits added where the work calls for them
- Terms of three, six, twelve or twenty-four months
What churches use it for
Working a phased plan without losing the thread between phases. Getting a system you already own configured properly. Building a volunteer bench that can run a Sunday without one person carrying it. Deciding whether a piece of gear is worth buying before you buy it.
Anything system-related is in scope, including equipment you bought somewhere else. If the answer turns out to require a purchase, we will say so and hand you to the right person rather than selling you something on a coaching call.
Every church that installs with us gets Pro-level access through the stabilization window after commissioning. Pro is how that keeps going.
Questions
Before you reach out
Do we have to use Churchfront for the work afterward?
No. Pre-design is a standalone paid engagement and the Program Report is yours. Churches use it to plan, to fundraise, to brief their board, and sometimes to go out to other integrators with a scope everyone can bid against apples to apples. Nothing in the agreement obligates either of us to go further.
How long does the whole process take?
We commit to two dates: the programming meeting within seven to fourteen days of the on-site visit, and the first draft of the Program Report within fourteen to thirty days of that meeting. Everything after the first draft depends on how quickly your team can schedule the review call and return consolidated feedback.
What does it cost?
It is custom quoted against your location and the number and size of the venues in scope, with travel, the on-site day and the report included. The fee is typically a small percentage of the total project it is protecting. Tell us about your project and we will quote it.
What is the difference between pre-design and Churchfront Pro?
Pre-design answers what to build and roughly what it will cost, and it ends with a report. Churchfront Pro is ongoing coaching with no fixed deliverable: unlimited calls, group sessions, the course library, and on-site visits where they help. Churches often do pre-design first and then continue on Pro through the build and after it.
We are building a new building. Can you consult before there is a room?
Yes, and earlier is considerably cheaper than later. On a new build or a major renovation we ask that the architect, the owner’s representative and the general contractor join the discovery session, because the decisions that cost the most to reverse are structural, electrical and acoustic, and they get made long before anybody orders a speaker.
Do you travel outside Florida?
Yes. We are based in Melbourne, Florida and we consult with churches across the country. Travel is priced into the engagement quote rather than billed separately afterward.
What if the answer is that we do not need to buy anything?
Then that is what the report says. It happens. A system that was never commissioned properly, a room fighting the loudspeakers, or a team that was handed equipment and no training will all produce the same Sunday morning symptoms as inadequate gear, and none of them are solved by spending money.
Tell us about your project.
Give us a few details about your church, your rooms and what is prompting the conversation. We will tell you honestly whether consulting is the right next step.