We attend church for many different reasons. Most of those center around the enrichment to our lives that worship services so often provide. However, for those who can not understand the service, either because of hearing loss or language barriers, worship services have a difficult time meeting their needs. For this reason, assisted listening systems are gaining popularity among houses of worship. Not only are we better able to engage our members, but we also have an opportunity to retain and even reactivate members.

Assisted listening systems function by taking a feed from the house sound console and running that into a specially made radio frequency transmitter. This transmitter is tuned to broadcast the audio from the console on a certain frequency. Each person that needs an assisted listening device can tune a small pocket sized radio receiver to the same frequency as the transmitter, then plug in a set of headphones and they can adjust the volume of the service to meet their own individual needs.

Assisted listening systems can also often be used as language interpretation systems. Instead of the main output of the house console, a direct input from a microphone can be run into the transmitter. The language interpreter speaks into the microphone and the signal is broadcast to those that have their receivers tuned to the same channel.

Assisted listening/language interpretation systems have tremendous potential in a worship environment to enhance the ability of our congregations to receive and be affected by the message, and isn’t that really why we are all here!