Renewing Calvary Chapel with Wybron's Cygnus LEDs

	Pastor Richie Furay and the Calvary Calvary Chapel worship band performing during a Sunday service. Photo by Shanna Lemke

Calvary Chapel, a non-denominational church in Broomfield, Colorado, offers contemporary style worship and music every Sunday for their devoted congregation. Pastor Richie Furay, a past member of the nationally recognized bands -- Poco and Buffalo Springfield -- has made music a big part of the church's ministry, with a modern professional band performing exceptional music to enhance the worship experience. Until recently, the sanctuary stage lighting was not at all reflective of the meaningful messages and music so passionately performed by Pastor Furay and his worship team.

With one bar of four 100W and two 75W incandescent can lights to illuminate the stage, it was time to update the lighting and renew the atmosphere to harmonize with the excitement, which was happening on stage every Sunday. The track lighting system gave a stark, cold feel to the stage without the ability to change color or dim. The decision was made to install 12 Cygnus 100W LED Color Wash luminaires, completely replacing the outdated incandescent system. The Cygnus fixtures were hung to light the stage and pulpit from above and as side lighting.

Pastor Furay shared that the updated lighting design has made a dramatic difference by creating a warm, inviting atmosphere much more in line with the church's contemporary style of worship. The Cygnus LED lighting has also greatly improved the experience for Furay and the band members: "The old lighting was distracting and very hot, leaving people on stage for any length of time covered in perspiration. With the Cygnus lighting, the stage is now cool, calming, comfortable and impactful," says Furay. He went on to say he feels very blessed and humbled to have such brilliant, high-quality stage lighting.

Pastor Furay has had a long-time dream of offering streaming video live from the Calvary Chapel website, subsequently more people would have the opportunity to experience and benefit from the weekly worship service. With the old lighting system, the quality of the video was poor and unusable for live broadcast. Now with Cygnus LEDs lighting the stage, they are able to produce high-quality streaming video, without flicker or shadowing, to share their message and music with the world.

Cygnus LEDs have given Angela Dickinson-Mickie, the church A/V tech, the flexibility and ability to create different scenes that elevate and enhance the messages and are essential to focusing the attention of the audience and setting the mood. Angela is from the old school of lighting, using colored gels to achieve different lighting effects. Now she is enjoying the ease of controlling the Cygnus and applying the fixtures' vast array of color choices to create a variety of lighting effects as they move through the different theatrical scenes during a program. With Cygnus LED fixtures all that is required is a push of a button and or slide of a fader and you instantly have a mood change. Angela says they started out working within the Cygnus range of 2,000K to 7,500K white lighting, but are beginning to incorporate some of the customizable rich, brilliant colors the Cygnus provides. The creative lighting options are endless with the unlimited color palette of the Cygnus.

Shannon Lemke, the church photographer, shared her experience with the Cygnus lighting. "I think the real bonus for me as a photographer with the new lighting is the moving away from the generic feel of track lighting. With the Cygnus lighting you are able to control the look and feel of the situation you are photographing. The ability to move from a cool concert vibe, to a warm inviting environment with the slide of a control is important to any artist. And in the same event you can create several very different looks very quickly and easily by playing with the colors." She went on to say that LED lighting has many benefits: " Even in editing, I can get some really cool looks that I wasn't able to get before. Part of the draw is being able to use the actual light in the photograph, creating a new element."

Wybron's Cygnus 100W LED Color Wash luminaires have renewed and uplifted the Calvary Chapel sanctuary, brilliantly and cost-effectively supporting all of the worship lighting applications from transforming the atmosphere to supporting the ability to stream live to their many followers around the world.