In February 2020 Transformation Church in Indian Land, S.C., celebrated its 10th anniversary of ministry to the Charlotte, N.C., metro area, less than 30 minutes away. The driving vision at the heart of the church is to reach and influence the entire world with the message of the Gospel, uniquely and intentionally contextualized for multi-racial and multi-cultural communities.
For Broadcast Director Dan Rutty, the process of committing to that mission was a gradual process. “I’d been in ministry for 20 years, and I’d just come out of a season of domestic missions working with the homeless in Colorado,” he says. “We’d just moved back to the Charlotte area, so our goal was to find a church to begin attending.” Rutty continues, “Soon after we started coming to Transformation they approached me to come on as a music director, and while I was actually reluctant at first, it turned out to be one of the greatest experiences ever. Six months later I was invited to be the production director of the main campus.”
Missional Resonance
“In the past, the churches I’ve worked in were very localized, which unfortunately didn’t translate to a larger, global movement,” says Rutty. “Pastor Durwin is a great leader and a global teacher, and the vision of the church is a national vision.”What Rutty found here at Transformation Church was a community that he describes as “full of grace and full of love, which was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before.”
“Our next step will be to upgrade all ofour white lighting to LED so we can really improve how we represent skin tones as accurately and consistently as possible.”
Dan Rutty, Broadcast Director, Transformation Church, Indian Land, SC
And he adds, “When I first started on staff, I wasn’t sure that I even wanted to be in ministry anymore. I told the person who hired me that I didn’t want the job, that I was struggling myself. And his reply was ‘Welcome to the family.’”Looking back, Rutty finds, “Believing in that vision so intensely has definitely made it easy to go all-in leading the broadcast ministry. This isn’t a church that you just come and work at. It’s not about making the pastor famous. It’s about inviting the rest of the world into this great community and this great vision.”
"Need" fulfillment
At the time Rutty was asked to take on the role of production director, the needs went far beyond maintaining the status quo. “On my first day in that role I asked what my main initiative should be, and they told me it was to build a strong live streaming ministry,” says Rutty. “Our picture quality was inconsistent, as our video gear was a hodgepodge of different cameras and equipment. My main goal initially was just to bring consistency on the audio and video fronts. Which meant needing to move us from [a] small-church to large-church mentality.”
The toughest part, Rutty reports, was actually switching that mindset on the executive team side. “You have to help the executive team understand why it’s worth investing in quality equipment,” he says. “We needed to create a vision in production that matched the vision of the whole church, which lead us to a philosophy of first removing distractions, then tastefully complementing the music and the message.” He adds that the whole process of research and vision casting lasted almost a full year, starting in 2016.“Once we were all on the same page, our team was able to start the conversation about how were we going to accomplish it,” he describes. “We literally had to unpack the value of things like haze, but once the executive team got that we were ‘painting an area with light’ they really got behind it, and their attitude became ‘Go for it!’”
Next steps
The process of outfitting Transformation Church’s 1,200-seat main auditorium for the kind of 21st century impact they were envisioning meant starting with the foundations and moving the process forward one step at a time. “When I started, the building was one year old, and everything was in a very basic state,” recalls Rutty. “We had no moving lights and just a little color wash, so our focus began with four elements: truss, lighting, curtain, and video. Those were things we could buy, store, and implement as needed from series to series.”
Dan Rutty
The second area Rutty and his team focused on was the church’s video studio. “We had a switcher, two fairly nice studio cameras, and a smattering of other cameras from different brands,” he says. “After talking to SES Integration in Concord, N.C., our next step was upgrading our switcher and wiring.”In the process, Transformation has built a relationship with SES over the past few years, and the church trusts the company to be honest with them. “I actually sold SES on Canon and they sold us on Square V, so that give-and-take feels good for us.”Rutty reports that a Ross Ultrix router helped set up his team with a great deal of flexibility to route signal anywhere they needed in their entire building. “Once that was done our next step was to create an audio system dedicated to the live stream, complete with an Allen & Heath console for dedicated audio mixing,” he says.
Transformation Church also incorporated two Ross Carbonite Black switchers (ME1 and ME2) and mulit-viewers for maximizing the effectiveness of their broadcast mixes. “Once those were in place we added a center Square V LED wall to provide lyrics in the middle of the stage and serve as great background for our cameras,” he adds.
Bringing visuals into focus
Once those areas were in good shape, the broadcast team at Transformation turned its attention to the video side. “After experimenting with a Canon C100 shot in our weekend mix, the whole team was really impressed,” remembers Rutty. “So last November we made the jump to Canon cameras and lenses for everything.”He continues, “The Canon cameras and lenses are just great. We really wanted that cinema look in a live setting, with cameras that could also be used to create film content during the week, and still have that same look on the weekend.”In order to achieve that aesthetic, the broadcast ministry at Transformation incorporated two Canon EOS C700s, with a Cine-Servo 17-120mm mounted to one for the wider room shots and a Cine-Servo 50-1,000 for mediums and closeups. The team also selected three Canon EOS C300 Mark IIs, two with CN-E 18-80mm servo zoom lenses and one with a CN-E 70-200mm servo zoom.
"Our broadcast audience had already been growing to around 6,000 per weekend, and now that number has jumped to 20,000. Giving at Transformation Church has also gone up massively during the quarantine, which just blows our minds."
Dan Rutty, Broadcast Director, Transformation Church, Indian Land, SC
(Canon recently produced a video about the video upgrade process at Transformation, which is currently available to view on Canon USA’s YouTube channel.) “When you have a team of servant leaders running cameras, the goal is for them to be able to turn them on and be able to do whatever is needed,” Rutty states. “Last week, for example, the pastor did an illustration where he dipped a small, white string into red dye, and on that 50-1,000mm lens the string looked like a giant rope onscreen. It was awesome.” On the lighting side, the tech ministry recently added four Martin moving lights and haze, mainly because “we trusted Martin and knew we’d get great results,” shares Rutty. “Our next step will be to upgrade all of our white lighting to LED so we can really improve how we represent skin tones as accurately and consistently as possible. Being a multi-ethnic church means we want to have as much flexibility as possible in that regard.”
Forward momentum
“Right now, I feel like the entire church is on an incredible ride,” Rutty says. “We’re trying to be faithful through everything that’s happened. We didn’t know at the time [that] COVID-19 was coming, but all of the work over the last three years has gotten us ready for this moment.”He adds, “Our broadcast audience had already been growing to around 6,000 per weekend, and now that number has jumped to 20,000. Giving at Transformation Church has also gone up massively during the quarantine, which just blows our minds.”Through it all, the broadcast team remains focused on making an impact, both within their community and beyond the walls of their church, with their ministry. “We’re now having the opportunity to help other churches and production teams get things off the ground with their broadcast ministries, and we’re so thankful for that,” Rutty shares. “It’s been a big moment for us, and whatever happens in the future we just want to keep sharing the Gospel and inviting people into this beautiful community.”
