“ I say that because what it looks like for us , is probably different than what it looks like for the church down the street ,” he says . “ Is it just a live stream ? Are there social aspects to this ? That ’ s when it really blew up .” True to form , in the past five years , weekly online attendance has grown from zero to 400 . Last year , the church reached more than 4.5 million people with its online offerings . This translates to more than 75 months of consumed content in 2024 — a figure that exceeds the church ’ s goal 25 times over . “ I ’ m not talking about ‘ likes ’ on a photo ; we don ’ t even count that ,” Watkins explains . “ It ’ s also not including the live stream ; I ’ m talking about content that ’ s been consumed , whether that ’ s a Reel on Instagram , a YouTube video after the fact — basically , everything that ’ s not ‘ live ’ but that we can track .”
Back-end production needs take center stage With the amount of technology being added to meet rapidly growing content production needs , storage was becoming a real issue at Without Walls . Up to that point , Watkins and his team would buy hard drive after hard drive — about 75 in all — at hundreds of dollars apiece . The
complications associated with the abundance of equipment , spread out over multiple spaces , came to a head when Pastor Dutton was preparing to revive and revise a message from a few years prior . He asked the production team for that footage . “ I had to say , ‘ Pastor-in-Law , we don ’ t have that content ,’” Watkins admits . That ’ s because the video which the pastor was looking for was hosted on Vimeo — an account the church canceled when it moved to other platforms . Effectively , the footage had disappeared . It was a tough , but pivotal conversation . “ Pastor said , ‘ You ’ re telling me that everything from ‘ X ’ date and prior is gone ?’ And I admitted , ‘ Yeah , that ’ s kind of where we are ,’” Watkins recalls . “ It wasn ’ t anyone ’ s fault ; but again , we knew nothing other than that we needed to keep up with all this stuff . That ’ s why we had all these hard drives everywhere .” It was decided : this couldn ’ t happen again . The team invested in network-attached storage ( NAS ) devices . “ NAS is a storage space that ’ s on site — kind of like a really large hard drive that multiple people can access ,” Watkins explains . “ But there were hurdles .” Namely , it was clunky — not always reliable ; plus , accessibility proved tricky . Still , the team was moving fast and made it work for several years .
Fast-forward to eight months ago , when … A much better solution emerged . On that day , the RED Digital Cinema team was onsite at Without Walls Church doing a ‘ demo day .’ The church uses several of the provider ’ s cameras ; however , the event also debuted and demonstrated new , related products . Church production and worship teams from the community were invited to come by , put their hands on the products , see the latest and greatest functions in action , and have a representative from RED walk them through it all . The DigitalGlue team was one of the providers on hand that day , demonstrating their proprietary managed storage solution , creative . space . “ I ’ ll be honest , I ’ d never heard of them ,” Watkins says . “ But throughout the demo day , people kept telling me to check them out .” After spending an hour talking with one of the creative . space experts , Watkins was intrigued by the product and impressed with the gentleman ’ s depth of knowledge about the storage solution . A few weeks later , a larger conversation took place . “ We ’ re not a 5,000-member church ; we ’ re around the 1,500-member mark — more of a mid-size church ,” Watkins points out . “ So , it wasn ’ t about what creative . space could do , because that was clear ; the conversation came back around to what it could do for us . We wanted to know if it would be a good fit for our ministry .” That talk convinced Watkins that Without Walls needed this solution in a big way . He took it to the board , and they acknowledged the necessity of creative . space for the production team .
Getting to work Watkins expected a steep , intensive learning curve with creative . space . “ We came from the Box drive world , which , as far as storage solutions go , is the typical one that everyone uses ,” he explains . “ It was so disorganized ; access management was all over the place .” He prepared his team to climb that short , steep hill with him , with the promise that everything would be better — and easier — on the other side . Together , they set aside three intensive days to accommodate every step , from set-up to training . In the end , they only needed half that time . “ The creative . space team ’ s organization and all the pre-install work they did far exceeded my expectations ,” Watkins explains . “ There was plenty of time and plenty of communication spent to make sure our infrastructure and workflow were aligned before the hardware was even sent to the church . “ I would say that ’ s the brunt of the work ,” he adds . “ Sure , it takes time to learn something new , but — in this case — it wasn ’ t difficult .” Even better , the DigitalGlue team was there every step of the way , providing guidance on network flow , hardware placement , power consumption , and more . “ They were even able to tell us what temperature our rooms needed to be ,” Watkins says . In Arizona , this is an essential consideration ; Without Walls doesn ’ t even have air-conditioning in some of the upstairs rooms used only for racked equipment storage . “ It got that detailed ,” Watkins recalls . “ They had an answer for everything . And if they didn ’ t , they would find it .” Ultimately , he says , he was “ so far off the mark ” when it came to the learning curve : “ Basically , there wasn ’ t one . It was that easy . We have people on our staff who are really , really knowledgeable . They catch on
14 CHURCH EXECUTIVE | FEBRUARY 2025