‘Embracing technology has been a part of Choose Life’s ethos throughout their journey’
South Africa - Located in Pretoria, Choose Life Church was founded in 2005 by Pastor John and Mandri Roebert. Embracing technology has been a part of Choose Life’s ethos throughout their journey, consistently ensuring that high quality systems are installed on their premises.
In fact, after purchasing the building in 2010, the first thing they did was renovate and improve upon the existing system. The first major project in 2011 was centred around the installation of a d&b T-Series audio system in their main auditorium, which was supplied and integrated by Stage Audio Works (SAW).
Recently, Choose Life Church called upon SAW once again, this time to implement a large Pixel Plus LED wall to act as the backdrop for their stage. A secondary requirement of this project was to upgrade their hardware and streaming infrastructure, to allow them more flexibility moving forwards.
Grant Boswell, technical support officer at Choose Life Church comments, “Our old stage backdrop was rather boring and dark, so we wanted to brighten and liven it up to make our auditorium look more contemporary and create an exciting stage feature. A couple of years ago we hired in a screen and fell in love with it, so decided it was time for a permanent upgrade. We did some research and received several quotes, but ultimately decided to go with SAW’s Pixel Plus solution. They were always the favourite, as we have an excellent relationship with them and felt assured that they would deliver a premium quality product.”
For the primary solution, Stage Audio Works implemented a 108-panel Xcell-i LED wall from their Pixel Plus range. The technology offers high contrast and refresh rates, unparalleled brightness, and the ability to vary the pixel pitch to fit any application – indoors or otherwise. Significantly, all of this comes at an extremely cost-effective price point.
Boswell continues, highlighting the other work that the integration covered: “This visual element will greatly improve the quality of our live streams, especially with the additional upgrade to our video framework throughout our facilities.” SAW significantly improved the church’s live streaming capabilities by upgrading to HD-SDI cabling for all projectors and equipment in the auditorium, additional rooms, and foyer.
Likewise, the team upgraded their original streaming PCs to a more sophisticated network of custom-built Dream Machine Light PCs. On a software level, SAW galvanised the adoption of ProPresenter 7 and supported the transition towards the Resi streaming platform, affording the church increased flexibility and scalability, with the guarantee of seamless streaming, even though temporary total internet connection loss - in Boswell’s own words, “opening up many more options and opportunities for us in the future.”
“We are loving the new look,” affirms Boswell. “The colour and movement in the background makes our stage look even bigger and more impressive and eliminates the dark spots we previously noticed in our playbacks.”

Latest Issue. . .