A school, a theater and an industrial unit; a congregation of the unlikely you might say, yet this enigmatic association has a single community at its heart, and a very potent one at that. Elevation Church is new, robust, and growing exponentially from just twenty to over eight thousand people in just five years. "These three buildings were just the first steps," says Wes Watson a member of the Leadership Team at Elevation, "A fourth is completed now. Our hope is to continue to spread throughout the city of Charlotte." ??
The church was founded by its inspirational Pastor Steven Furtick; besides his passionate zeal for The Word, he has also conceived a potent and entirely business-like method to channel the resources of the church towards what matters most: reaching people far from God. "The thing is, by sharing buildings with existing tenants it allows for growth with lower cost for land and property," says Donnie Haulk of AE Global Media Inc (AE), the company hired to install systems, and work alongside Watson and Elevation Church to create the best possible experience for people who come through the doors. "Music is a big part of our worship," Watson adds, "and it's real loud." He's not kidding; by default Elevation makes earplugs available at every worship experience. "That's one reason we're so pleased with the d&b audiotechnik systems that AE has installed at all the locations. We find with the d&b equipment, regardless of campus, our people get a consistent experience, and that's key. Punchy low end, they sound tight and even. The loudspeakers are well made and predictable, and there isn't a need for tons of EQ on the front end," he says. ??
AE Global Media has supplied all elements of presentation technology, acoustic treatment, architectural lighting, presentation lighting, video suite, multi track recording, PA and communications, according to an announcement from d&b. "The content is the thing," explains Haulk. "Pastor Steven delivers locally to only a few of the campuses, but each has their own live worship band and live staff. He can't physically be in all places at all times so we have linked them all by fiber optic to deliver him in sound and vision everywhere." ??
Watson, a graduate in Communications has been involved with the church and audio, video and lighting technology since an early age. "My dad was a youth pastor, so I started to work with sound mixing when I was just five. From a design standpoint the church is real fortunate in having several skilled technology adherents, a guy from Sennheiser, two from Design 20:20 (an A/V design firm based in Charlotte) and a couple from AE Global Media themselves, who are church members. So between us we all collaborated on the design components. Of the now four existing campuses three are T-Series, with Q-Series in the other. Pastor Steven knows how to use the technology and he drives it so the common experience is that all the people at whatever campus feel like they're all part of one big church."
??Haulk describes the church as, "explosive, a phenomenal movement of God. Something you have to see to believe." Watson says. "It's been really exciting to be with Elevation and watch it grow. From the perspective of the leadership team, for us the point is to reach the people who are far from God, and for that the system has to be excellent to bring the Gospel to the people."
