One church, two campuses, one live service: Christian Family Church South

Christian Family Church built its South campus from the ground up in Alberton, south of Johannesburg, and opened it in March 2026. The building has a 750-seat auditorium, production facilities, a foyer, multipurpose rooms and children’s spaces.

The church already streamed its services online. The new campus was different: it would be part of one live service shared with CFC’s main campus, several kilometres away.

The church didn’t want to replay a service from somewhere else. It wanted a live, two-way connection, so that a pastor could speak to both congregations from one campus during the first service, travel to the other and swap for the next, and musicians at one site could play with feeds from the other. That meant a low-latency link (little enough delay that people can sing and speak together across it), not a scheduled or time-shifted programme.

It also had to be simple. Experienced technicians work alongside volunteers who are still learning, and everything had to be finished for opening Sunday, while many other contractors worked towards the same date.

The auditorium brought its own problems. Its ceiling isn’t high enough for a line array long enough to work well, and there are neighbouring properties close behind the building.

The church first ran a competitive tender between several of South Africa’s major distributors and integrators, then asked each to demonstrate its proposed sound system in one of the church’s existing venues. Its leaders heard the options in a room they knew, instead of approving a system from drawings. We were appointed, and as the conversations grew into lighting, video, room control and the spaces outside the auditorium, the church asked us to deliver all of it as one turnkey system rather than hire a contractor for each.

At the heart of it is the link between the two campuses. Matrox Monarch Edge encoders and decoders at both ends carry four video channels and 16 channels of audio over a dedicated network connection, and we worked with the church’s internet provider early on to make it possible. For worship, the drums, tracks, click, guide and lead vocal can each be sent across, so local musicians can play alongside a worship leader at the other campus. Each segment flows one way only, which keeps the delay from building up. Hollyland intercoms run over the same link, so the producers at both campuses can talk to each other throughout the service.

In the auditorium, we proposed a distributed d&b audiotechnik point-source system instead of a line array: four Vi7P loudspeakers, six 44S frontfills set discreetly into the stage edge, and a central pair of B22 subwoofers. The loudspeakers’ controlled coverage keeps sound on the congregation and away from the neighbours.

Behind the stage is one continuous, gently curved 18 m × 4 m Pixel Plus LED wall with a 2.6 mm pixel pitch, instead of separate side screens around a central one. Resolume, on a custom PC, drives it through two synchronised 4K outputs, so the team can put live cameras in the corners or give a remote pastor a large central frame with scripture and graphics around it. Lighting comes from Plus Lighting fresnels and house lights with ACME Voltkas, Pixel IP bars and Willow 500 moving lights, all run from an MA Lighting Command Wing. The band mixes on a Waves eMotion LV1 Classic with Sennheiser EW-D wireless microphones, and we supplied the backline too, including an electronic drum kit that keeps the stage quiet.

Outside the auditorium, a Q-SYS Core 24f carries audio and control to the foyer, children’s areas, reception and a multipurpose room, through Audac wall-mounted loudspeakers. The foyer has a wall panel for sources and lighting, and the multipurpose room can run on its own or take a feed from the auditorium. Dante (audio over the building’s network) and Plus Audio converters replace mixing consoles and multicore cables in these spaces. Each area gets only the controls it needs, and at the main campus the church upgraded its vision mixer to a Blackmagic Design ATEM Constellation 4 M/E.

Both campuses now worship as one church in the same live service. The teams rehearse across the link on Wednesday evenings, which is both a creative run-through and a test of the whole path, and on Sunday the tracks, remote cameras and intercom meet at the right point in the service. Most of that complexity sits behind simple controls, like Companion on a Stream Deck and Q-SYS panels, so volunteers can run it alongside experienced technicians.

We were on site through commissioning, and came back for follow-up training once the team had run live services. Nothing was left for a “phase two”: every seat had full coverage from the first Sunday.