| The installation of ISONAS system in 2007 took only one day for the physical installation of the 4 exterior doors |
From its very beginning in 1955, the members of the First Baptist Church in Beaverton Oregon have been committed to reaching out to others in fellowship and service in the name of God.
Today that devotion to service to others takes the form of multiple ministries aimed at interactions based on Christian principals not only with fellow members of the congregation, but with the community at large as well. Programs for youth are as varied as providing care and teaching for preschool aged children to programs based at local colleges and universities for and run by young adults with assistance from FBC clergy. Outreach to the community is active and as varied as providing a Severe Weather Centre in conjunction with Washington County’s emergency shelter program, to providing English as a Second Language classes to the Food & Essentials Pantry program which provides necessary supplies to those in need. And of course the church facilities are heavily utilised on a daily basis. In addition to office use by clergy and staff there are multiple worship services as well as meetings and gatherings of many types.
Cost-effective electronic access system
With up to 500 church members and other community participants the demand for access to the church’s facilities has always been high. According to Willy Hughes, youth pastor and resident technoid, the requirement for so much access meant that the church was giving out keys to lots of people for what were intended to be temporary use periods. Predictably many, many keys were misplaced, never returned or lost which resulted in a significant amount of rekeying of lock sets throughout the church. “We decided to replace our manual key locks with an electronic system and ISONAS was the choice. Constant re-keying wasn’t economical and the new system paid for itself in less than a year. Installing the system ourselves was also fairly easy,” according to Pastor Hughes.
The current system covers 4 exterior doors with another planned to be added this year as part of the church’s remodel project on its Youth Wing. The original installation in 2007 took only one day for the physical installation of the 4 original doors and an additional day to configure the installation of the Windows-based software that controls the system. Although there was a technical issue with one of the doors at installation time, “ISONAS tech was helpful on this small issue and the system came up fine. The ISONAS system was also the most cost effective of those we evaluated, both from the perspective of initial installation costs as well as on-going operational costs.”
“All things considered the ISONAS PowerNet system turned out to be the best value for us and meets all of our needs, both present and future.”