In 2015, Ellis Maryland’s life changed course. It wasn’t a burning bush but God began prodding him toward a different path from his job with a mortgage company.
He followed those nudges to a life now filled with church filmmaking, media team leadership and the creation of a community for church creatives in not only his city of Atlanta, but now many others. We learn more about Peace Baptist Church’s Ellis Maryland in this 5 Minutes.
For 11 years, I worked in the mortgage industry, but I began to hear God speaking to me in my quiet time telling me “I got something for you, but I need you to trust me.”
CPM: How did you get into filmmaking?
Maryland: It started in 2015, I have been on a faith journey that has taken me on a path I never would have expected. For 11 years, I worked in the mortgage industry, but I began to hear God speaking to me in my quiet time telling me “I got something for you, but I need you to trust me.” I contemplated and wrestled with this for about four months. So, I decided to quit my job and finish school, putting my complete faith in God to provide for me during this time. And he did just that, paving the way for me as I finished up my degree in the music business.
While volunteering at a church in Greensboro, North Carolina with the praise and worship team, I noticed the media team was struggling. Having some experience in music production, I offered to help with the video and production. I had always been intrigued by video and filmmaking. I had seen some work by my neighbor at the time with his DLSR camera and it sparked my interest even further. I was like, “Oh man, I want to get into this!” As I started doing more work with the church, another pastor took notice and liked what I was doing. Soon after that church hired me! I was at that church for two years as the media director and helped push the pastor’s vision forward in technology and production.
CPM: When did you move to Atlanta for your current role at Peace Baptist Church?
Maryland: It was 2018. The pastor's wife Tabitha Barnette had come across my social media for a while and was impressed with the work that I was doing for my previous church. She asked if I would be interested in relocating and taking on a more permanent role as their media director. I was like, “No.” She said, “Well, I've been seeing all the things that you're doing and we're looking for a media director at our church and love what you're doing.” In the back of my mind, I was like, “Wow, OK.” A few weeks later I ended up meeting pastor Tyrone Barnette, when he was visiting North Carolina, and he shared his desires of where he wanted to take the church. Despite being taken aback, I prayed about it and decided to make the transition to Atlanta in January 2019.
I remember starting out with three volunteers, the church was ready to move forward to an online presence. However, with my leadership and training, I was able to recruit around 15-20 volunteers to help with various aspects of media production, such as ProPresenter, camera operators, lighting directors and photographers. Little did we know my role would become even more crucial during the pandemic. Without this awesome team in place, the church may not have survived the pandemic.
CPM: What prompted the beginning of the Atlanta Church Creatives?
Maryland: Well, Atlanta Church Creatives was born during the pandemic. When the pandemic hit, I had just moved to Atlanta, and I didn’t know too many people outside of my church. So, I found myself constantly traveling back to my hometown to seek inspiration and ideas. However, I wanted to connect with other creatives in Atlanta and create a community of churches that worked together. I was so used to having a pool of friends back in North Carolina that I could turn to and say “Hey, what y'all doing at your church?” But here, there didn’t seem to be that kind of community. I often searched for local groups and meetups but couldn’t find anything.
That’s when the idea of some sort of local church creative community came to me. During the pandemic, I was creating a lot of content on my own and figuring things out, which was a lot of work, but I knew it would have been much easier and more fruitful to have a community where we could bounce ideas off each other and collaborate. Being able to physically go to other churches and see what they were doing or have them come to our church and help, would have made a big difference compared to trying to figure everything out virtually. I had wrestled with moving back to NC because all I was doing was working at the church and spending time at home, but I knew God had orchestrated me to transition to Atlanta. So, I continued to follow His plan.
CPM: What was the first thing that kind of kicked it off?
Maryland: It was around Easter time in 2021, and a co-worker from my church had tagged me in a post from another group showing a behind-the-scenes Easter project. I thought it was so cool! It was a local church in metro Atlanta, so I reached out to them and expressed I would love to connect with them. I scheduled a time I could go over and visit their church. I ended up doing a tour of the church and met their video production team Chris Gray, Seth Butler and Communications Director Amy Varner. I asked Chris and Seth about what the church creatives community looks like in Atlanta and they also felt the same way, they felt isolated.
So, in that same period of time, I met some other guys from all over Atlanta, Jeff Morris, Will Smith and Joseph McBrayer. We went back and forth about the same idea - about feeling isolated and desiring community in this church space. So, we brainstormed and ended up creating the Facebook group, Atlanta Church Creatives. Will created the logo design and I created the Instagram page and we launched it in August 2021. We wanted to build up, support and encourage other creatives. We understood how it's a lot of work and a lot of stress on us. We wanted to create that culture that we were encouraging. We wanted people to know you are not alone in this.
CPM: How did it grow from there?
Maryland: I really believe it was just being consistent that caused the group to grow and us wanting community, understanding and being available. I was always posting, sharing things I think the community would value, sharing what the community was doing, highlighting other creatives and eventually having events. I would hear that this group was so positive, and we wanted to make sure it was a safe place for creatives to share their work and concerns. One of the things we would do is post creative spotlights to highlight and let church creatives know who’s in the city and share a little bit about them. “Hey, we see you. We support you.” We wanted to make sure this was a platform for them. We would do tutorial videos and share projects they were working on. During that period of time, we were also doing small meetups every other month for lunch. The goal was to build a community and it started out with six individuals and now we have about four to five hundred churches represented in the group. It’s pretty amazing to see what God has done and is doing. Now we meet every week for breakfast in different locations in Atlanta.
Looking back on some things we’ve done, we had our first mini-conference at Rock Springs Church in Jan. 2022. Chris, Seth, and Amy are staff members at that church. I remember Chris was so adamant about doing something bigger than the meetups. So, we brainstormed and came up with some ideas for the mini-conference. Rock Springs Church was pivotal and very supportive of the Atlanta Church Creative's first mini-conference We’ve had three mini-conferences so far, the last one we had was in January 2023, Let’s Talk About LIVE PRODUCTION with some amazing speakers from all over Atlanta sharing about creating an online experience and live worship experience. We have another one coming up in June titled Storytelling, Branding and Marketing, and the Women in Production Conference is happening in September. We are super excited about it.
CPM: Now your idea of a local church creatives community is catching on in other cities?
Maryland: A friend from another city asked me about our group through social media and was inspired by the last conference we had Let’s Talk about LIVE PRODUCTION and our Monday breakfast meetups. He said, “Man, I love this community. I’ve been wanting to do this in my city!” And, I said, “Hey, it can happen. It’s a lot of work though, but it can happen! (laughs) You can do it, but it takes dedication.” But once you understand the purpose of it, then you’ll put in the effort.
So, in March 2023, we launched Phoenix Church Creatives. We’re in the process of launching other church creative communities in Odessa, Nashville, Chicago, Raleigh, Orlando, St Louis and Dallas. Hopefully, many more will come. This has really been a blessing. I came to Atlanta not knowing anyone, but now have a community of like-hearted individuals who are really doing life with me and others.
God desires us to be in community. We all need people, giving and receiving support from others. We all need to be pushed just a little bit to say, “This is what I’m experiencing right now. I feel alone.”
CPM: Anything else you’d like to share about the group?
Maryland: So many connections have been made through this community. A few church creatives shared with me saying they feel motivated to be more creative since they got connected with this group. This is what it’s all about. God desires us to be in community. We all need people, giving and receiving support from others. We all need to be pushed just a little bit to say, “This is what I’m experiencing right now. I feel alone.” I had to push myself and reach out to other church creatives and they were willing to help and help others. And as a result, I’ve gained so many friendships. It’s like a family right now. Man, this has been a blessing. So grateful for the awesome team to help push the mission and vision forward and to this awesome community! Atlanta Church Creatives Rock!
Filmmaking, video production and social media are mission-critical elements to communicate the Gospel. Capture brings church techs, creatives, and senior leaders together in community to collaborate on the latest techniques and technologies to help tell God’s story in this rapidly changing world. | CAPTURESUMMIT.COM
Want to learn more about church filmmaking? Join Ellis Maryland and the ATL Church Creatives, along with hundreds of your fellow creatives at Capture Summit '23 - the 7th Annual Content Creation & Filmmaking Summit in Dallas, Aug. 7-9.
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