Michael Kamau serves as Lead Lighting Designer at Free Chapel in Gainesville, Georgia, where he oversees lighting, stage design, and visual environments for weekly services and major ministry events.
At many churches, Sunday production depends on years of experience, seasoned staff, and carefully refined systems. At Free Chapel in Gainesville, Georgia, it also depends on a 23-year-old lighting leader who has been learning the rhythms of worship production since elementary school.
Michael Kamau, Lead Lighting Designer at Free Chapel, is not just a young technician with unusual experience. He is also a product of the church’s culture itself. Long before he was designing stages, programming services, and helping shape the visual experience for one of the country’s best-known multi-site ministries, he was a kid in Free Chapel’s children’s ministry, watching volunteers run cameras and lights and deciding he wanted to be part of it.
Michael Kamau, Lead Lighting Designer at Free Chapel.
That early exposure became more than curiosity. It became formation.
Today, Kamau leads lighting, stage design, and center-screen visuals at Free Chapel’s Gainesville campus while also contributing to major seasonal productions and youth conference environments. His story reflects what can happen when a church takes the next generation seriously and gives young volunteers real opportunities to grow.
Raised in the Booth
Kamau’s production story began early — very early.
Growing up at Free Chapel, he saw firsthand that the church brought the same level of production intentionality to children’s ministry that many churches reserve only for adult services. There were cameras, lights, sound, and volunteers serving in meaningful roles. He was captivated.
By third grade, he was serving weekly on the production team.
“One service, I was like, ‘Let me just go to the back,’” Kamau recalls. “That’s where the sound booth is. And all the production guys were hanging out right after our service and I was like, ‘Hey, I’d like to join the team.’”
He started on cameras, but his trajectory shifted quickly. In fourth grade, he convinced ministry leaders to let him serve in production for the church’s kids camp, Summer Extreme, a weeklong VBS-style event with worship, games, skits, teaching, and full technical support. That environment proved decisive.
“What the worship team is doing, I’m trying to do with lights.”
Summer Extreme gave him repeated, hands-on reps in a compressed setting. While most volunteers might serve once a week, Kamau was helping build and run services day after day. He began programming lighting on Hog PC while still in elementary school.
That is where lighting became his lane.
“Summer Extreme was literally where I took the ownership of learning that lighting was my thing,” he says.
Lighting and center-screen visuals work together at Free Chapel to support worship and communication—two areas overseen by Lead Lighting Designer Michael Kamau.
The work was practical, but it was also formative. New scenic elements would appear. Lighting positions would change. He would walk into the room and have to figure out what needed to be rebuilt, patched, or programmed — the kind of problem-solving many lighting programmers do as adults on conference and touring shows.
For Kamau, those lessons started when most kids were still learning multiplication tables.
A Church Built to Raise the Next Generation
Free Chapel’s culture helps explain why that was even possible.
Based in Gainesville, Georgia, the church has seven physical campuses, an online campus, and a newly acquired campus in Destin, Florida, that will bring the total to nine. The ministry’s reach is broad, but Kamau describes its mission in simple terms: inspire people to live for Jesus and raise the next generation in every ministry.
He sees himself as evidence that the culture is not just aspirational language.
“I’m truly a testimony to it,” he says. “I grew up in the kids’ ministry, and I’m still here helping with now our adult ministry and all our other ministries that we help make a part of our services.”
That next-generation emphasis shapes more than volunteer recruitment. It affects how people are developed, how responsibility is handed off, and how ministry leaders think about the future. At Free Chapel, production is not treated as a side ministry that just supports the platform. It is one more place where young people can grow, serve, and discover calling.
That philosophy also explains why Kamau, now on staff since 2022, is already leading such a broad scope of work at 23.
Designing for Worship, Not Distraction
Kamau’s role at Free Chapel includes more than lighting cues on Sunday. He oversees lighting direction, contributes to stage design, and manages visuals on the center LED wall. He is also involved in major events, including youth conference, Easter, Christmas, and the church’s women’s conference.
Still, Sunday mornings remain central.
Kamau’s lighting philosophy focuses on supporting worship while creating visual environments the congregation may not have experienced before.
Free Chapel’s Gainesville campus seats about 3,500, and the church is known for large-scale ministry, strong worship, and a dynamic preaching style from Senior Pastor Jentezen Franklin. But Kamau is quick to clarify that the church’s production culture is not driven by spectacle for spectacle’s sake.
“Our pastor’s not up for making a concert,” he says.
That conviction shapes the visual language of worship. On a typical Sunday, the church avoids strobes, and other elements that could feel more like a rock show than a worship gathering. Audience lighting is used carefully. The goal is not to eliminate creativity, but to remove distraction.
For Kamau, that creates a design challenge he genuinely enjoys.
“I’m trying to create an environment that people haven’t seen before,” he says. “I think lights are a part of what the band is doing. They set the energy and tone, and my job is to follow them and help support that.”
Programming Fast, Responding Faster
One of the more interesting details in Kamau’s process is how late some elements of the service remain fluid.
The worship set is planned in advance, and Thursday rehearsals provide an opportunity to refine cues and work through the flow. But the church’s preaching culture remains highly responsive. In an environment where the message and music can shift in real time, the production team operates with the flexibility and precision to support it seamlessly.
“I stay looking at the multiview constantly.”
Kamau generally programs the Sunday songs on Sunday morning, beginning around 6 a.m. Between then and rehearsal, he builds cues, listens to arrangements, and prepares the room. During rehearsal, he refines timing and intensity based on how the band actually plays the songs.
What cannot be programmed in advance is what happens when worship extends beyond the arrangement.
At the end of songs, the team may tag sections, shift dynamically, or continue in spontaneous worship. In those moments, Kamau busks.
“As the music builds and the room comes alive, that’s when I bring lighting into the audience,” he says. “What the worship team is expressing, I’m aiming to reflect through light.”
Lighting for the Room and the Camera
Kamau also brings an awareness that many churches still underemphasize: the need to light for both the in-room experience and the broadcast image.
Free Chapel is currently in the middle of a significant AVL upgrade, including a shift from older broadcast cameras to a new cinema-based workflow. That transition has included lighting changes as well, particularly around key light, side light, and top light to improve what online viewers see.
Kamau pays close attention to the multiview during services, not just the stage. “I’m constantly watching the multiview to stay in sync with everything happening,” he says.
Lighting and shading are closely connected in the church’s workflow. If a shot is about to go live and an area needs help, Kamau may adjust intensity in real time to support continuity and keep exposure natural across camera angles.
It’s a reminder that modern church lighting is no longer only about what feels right in the room. It also requires an understanding of how light translates on camera and how collaboration with video operators shapes the final image.
Building Big Moments
While Sunday programming may be relatively restrained, Free Chapel’s larger seasonal productions operate on an entirely different scale.
“Growing the next me is the number one goal.”
Christmas and Easter involve extensive scenic design, rental inventory, custom environments, and multiple rehearsals. Easter in particular becomes a full storytelling production supported by large lighting packages, projection, LED, and highly intentional stage design.
The church’s goal is not simply to impress. It is to tell the story of Jesus in a way that invites people in — especially those who may not otherwise come to church.
That same philosophy drives youth conference production as well. Much of the team’s midweek focus is often aimed not just at the coming Sunday, but at what is next on the larger ministry calendar.
Volunteers Are the Model
If there is one theme that consistently defines Kamau’s perspective, it is the importance of volunteers.
Free Chapel uses a large volunteer team in production, with roughly 30 volunteers involved on a typical Sunday at Gainesville alone. Across camera positions, audio support, video, and lighting, volunteers are essential to the church’s model.
Currently, one of Kamau’s goals is to train the person who might one day replace him. "My number one goal is to raise up the next person just like my mentors at Free Chapel did for me," he shares.
That mindset is reinforced structurally. Every other Thursday night, Free Chapel opens training opportunities in camera, lighting, video, and audio. New volunteers can shadow positions, get hands-on experience, and begin learning without pressure.
“We take you as you are,” Kamau says. “You can come in with any level of experience - our goal is to bring you up to where we are.”
Free Chapel believed that when Kamau was a kid. Now he is building the same path for someone else.
Michael Kamau constantly monitors the multiviewer during services, ensuring lighting supports both the congregation in the room and the cameras feeding IMAG screens and the livestream.
The Work Behind the Work
There is also a quieter side to what makes Sunday happen: organization.
In addition to his design and programming responsibilities, Kamau manages volunteer scheduling for the Gainesville production team. With a large volunteer team serving across camera positions and other production roles, that means building rotations, planning months in advance, adjusting for availability, and responding to last-minute changes.
“Lighting today has to work for both the room and the camera.”
Like many strong production leaders, he understands that ministry excellence depends not only on creativity but also on systems.
Staying organized, he says, is what keeps everything working.
Making Sunday Happen
Michael Kamau’s story is impressive because of how early it began and how much responsibility he now carries. But the deeper takeaway is not simply that Free Chapel found a gifted young lighting designer.
It is that the church made room for one to emerge.
From children’s ministry to youth conference, from camera operation to lighting design, Kamau’s path reflects what can happen when a church gives young people real opportunities to serve, fail, grow, and lead.
At Free Chapel, making Sunday happen is not just about cues, gear, or polished execution. It is also about building the kind of ministry where the next generation is not waiting on the sidelines for a turn someday.
They are already in the booth.
