Evangelist Outreach Ministries Int (EOM) is a church based in Eldorado Park, South of Johannesburg, with a heart to serve the community, help people realize their worth and to fight drug and substance abuse. While the church started in the early 90s as a small evangelical team led by Pastor Eden Constance and his wife Zenia, the congregation grew to unveil their new 2 500-seater state-of-the-art building in 2022 which includes an L-Acoustics A10i audio system, a full Audix drum mic set and microphones for the choir, all supplied and installed by DWR Distribution.
Pastor Eden was introduced to Richard Smith of DWR Distribution by his brother, who is also a pastor. Several years ago, his brother’s church became the first House of Worship in South Africa to implement an L-Acoustics system.
“We were looking at either the A15i or the A10i,” Richard describes. “We did a demo with the A10i’s and realized that it was going to be a perfect solution both from a performance and price point of view and it’s a perfectly suited system for the room. The A10i system surprised even us in that it performed so brilliantly. You get the impression from such a small box that it’s going to be limited in its ability, yet in a bigger environment like this one it sounds good, and EOM is very happy. The project was once again a reminder of how important connections and relationships are.”
Relationships, creating a place of worship where people feel at home, preaching the uncompromised word of God and finding leaders in the community to encourage others, is the very reason EOM has grown steadily over the years. Working in the field as an IT specialist for two decades, Pastor Eden was ordained as a Pastor in 1992 at Rhema Bible School and three years later, dived into the ministry on a full-time basis. Along with his wife and small team, they travelled to places like Durban and Cape Town sharing testimonies and evangelizing, but by 2012, he believed it was time to find a home for Sunday services. Before opening the doors of EOM Int the small team went on a weekend retreat to cut the umbilical court between EOT (Evangelistic Outreach Team) and EOM (Evangelistic Outreach Ministry). This was symbolic to crossing over from just a small team to bigger vision and giving birth to EOM. The church says that God over the weekend, through Prophecy, promised that EOM would have favour, speed and supernatural growth. The journey started and EOM rented a little building in Eldorado Park which was on the same property as a church auditorium.
When EOM opened its doors for the very first time, they were pleasantly taken aback. “For the first service, we packed out chairs for about 20 people,” smiles Jonathan Stainbank from the church. “To our surprise, over 200 people arrived! We used a music stand for a podium and had a power speaker and a small mixer as we didn’t have a band. From the mixer, we played music from a CD, and it would stop in the middle of a song while people were dancing and praising! Knowing we had a great need for an audio system didn’t stop the vision Pastor Eden had.”
A year later, the community were in a ‘praise explosion’ service on a Saturday night when Pastor Eden had a word that there would be a storm. Hours later that very evening there was a storm and the church hall collapsed, with both walls and the roof coming down. As a result, it was another breakthrough when the pastor of the 1000-seater auditorium, located on the same property, agreed to allow EOM to use his premises, and that is where the congregation stayed for the next six or seven years.
“We filled that space every Sunday morning and evening and our conferences were packed out,” Johnathan describes. “The sound couldn’t handle the capacity and in one service one of the speakers caught fire. We saw smoke and you can imagine my thoughts… should I throw the water on the speaker while the speaker is burning? Water is not good for sound, but neither is fire. So, we ran out of the building with the speaker and from there had to get new sound because ours had burnt out. The frustration of the audio was crazy.”
Pastor Eden also wanted good sound and to be able to deliver the word of God with no interference. That said, the humble assembly continued in this way for years until he announced one day that the church would move to their own new property, and soon after found a piece of land nearby. “We looked at the man of God asking him where we were going to get the money to pay for all of this,” says Jonathan. “All he said was that he was not going to question God. He signed papers for the land, and a few days later, we started seeing God’s provision.
The dream was to change the way people stigmatized residents living in Eldorado Park. While people who found success in the community would often move away, Pastor Eden had no intention of relocating to an affluent suburb like Sandton. He was going to bring a world-class facility to host God’s people right in the heart of Eldorado Park. He has a picture of the city of Sandton on his office wall to remind him that something good would be born out of Eldorado Park, a place where people would be exposed to the best sound, seating and comfort, would see the excellence of God and know that they are the head and not the tail. For EOM it’s not just about attending church but rather belonging to a family. If you are not in church on a Sunday, you can be sure that someone will be checking to see why you missed the service and how they can assist.
The land stood barren for two long years, waiting for approval from the council for building to commence, and then it took exactly one year to build the auditorium, which was completed in conjunction with the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic. “The church leaders and admin staff moved into our new offices during the first lockdown, while the auditorium was still raw, a concrete shell with no stage, seats, carpets or sound,” said Johnathan. “During the winter season, with plastic chairs used for the interim, Pastor had to close the evening services because it was too cold in the building.” Eventually, funds and the upliftment of Covid restrictions worked in unison and the building officially opened in February 2022.
Richard Smith designed the system and handed most of the practical system installation to system technician, Jaco Beukes. The L-Acoustics A10i system is a two-way passive, 10” speaker for medium throw installation applications. It comprises of four A10i’s a side and three subs aside with two X12 fills and X12 monitors. The system is powered by LA4x amplified controller. Because of a bulkhead over the stage, rigging was a challenge. “We had to come up with a system of putting up long trusses where we could have a cantilever to hang the subs in the areas where there was no point to hang them,” Richard explained. “As a result, the subs hang above the PA in front of the bulkhead. DWR’s manufacturing department built some custom brackets to attach our Prolyte trusses to the roof trusses of the building.”
Quality microphones were chosen for the drums and choir to further enhance the sound. This comprises of a professional Audix DP7 Professional 7-Piece Drum Microphone Package kit which includes seven microphones consisting of two D2 dynamic drum microphones for rack toms, one D4 for floor tom, the i5 for snare, D6 for Kick Drum, and a pair of ADX51 studio condenser microphones for overhead miking. The church opted to add a few more microphones so in total have one D6, two i5, three D2, two D4 and four ADX51 (one for overhead and the other three for the choir). Also included are D-Vice rim mount clips for the snare and tom microphones, and heavy-duty tension fit microphone clips for the other microphones.
“It was an honour working with the team at EOM,” Richard concludes. “Eldorado Park has many challenges in terms of money and sometimes things like gang violence, but the church is there to uplift people and has become a sanctuary in a tough area.”