Red Rocks Church, Austin, Texas
Red Rocks Church began in the back of a remote, run-down theme park in Golden, Colorado, back in 2005. Over the past 16 years, it has grown to be a multi-campus church with locations throughout Colorado and most recently, Austin, Texas.
In Austin, Red Rocks was operating in a setup-and-teardown location and found itself outgrowing its space really quickly. That’s when lead Pastor Doug Wekenman notes something of a “miracle story” happening when they found a building at 7625 N. Interstate 35.
“We were at the right place at the right time,” he says. “We were led to a building that a church used to be in. They sold it to a nonprofit, and we ran into the nonprofit and talked to them about what it would look like for us to pay some rent and come in and make it our 'temporary' permanent home.”
Thanks to the deal, signed in January of 2020, Red Rocks Church no longer has to do setup and teardown each week.
“It was originally built as a movie theater, then it became a sporting goods store, but then a church moved in around 10-15 years ago, so they outfitted it as far as all the walls and rooms go for a church,” Wekenman says. “We realized quickly, we would get to have some fun and get creative and really make this place our home.”
Kids' ministry space and elbow grease
Thankfully, there was already an entire wing of rooms for kids’ ministry, and the auditorium was the perfect size for what they needed. Very few architectural changes were required for the renovation. Red Rocks staff reports that it relied on the most amazing team of volunteers and an incredible contractor from Waco named Paul Kocel to get the church polished and ready for service, calling it "a family effort." The volunteers helped with lights, screens, painting, cleaning, and everything they could.
“We did some cosmetic stuff with paint and cleaning and getting stains out of carpet and all that stuff and then we really went for it with all the AVL stuff,” Wekenman. “The only thing we hired a company to do was paint our ceiling tiles black because they were white before.”
That’s where John Clark, production ministry lead at Red Rocks Church, came in.
Retrofit and systems integration
“Out in Denver, we use a company called Summit Integrated Systems, and they had built for us a set-up, tear-down rig for an evergreen campus in Colorado. And when we launched Austin, we just sent that rig out and tweaked it for the first location. [Then] when we moved into this one, it’s become this really cool conglomeration retrofit for us here,” Clark says.
Red Rocks Church has a top-of-the-line AV system in place to help techs deliver online and in-person services with excellence. Their streaming, staff reports, is handled by Resi.
So, between that, purchasing some new things, including a sound system, and getting some hand-me-downs from the original Red Rocks campus in Golden, Colorado—items such as screens, projectors, and chairs—the new church was ready to open in a short time.
“It’s a fun hybrid, and it’s been really working, which has been awesome,” Clark says. “Since we have multiple campuses, we have gear floating around, and so we’re always making tweaks and adjustments and sending gear down there, or changing things—and it’s been really fun to outfit it and be creative with gear that we’ve already used.”
Chin up and forge ahead
The first service was held on March 1, 2020, and after one more week, everything shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We finally had this amazing situation and now we couldn’t use it,” Wekenman says. “But on the other side of that is if we didn’t have a space that had some permanence to it, we would be doing something on a camera in my kitchen all throughout COVID to talk to our church. And now we actually had a room that we could come in and, in an ideal way, get our online campus going in Austin, which was really cool.”
Red Rocks Church devoted its time to get serious about its presentations online, and switched gears to make sure they had a first-class system in place.
“We filmed three full online services in one night when Austin was going to go into quarantine.”
Doug Wekenman, Pastor, Red Rocks Church, Austin, Texas
“We were already thinking ahead about adding some cameras in here, and I wasn’t planning on doing it that quick. But it was easy and we upgraded and added to our cameras to cater to online,” Clark says, noting he chose the Canon C200, which was what was found to be successful in Denver.
“We filmed three full online services in one night when Austin was going to go into quarantine,” Wekenman says. “Our volunteers rallied and in less than 24 hours we got these done just in time.”
The church remained empty for a while, then slowly allowed people in for in-person services. By last fall, it opened its doors to a limited number of people. But this summer, it has seen similar numbers to what those first two services looked like pre-COVID.
“In a lot of ways, I think we are more ready for it now,” Wekenman says. “Things happened fast for us in the beginning, and this gave us a chance for systems in the church and production purposes to be fully ready.”
AV insight and quick maneuvers
Today, Red Rocks Church has a top-of-the-line AV system in place that helps them in both online and in-person services. The streaming is all handled by Resi.
Clark explains that there’s an Allen & Heath Avantis console for the front of the house, a Blackmagic video switcher (ATEM), a Jands Vista S3 console, Chauvet lights, and Elation WW2 blinders.
The Red Rocks tech team relies on an Allen & Heath Avantis console for the front of the house, a Blackmagic ATEM video switcher, a Jands Vista S3 lighting console, and fixtures from Chauvet and Elation.
Wekenman adds that for houselights, the church acquired some Rope Edison Bulb strings, a throwback to the roots of the early days of Red Rocks.
“It actually has an Austin vibe to it, so we turn the fluorescents off all day Sunday and use the ropes as the houselights,” he says. “It’s really inexpensive, too.”
A vision for inclusion
Red Rocks Church has a vision statement that reads, “We exist to make heaven more crowded,” based out of Luke Chapter 15, the story of the prodigal son.
Red Rocks' mission: make heaven more crowded.
“We’re building a front porch in the middle of Austin to welcome home prodigals,” Wekenman says. “When we were planning and praying about where to plant this thing, it wasn’t originally supposed to be Austin. But God has changed all those details in the process. He led us to Austin—and it seems like it’s the main hub for the prodigals of the Bible Belt. We are here to be a light and welcome home as many people as possible.”
