Rock solid

Jon and Chantel Norman met at Bible College in Australia and married in 2006. Initially serving as youth pastors at Mount Zion Family Life Centre on Heartsease Lane in Norwich in the UK, the couple moved to Cape Town to help plant Hillsong South Africa. During this time, a devastating fire forced Mount Zion to move to a converted warehouse on Mason Road. When the Normans returned to Norwich in 2014, they took over the running of Mount Zion, rebranding it as Soul Church. The Normans also inherited the Heartsease property, originally belonging to Mount Zion.

However, the church quickly outgrew the Mason Road facility, so the decision was made to build an entirely new meeting space for the church on Heartsease Lane. The new building features a 1,200-seat auditorium, nursery, chapel, sensory room, youth hall and a social supermarket that has already provided over 30,000 bags of groceries to local families. Soul Church also runs Soul Nursery, which supports 110 children, providing a much-needed early education resource for the community.

Pastor Jon Norman’s dedication to this project included a personal fundraising effort in which he ran seven marathons in seven days, underscoring Soul Church’s commitment to outreach and service. Now, after years of planning and community support, the church has celebrated its grand opening, with thousands of people attending from across the globe. This new facility is a central hub for Soul Church’s mission, offering essential resources, support and hope to the people of Norwich for generations to come.

HOW AV integration specialist Rock-Tech has been supplying equipment to Soul Church since 2015. For the new property, the company custom-built the main auditorium and youth hall stages, each meticulously constructed from sustainable timber and engineered to allow full accessibility. The entire stage structure was designed with access routes below, ensuring easy and seamless routing of cables, and accommodating technical setups and future maintenance.

“We have lots of clients who try to find an empty building so there’s always an element of whether this is going to suit the church’s needs in a few years’ time,” says Ben Freer, system designer at Rock-Tech, “but with Soul Church they had the opportunity to put everything together themselves. They’ve really taken the time to think about what they might need over the coming years. It’s a stunning building just down the road from the old premises – completely built from the ground up based on the church’s specifications. We’ve been working with them for several years, so when it was time to fit out the new building, we were grateful and excited to support the church with any opportunity they gave us.”

However, the integrator’s work didn’t stop at the stage. RockTech custom-built a FOH booth, designed to complement the auditorium’s layout while housing advanced control equipment, enabling the FOH mix engineer to have an accurate representation of the room. A further objective for the FOH booth was to also have three camera locations on the second level; however, to ensure that there was no vibration transfer from the audio, Rock-Tech had to make a custom floating section on the floor. The booth also allows for centralised operation and streamlines interaction with the church’s lighting, sound and media systems.

Rock-Tech integrated both new and existing equipment across the facility, addressing the specific technical requirements of each space. The custom acoustic solutions have been designed so that the space delivers clear, quality audio, creating an immersive environment for every attendee. Although Rock-Tech didn’t fulfil the audio for the main auditorium, it worked closely with Solotech to bring an acoustic solution that complemented the L-Acoustics Kara IIi loudspeakers that have been installed. To help control the sound in what was quite a challenging space, 52 large acoustic tiles have also been fitted with the aim of ensuring that they are aesthetically pleasing and have the most impact.

Another major part of the project was the supply and installation of the LED screens in the main auditorium. Rock-Tech has installed an Absen A3 pro 13m x 3m LED wall across the back of the stage, controlled by a Novastar processor, and re-purposed and relocated the church’s existing Absen LED screens to become IMAG side screens.

Rock-Tech also designed the house lighting system for maximum ease of use and adaptability. At the heart of the setup is a Scene Setter wall plate, a user-friendly, streamlined solution that enables anyone to instantly recall any preprogrammed lighting scene in the youth hall space with the simple press of a button.

With up to 16 customisable presets available, Soul Church can switch between lighting setups tailored to different ministries, events or community hires without needing technical staff present. The Scene Setter doesn’t just manage lighting; it allows for intuitive control over multiple systems. Each scene preset is configured to activate specific power circuits, so that the audio team can turn on only the PA system without activating the lighting or video setup, and vice versa.

This system has proven to be an invaluable addition to the church’s setup, enhancing both functionality and flexibility. It provides Soul Church with a versatile environment, allowing them to adapt quickly to diverse events and activities, creating a more welcoming, accessible and user-friendly space for both church members and the wider community.

Rock-Tech also designed, supplied and installed the illuminated stair nosing in the auditorium, which allows the church to have a low lighting environment while maintaining a high level of safety, but it also provides an ambient feel to the main seating area. The system also has a full emergency power backup, so if there is loss of power to the building, the stair lights stay illuminated on full brightness, allowing everyone to evacuate safely. The system is also fully DMX controllable from the Avolites Tiger Touch II lighting desk.

The integrator was also responsible for a fully bespoke lighting solution for the archways leading up to the building’s entrance, which allows the archways to be fully RBGWW controlled. This provides essential lighting for visitors at nighttime but also creates a welcoming look to the church for anyone who’s driving past, illuminating the dark walkway.

“We’re proud to have partnered with Soul Church on this state-of-the-art project,” concludes Freer. “We’ve been able to transform the church’s vision into a technical and architectural reality that will serve their growing community for years to come. Aside from having more space, the church wanted to be at the forefront of the technology it could be using and they’ve certainly managed to achieve this. It’s been an amazing project to work on – we were able to respond to any queries they had regarding different parts of the venue and, whenever they ran into any issues, we were able to support them with anything that they needed with a fast turnaround. The opening was highly anticipated and was a great success. We were honoured to be a part of it.