City News talks to Randal Taylor, technical consultant for City Harvest Church’s new worship location.
Contributed By Andrew Ong
Taylor lends his expertise in the area of multi-media installation to CHC’s new worship premises at Suntec Singapore. CN PHOTO: Elvis Chiu
Randal Taylor is a marketing strategist who helps church ministries use new and old media with their outreach plans and efforts. Before joining BMCFerrell, Randal served on staff as a media director under different churches and Christian ministries in the US, such as Fellowship Church, Ed Young’s ministry, and First Baptist Euless. He has also helped many Fortune 500 corporations develop strategic marketing and branding campaigns. He currently travels internationally, serving a broad range of non-profit and ministry clients.
Taylor was specially engaged as the consultant for the technical production for CHC’s new space.
What was your main role in the setup of CHC at Suntec?
My job was to ensure that the lighting and other technical aspects were in place to enhance the overall worship experience in the hall.
Would you consider this a large scale project?
Any project that involves a hall that sits above 7,000 people is considered a very large-scale project. And on such a scale, it would have normally taken 10 to 12 days but CHC completed this within a week.
What are the distinctive features of this project?
An obvious one is the LED wall. It is extremely unique as it extends across the entire width of the stage. From my knowledge, no other church has used LED panels to such an extent.
Taylor and the CHC team worked around the clock for the opening. CN PHOTO: Michael Chan
Do you see more churches embracing technology? Or is there still resistance?
There are both traditional churches and contemporary churches and in both instances, [I believe that] God desires the Church to be as creative as possible and to excel in every way possible, because churches are a reflection of His creativity.
I’m of the opinion that most churches want to strive for excellence. Therefore, they would find an appreciation for such technology and would not describe such use of technology as “extravagant.” In fact I find most churches incorporating such elements, as they want to present their weekend services at a very high level.
What were the challenges encountered during the setup of the new City Harvest auditorium?
The main challenge for me was the crunch for time. In normal circumstances, projects of such scale would have been given ample time for set up. However, this was not possible due to an IT show that was held in the same hall the previous weekend. Therefore, the five days were all we had and it was a very intense and aggressive schedule. But with God’s help, the team managed to pull through.
How would you describe your experience working with CHC on this project?
The technical team, from the volunteers to the full-time staff of CHC, was absolutely wonderful! I think CHC is a wonderful and creative church led by Pastor Kong and Sun, both of whom have a great heart to reach the churched and the un-churched. And they’ve created an environment that is of high quality to do just that. So for instance, if you bring a friend who is unchurched here, he or she is likely to look at the church differently because of his or her heightened experience with God in the place.
