SOUTHLAKE, TEXAS—When Gateway Church, located in this Ft. Worth suburb, began holding worship services in 2000, we only had 180 in attendance; however, that number has swelled a decade later to more than 20,000 weekend worshippers.
The EVS server control system installed at Gateway Church To accommodate this growth, we broke ground on our Southlake Campus during our third year of ministry. This was followed in 2007 with a new campus in another Ft. Worth suburb, North Richland Hills. We expanded again last year with the addition of a new church extension campus in Frisco, Texas, a Dallas suburb.
NEW PRODUCTION FACILITY
Due to such a large number of weekly worshippers, we found it necessary to provide recorded video messages from our pastors. These are produced at the new primary campus here in Southlake. This facility encompasses more than 200,000 square feet, and includes a 4,000 seat sanctuary and a brand new television studio. This facility typically operates from 6:15 a.m. to 10 p.m. with member and volunteer staffing. We're now able to accommodate more than 600 events each month.
We wanted to equip the facility with the best available technology, and as part of our package, we chose EVS for our audio and video recording equipment, including two six-channel XT2 servers and one XT production server that's controlled by an EVS IP Director content production management suite. This allows us to perform ingest control, metadata management, on-the-fly editing, and playout scheduling.
In order to accommodate such large congregations, the recorded content we produce is projected on three big screens set up on stage, and is also transmitted to our other two campuses.
The ministers' messages are initially recorded on our EVS XT production server. For capturing the action in a typical fast-paced musical number or sermon, we use from eight to 10 different camera angles, covering both the stage and the audience.
ENHANCED PRODUCTIVITY
Our EVS equipment allows us multitask in edit suites which are located about a mile from the main facility. Once the montage is complete, videos are transferred through a Gigabit Ethernet connection to EVS servers via XT access.
We have been transmitting our sermons to our satellite campuses for about four years. Before acquiring our EVS gear, we tried out several other products, but were disappointed due to high failure rates. Our EVS equipment has proven to be reliable, simple to use and—as we rely heavily on volunteers—an easy learning curve. We found that operations are largely intuitive and training takes only a short time. The IP Director's drag-and-drop interface is very easy to learn and volunteers can master it very quickly.
Since we made the move to EVS we've become more productive in streamlining content and, in the long run, this saves us time money. Our EVS system allows just two staff members or volunteers to handle five events simultaneously.
We've been using our EVS gear for four years now without a single failure. The company's products are really rock solid.
David Leuschner has served as the executive director of technological arts at Gateway Church since 2005. He may be contacted at david.leuschner@gatewaystaff.com.
For additional information, contact EVS at 973 575 7811 or visit www.evs.tv.
