Crossroads Church pioneers a new era of worship with the world’s largest GhostFrame-powered LED stage

“This all started as a simple concept with a complex solution,” notes Craig Dockery, Creative Director at Crossroads Church. He explains that back in 2022, the church wanted to use technology to share the Gospel in fresh and creative ways. The goal was to create immersive moments with real impact and connection while leveraging best-in-class technology and creativity to stand out and share the message of Jesus in a landscape crowded with competing media and entertainment.

This vision led to a major two-year project which saw the church, located in Cincinnati, Ohio, make use of Disguise’s full turnkey solution of software, hardware and services to completely redesign its in-room and online experience. 

As a result, Crossroads now has a high-tech LED stage capable of hosting a live audience while simultaneously providing an XR livestream for remote churchgoers at home and broadcasting a feed to other Crossroads locations. The auditorium, which can seat 3,500 people, creates a unique multi-purpose space that blends the worlds of live performance, broadcast, production, and immersive events into a unified system comprising an impressive 17 GX 3 media servers, 12 RXIII render engine servers, and the largest use case of GhostFrame technology in the world. 

Working side by side, Disguise Services and Diversified managed the install and worked with other key partners including TAIT, Concept Pixels, ARS, Megapixel and Nathan Paul Taylor to bring the vision to life. A range of immersive content created by studios including Visual Endeavours, Silent Partners, Lüz Studio, Lightborne, Possible and Crossroads’ in-house team has helped Crossroads hit the ground running, with a further series of immersive environments created by Disguise’s creative team arriving in 2026 to help the church continue delivering the most impactful services possible.

The challenge

Crossroads' new install stands out in terms of its size, scale, and complexity. The church’s stage needed to do many things at once for different audiences: for in-person attendees, it needed to be a venue for services, live concerts, and an immersive teaching space; and for those joining services and events from home or other Crossroads locations, it needed to function as a broadcast-ready XR environment that offered the same caliber of heightened experience. Outside of services, the space would also be used as a virtual production environment to boost the church’s on-demand video library.

To achieve all this, the stage was set up for multiple ROE LED screens, including four moving tracked walls, two stationary legs, a massive vanish screen that hangs upstage, a Ghost-Frame enabled floor, and an LED “skirt” that surrounds the proscenium. The team needed to be able to maintain colour accuracy and temperature calibration across all those screens for both live and remote audiences while enabling low-latency synchronisation across multiple servers and LED processors. On top of that, they also needed to work around site availability issues, as Thursday and Sunday services continued throughout the project.

“There was also the additional challenge of managing two competing factors: creative excellence and the ability to consistently execute every single week,” explains Dockery. “No matter how impressive the technology was, the stage couldn’t just work once—it had to be great and reliable every single time.”

The solution

At the start of the project in 2022, the Disguise Services team partnered with renowned production designer Nathan Paul Taylor, known for his work with artists like Camila Cabello and Shawn Mendes and productions such as the MTV EMAs, to develop the visual concept for this multi-purpose space.

Once the concept was defined, the Disguise team then worked on a solution to integrate an end-to-end ecosystem capable of handling simultaneous LED playback of real-time Unreal Engine and Notch content, as well as AR overlays, camera tracking, and broadcast output - all without breaking under weekly production loads. 

To do this, the Disguise technical team worked with multiple partners, including Diversified for systems integration, broadcast routing and control, TAIT for automation, Concept Pixels to supply LED, and ARS for rigging. Together they created a hybrid architecture consisting of Disguise GX 3 and RX II servers for playback and rendering, Disguise Designer for sequencing and controlling visuals, and expert tools including Stage Precision for tracking calibration and spatial alignment, Stype tracking for AR/XR frustums, T-Max for talent tracking, and L-Acoustics for immersive audio.

“These systems allow a small weekly crew to run a production comparable to major touring or broadcast events,” Dockery explains. “Disguise provides the best playback system for real-time applications, bar none, especially when managing multiple servers and large LED surfaces. The system’s ability to unify Unreal Engine environments, Notch effects, and live camera feeds was central to making the setup stable and repeatable.”

The introduction of Megapixel’s GhostFrame technology was an innovative addition that allows the same space to showcase different environments simultaneously for both live and broadcast audiences. GhostFrame embeds multiple video signals into the LED wall’s refresh cycle, allowing different environments or image layers to be revealed only to cameras synced to those signals, while the naked eye sees a single unified display - meaning remote audiences can even have unique viewing experiences unseen by those attending church in person. 

To hit the ground running creatively in 2026, Crossroads also collaborated with Disguise’s creative team on a content package for their Real Encounters series of services. Created in Unreal Engine, the sixteen different looks utilise real-time components to realise historical reproductions of Biblical sites, transporting audiences to ancient locations during services as well as serving as backdrops for virtual production shoots. This will be an addition to their current content catalogue, with visuals created by studios including Visual Endeavours, Silent Partners, Lüz Studio, Lightborne, Possible and Crossroads’ own in-house team.

The results

Crossroads’ stage represents not only a technical achievement but also proof that immersive technology and storytelling excellence don’t have to be limited to the entertainment industry. 

Every week, the stage functions as a live concert environment, an immersive teaching space, a broadcast-ready XR stage and a virtual production studio for content creation - one space that can be used for various applications. Speakers and musicians alike use it to pull audiences into immersive moments, bring teachings to life, and deliver a more engaging worship experience, no matter where people join from. So far, the audience response has been overwhelmingly positive, with congregations both in-room and remote being blown away by the impact and experience.

“Creating something new isn’t easy, but with Disguise we knew we were in safe hands,” says Dockery. “It’s the only platform that ticks all the boxes for how Crossroads wanted to use the stage. Its ability to handle live playback, real-time integration, and future-ready XR broadcast made it indispensable - the workflow flexibility, real-time engine compatibility, and robust ecosystem give the production team creative freedom without sacrificing reliability.” 

Backed by a powerful technical ecosystem and high-quality content, Crossroads Church now has the flexibility and stability to elevate every live and broadcast service, driving a new era of immersive worship.