Planar LED Video Wall Fosters Engagement at Life Church

For Matt Blankenship, lead pastor of Life Church in Aloha, Oregon, the experience of worship is greatly enhanced when there is more engagement among the congregation. “There should be an enthusiasm about worship,” he said. “It’s not just supposed to be liturgy, it’s also music and hands being raised. It’s all of your heart, body and soul-putting everything into it.”

To create a setting that could inspire more of this kind of participation, Life Church set out to upgrade an older projector system with more current display technology and began a consultation with audio visual solutions provider MeyerPro. After a visit to Planar’s Hillsboro, Oregon, showroom and global headquarters with Bryan Lundstrom, equipment sales manager with MeyerPro, Blankenship and his team decided that LED display technology would best deliver what they were seeking.

With support from Planar, MeyerPro installed a nearly 16-foot-wide, 9-foot-high Planar® TVF Complete™ 219-inch LED video wall. Mounted directly behind a stage at the speaker level and flanked by two existing projector screens installed higher up, the Planar TVF Complete LED video wall brings a dynamic and vibrant background to the service.

“There is something about a lot of light, color and movement on the stage that adds to the level of excitement and the full experience of the worship,” Blankenship said. “We can use background graphics and abstract imagery that complement the direction of the music and really work to bring the audience along. It’s also helped some of our crowd who are a bit older to see things more clearly.”

Getting the message across

As a pastor, Blankenship needs to effectively connect with his audience during sermons, and this is where the Planar TVF Complete LED video wall is tremendously useful. “It provides a great advantage for me as a communicator,” he said. “If I’m leading a group through a Bible lesson, I can walk right up to the video wall and point to pictures or graphics. I can take people back to a biblical landscape from 2000 years ago.” 

During one segment, Blankenship spoke about a missionary journey involving believers who traveled from city to city preaching the gospel. The sermon was aided by a map of the Greco-Roman world displayed on the LED canvas. He said that having a visual representation like this helps the story come alive for people. “They can really identify, and it helps me to drive home the message I’m trying to convey.”

Engaging online worshipers

Life Church streams its services every Sunday so it was very important that the new video wall solution would also appeal to its online viewers.

“Ultimately, they were looking for versatility,” said Lundstrom. “The LED video wall is great for multi layers it gives them a beautiful backdrop and a versatile, creative approach for displaying content. It elevates the production value for both the in-person audience and their streaming Sunday package.”

According to Blankenship, the in-person and online feedback has been consistently positive. And the new LED video wall has been very effective in terms of appealing to current culture. “Our generation today is very used to connecting through an interface of multimedia,” Blankenship said. “They are experience-driven. So, investing in something that meets them where they are is very beneficial. They can come in and think, ‘this is a place that gets me.’”