Central Christian Church Unifies Remote Production

Clear-Com has announced that Central Christian Church has overhauled communications for its live productions by deploying Clear-Com’s LQ Series IP interfaces, Gen-IC Virtual Intercom, the Agent-IC mobile app and the Station-IC desktop client.

The setup enables production staff and volunteers across multiple sites, including team members hundreds of miles away, to communicate as if they were in the same control room.

Based in Mt. Vernon, Illinois, the church delivers four live worship services each weekend, distributing them on Facebook, YouTube, its online campus, a local ABC affiliate, and to a second campus in Carbondale, Illinois. A volunteer-led team headed by Live Video Director Steve Dillingham manages live switching, graphics and video output.

As production ambitions grew, keeping remote personnel reliably connected proved difficult. A patchwork of phone calls, video chats and separate audio feeds introduced unnecessary steps and delays during rehearsals and live broadcasts.

"Our primary challenge was collaborating with our remote lighting director after he relocated to South Carolina," said Steve Dillingham, Live Video Director at Central Christian Church. "Before Clear-Com, we relied on a mix of phone calls, video chats and separate audio feeds. Now he's on the intercom system with zero friction, just as if he were standing in the control room. It's been a complete game changer."

The church's current workflow integrates an existing Clear-Com base station and wireless camera comms with an LQ-2W2 interface linked to Gen-IC. The remote lighting director connects via Agent-IC, while the Carbondale campus uses Station-IC to join the same intercom environment. This unified approach lets teams coordinate lighting, video, audio, stage management and live sermon broadcasts with no perceptible delay.

The move has also safeguarded institutional knowledge. After relocating, the lighting director remained fully active in services, and his wife stepped into a remote Assistant Director role, helping retain decades of volunteer production experience within the ministry.

"One of the biggest benefits has been flexibility," Dillingham said. "We're now able to support remote programming, offsite troubleshooting and collaboration during services without requiring every team member to be physically present. Communication is immediate, natural and always available."

Alongside remote connectivity, the Clear-Com solution continues to support mobile camera operators through the church's existing wireless intercom, bridging comms smoothly between onsite and remote users.

For other churches seeking to scale production without compromising communication, Dillingham's verdict is unequivocal.

"If you need a reliable way to communicate with offsite team members, the Clear-Com LQ Series is the ultimate solution," he said. "The headset clarity is amazing, the Clear-Com technical team went above and beyond to help us get everything set up, and once it's connected, it simply works. We experience zero latency."

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