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Elevation Church - Providence High School Location
Plug and Play Upgrade Makes Setup Efficient and Blesses A Local School
Recognized by Outreach Magazine as the "Forth fastest growing church in America." Elevation church has been in fact growing since it's initial meeting of 121 people in the atrium of Providence High School (PHS) in Charlotte, NC in February of 2006. They quickly out grew the capacity of the atrium and moved to an auditorium in a local senior center. About five months later they were back at Providence High School, this time in their auditorium, which holds approximately 800 people.
A portable church since its inception, though now with a new semi-permanent HQ dubbed the Matthews location, some Elevation members continue to meet in the Providence location. In addition to being a portable church, Elevation is also a multi-site church with the new HQ, the PHS site and another location in uptown Charlotte. Read more about the new Matthews location in the October 2009 issue of Church Production Magazine.
With the new location came increased technical demands and expectations, ones that would carry over to the existing satellite locations as well. So to make the process of building and moving to a new facility even more challenging, Elevation decided to provide a permanent audio system upgrade for the PHS location.
Trey Blair, project manager for Audio Ethics and also serves as one of the primary front-of-house engineers for the Elevation says, "The installation of a permanent system in the Providence campus came from a desire to improve the coverage in the room as well as increase the overall quality of the worship experience. With the new permanent campus in Matthews going up, it was known that things would need to be kept on a fairly level playing field at the other campuses to create the same level of worship experience regardless of which campus you were attending."
And the idea of getting a brand new sound system was well received by the school. Wes Watson, lead producer for Elevation recalls, "We obviously had been building a relationship with them for several years at this point. Our Executive Pastor, Chunks Corbett, began talking to them about wanting to do something to bless the school, and also it would help us out with what we were doing. So as we began to look at it they were really excited about it, because they have a great auditorium, which they already used a lot for their district meetings and such. It was part of an outreach thing for us to invest in our city."
Watson describes a typical Sunday before the new system was installed. "We would show up at 5:00 in the morning, all production volunteers. By 6:10 all the sound system was set up and the band would start getting line checks. At 6:30 the band practices, from 6:30 to 7:30. That's the only time the band practices. We don't have a midweek practice, you come in and you know your stuff or you don't play. And then at 7:30 we do a run through until about 8:20. And then at 8:20 the doors open. So all of that happens in not a lot of time, but we have these great production volunteers that get in there and knock it out. Our service times are 8:30, 10:00, 11:30, and 1:00. We split our volunteer groups up, so a group of volunteers comes in and does set up. A different group comes in and runs the first two services. And then a different group comes in and runs the second two."
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Mark Johnson is an independent technical trainer/writer based in Crockett, Calif., and former editor of Sound & Video Contractor and Church Production magazines. He can be reached at mjohnson6286@sbcglobal.net.
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