LINO LAKES, Minnesota – Fast-growing Eagle Brook Church now has six locations for 18,000 congregants in the Twin Cities area, with churchs in Lino Lakes, Blaine, Coon Rapids, Spring Lake Park, White Bear Lake and Woodbury, MN. The church has 16 Martin MAC Viper Air FX fixtures and eight Martin 250 Washes at Lino Lakes, 10 MAC 700 Profiles and four MAC 250 Entours in Blaine, six MAC 250 Entours and six MAC 250 washes at Spring Lake Park and eight washes and six MAC 250 Entours at White Bear Lake. The church also supplements its installed gear with rented Martin fixtures for special events.
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When a person enters a service at Eagle Brook Church, the congregation’s goal is for them to be welcomed by real people, challenged by biblical messages that address everyday problems and inspired by excellent music. With 18,000 attendees worshiping at 6 locations throughout the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area, the scale of Eagle Brook Church makes providing a personalized, immersive experience a challenge. Making the music even more inspiring, however, became a little less daunting of a task with the installation of Harman’s Martin Professional lighting fixtures.
Deployed to complement the message and the music at the Lino Lakes campus are 16 Mac Viper Air FX fixtures and eight Martin 250 Washes. For Easter and other special occasions, the church supplements its installed fixtures by renting other Martin Fixtures. The church’s Blaine campus boasts 10 Mac 700 Profiles and four Mac 250 Entours. At Spring Lake Park, six Mac 250 Entours and six Mac 250 washes are used, and eight washes and six Mac 250 Entours are used at the White Bear Lake campus.
Eagle Brook Church has come a long way since 1948, when it was founded as a Sunday school initially attended by only 19. Today, for weekend services, the teaching pastor’s message is delivered live at the Lino Lakes location and broadcast via simulcast technology to the Blaine, Coon Rapids, Spring Lake Park, White Bear Lake and Woodbury locations.
While the pastor’s message is simulcast, each Eagle Brook campus has its own music. Nate Nohling, Lead Lighting Director, oversees lighting and scenic design across the organization and works closely with Tom Clark and Travis Leatherman who help to design and program across the 6 campuses. “My goal is to create an immersive environment that enhances the worship experience,” he said. “We don’t want the lights to become the focal point or draw attention away from the experience. Instead, we want the lighting to match the energy of the music. To attain that, I work closely with the music pastors to make sure my design is cohesive with their vision.”
To help meet that challenge and many others, Nohling said that Eagle Brook Church was a Martin house before he joined the organization more than two years ago and that it will remain one for the foreseeable future. “We’re very particular about the brand of our campuses,” he said. “A part of that brand is making sure we have the same quality of fixtures to achieve the same type of environment across our campuses. Sticking with Martin fixtures helps us by having consistency when it comes to color palettes and overall output quality of our lighting.”
In the end, though, what’s important to Nohling and other members of Eagle Brook Church’s leadership team is making sure that everyone who attends a service has a deeply personal and immersive worship experience. “Lighting plays an important role in how people experience our brand,” he said. “And when you have different spaces, lit by different fixtures, creating the same lighting experience with different rigs is a challenge. That’s why maintaining a consistent design throughout our sites is a key part of my role. We need to have one design sensibility that we can draw on to create and deliver a consistent look and feel across campuses. Utilizing Martin fixtures helps us to be confident that when you walk into any one of our campuses, it is going to look and feel like Eagle Brook Church.”
