Victory Temple of Beaumont, Texas has a much larger ministry than its congregation of 500 people. Under the leadership of Pastor Robert Turnage, the church continues to fulfill its original vision set in 1956 of taking the Gospel to all persons. Home missions have included every form of electronic and print media, as well as starting minority and ethnic churches. Likewise, every conceivable means has been employed to spread their ministry to nearly every region of the world.
To this end, Shannon Pridgen, Director of the Media Department at Victory Temple, and their production team have built a state-of-the-art TV and video studio with NVISION broadcasting equipment. Within the studio, they produce a variety of programs for ministry outreach. The weekly service is recorded and airs twice on Sunday by the local ABC affiliate, KBMT. The program includes the sermon of Pastor Turnage in its entirety, as well as other segments that complete an hour-long schedule. They also record and broadcast special holiday productions.
The studio’s primary role is to meet the recording and distribution needs of Victory Temple. As time permits, they also provide services to the School of Christ division, which offers training for missionaries who reach out to over 100 nations.
Back in 2005, Victory Temple was in the path of massive destruction caused by Hurricane Rita. “Hurricane Rita devastated the church, as well as much of our community,” says Pridgen. “The TV and video facilities at the church were completely destroyed. The environment around us was chaotic, but we were all committed to our faith in God and our mission for spreading the Gospel. Step by step we have rebuilt the church and the TV/video studio with long-term expansion goals in mind.”
Pastor Turnage and Pridgen turned to Michael Hobart, a trusted source for collaboration of defining a long-term roadmap for the broadcasting equipment needs of the church. “Michael recommended NVISION routers and router control systems because they have a well established track record for high reliability, stability, scaleability, and responsive customer support,” says Pridgen. “Our strategy is to buy once with future needs in mind, rather than spending additional budget on replacement equipment, recabling, and other additional peripheral costs. Each product we purchase is managed as an investment that needs to provide a high return to the church.”
The $1 million TV studio is a tapeless facility that comprises a three-room suite. Pastor Turnage and a church review team approved the purchase of NVISION’s NV5128 Multi-Format Router and NV9000 Router Control System with NV9640 Control Panels. The programming is currently in SD, but the NV5128 Router has built in capability to easily expand to HD with hot-swappable cards when needed. At this time, the facility is using 32 inputs and 32 outputs, but the router’s scaleable architecture is able to expand to128x128 over time.
The NV9000 Router Control System provides operational consistency across the NVISION router product line as well as for third-party routers. The NV9640 control panel is a 2RU panel package that offers 30 multi-color, reconfigurable LCD display buttons linked to sources, destinations, and functions. “This whole system is wonderful. It’s so user friendly, which ends up saving us a lot of time and frustration,” says Pridgen. “The LED screen is easy to read, and we don’t need to create labels. We now have a very seamless operation throughout the facility, and coming from old patch bays, we are now living a dream.”
Pridgen adds, “Since we are fiscally responsible organization, price of the hardware was definitely a top consideration for us, but the easy and cost-effective upgrade path outweighed the initial cost. Another key consideration is our requirement for direct and responsive customer support, which has already been a good experience for us. NVISION has been an excellent business partner for us.”
Beaumont, Texas recently suffered through Hurricane Ike, but Victory Temple weathered the storm with minimal damage.
Shannon Pridgen, Victory Temple, spridgen30@hotmail.com
Michael Hobart, router sales, Michael.hobart@btshouston.com
NVISION, www.nvision.tv
