House of Worship (HOW) Awards

The House of Worship (HOW) Awards provided churches across the nation the opportunity to be recognized for their excellence in church growth, management and production. The awards were divided into two primary categories, worship facilities and audio-visual production for church services. Multiple awards in a category were available based on church size.

2006 HOW Award Winners Announced!

Facilities Categories

Category: Best Church Design - New Construction Project

Countryside Community Church	Spearfish, SD
	Countryside Community Church just completed construction of its first facility with the goal of being a 7-day-a-week community outreach facility. Through an intensive design review process the facility was designed and constructed to meet that goal. Their exposure in the community has increased dramatically since opening on Labor Day weekend.

River Pointe Community Church	Richmond, TX
	The new 32,000-sf worship center, administrative building, bookstore and cafe creates a human-scaled village for the 600-family congregation. Unique features include a large baptismal overflowing into a stream and a two-acre pond within grove of trees for outdoor gatherings. Kirksey designers utilized a blend of natural materials, complemented with more modern materials and parishioner donations.

Park Cities Baptist Church: Community Life Center	Dallas, TX
	Park Cities Baptist Church’s new Community Life Center was designed to fulfill the church’s mission of bringing Christ into the community. The three-story, 70,000 SF building houses a 1,200 seat Great Hall, 17-room preschool, and youth education/gathering space. The project also includes a 3-level, 315,000 SF subterranean parking garage.

Category: Best Church Design - Expansion Project

Mountain Christian Church	Joppa, MD
	Mountain Christian Church's New Life Center is an excellent example of a true multi-purpose facility without compromise. With excellent sounds, lighting and acoustics, it provides a worshipful and welcoming environment for weekend services. Yet the hardwood flooring and open design make it great for sporting events and activities as well.

Category: Best Church Design - Renovation Project

Highland Park Presbyterian Church: Bell Youth Center	Dallas, TX
	Highland Park Presbyterian Church renovated its basement into a youth center for junior high and high school students to worship and play. The center contains gathering space with flatscreen televisions, karaoke stage, snack bar, video gaming consoles, meeting space with stage and sound booth, and a second multi-purpose room.

Lakewood Church	Houston, TX
	The renovation of the Houston Compaq Center, a 20,000-seat basketball arena, into a 16,000-seat worship center was a great undertaking. Morris Artitects created a brillant design for the building while Bill Klages served as the lighting consultant, Audio Analyst designed the sound, and Russ Berger designed the media facility.

Category: Best Construction Management - New Construction Project

First Baptist Dallas: Churchworx, Inc.	Dallas, TX
	Churchworx, Inc demonstrated incredible expertise in Owner's Representation for the construction of The Criswell Center with a professional attitute, attention to detail, accoutnability and coordination. Their hands on, day to day approach to project management allowed for excellent communication and teamwork between all parties involved in the project.

Turner Chapel AME Church	Marietta, GA
	Turner Chapel AME Church is a 118,500 square foot, three-story worship center housing a new 3,000 seat sanctuary, 300 seat chapel, educational spaces, fellowship hall and administrative space. The multi-colored masonry exterior rises as high as ninety feet with eighty foot curtain wall glass systems.

Category: Best Operations and Maintenance

Prestonwood Baptist Church	Plano, TX
	For the Facility Services Department at Prestonwood Baptist Church, attaining the highest level of excellence means employing people with skills and a sense of calling to the church.

Category: Best Green Church

Prestonwood Baptist Church	Plano, TX
	Prestonwood Baptist Church is participating in an innovative energy conservation program that has helped the church make significant progress in cost avoidance savings of about $80,000 in just two months.

Category: Best Special Project

Faith Baptist Tabernacle	Jamestown, TN
	The church set out to design a room for youth that would promote excitement and stability. This room, which has been named “Crosswalk” has incorporated lots of multimedia to enhance the ministry of worship, preaching, and discipleship. This project is a teenager’s and youth pastor’s dream come true.

Mobberly Baptist Church: Elevation (Fitzpatrick Butler Architects)	Longview, TX
	Mobberly Baptist Church, Fitzpatrick-Butler Architects, and RLM General Contractors combined to develop one of the nation’s most unique youth buildings: Elevation. Designed as a place where youth would want to “hang out,” it provides a variety of environments and activities where relationships can be built – vertically and horizontally!

Best Overall Building Project

Highland Park Presbyterian Church: Bell Youth Center	Dallas, TX
	Highland Park Presbyterian Church renovated its basement into a youth center for junior high and high school students to worship and play. The center contains gathering space with flatscreen televisions, karaoke stage, snack bar, video gaming consoles, meeting space with stage and sound booth, and a second multi-purpose room.

Audio-Visual Categories

Category: Above & Beyond

Brent Johnson is the hardest working person at our church, always putting in extra hours to make every element of media as creative and excellent as possible. We have dozens of events throughout the week and special events all the time for which he administrates the media needs. There is hardly ever a limitation felt by the people who plan special events as Brent always goes the extra mile to ensure each event is the best it can be.

Category: Best Design, Implementation and Operation - Audio Equipment/System

RockRidge Canyon, A Young Life Canada Property	Princeton, BC
	Rockridge Canyon Camp needed a reliable, easy-to-use, hi-fi sounding system in an intimate setting. We chose vendors based on their reliability, quality, and friendliness to churches. We chose equipment that teenagers with little audio experience could run. The sound system allowed teens to have the best times of their lives.

Sunset Christian Center	Rocklin, CA
	Sunset Christian Center in Rocklin, California recently completed a system upgrade project involving a relocation of the mixing position from a level above the main floor to a sound booth off the center aise. Included in the upgrade is a new console plus several infrastructure improvements.

First Baptist Church of Springdale: MediaMerge	Springdale, AR
	MediaMerge designed, implemented, and installed a flexible, user-friendly, and high performance audio system with extensive routing, processing, and multichannel playback capability for our Kidz Theatre at the First Baptist Church of Springdale. We remain impressed to this day with the system’s capabilities, performance, and MediaMerge’s customer support.

Category: Best Design, Implementation and Operation - Video Equipment/System

RockRidge Canyon, A Young Life Canada Property	Princeton, BC
	Rockridge Canyon Camp needed to have a reliable, easy-to-use, video system in an intimate setting. We created a video system that allows for preview monitoring and seamless switching to accommodate last minute changes. The reliability of this video system comes from having two projectors, switchers, cameras, and DVD players.

Dove Christian Center: Media Team	Rapid City, SD
	The purpose of the Dove Christian Video project is to promote the cause of Christ to the Black Hills Region, not only for our church but for other churches. We are using technology to teach, inform and distribute the “Good News" as far and wide as we can. Our equipment is extremely portable and has been used very effectively inside and outside the church.

First United Methodist Church	Wichita, KS
	A desire to bring projection and IMAG capabilities to an architecturally unique Sanctuary, led First United Methodist Church of Wichita, Kansas to bring production of their live televised worship service in-house, and to design and install a state of the art live television production facility in the church.

First Baptist Church of Springdale: MediaMerge	Springdale, AR
	MediaMerge designed, implemented, and installed a flexible, user-friendly, cost-effective and high-performance video system with extensive routing, true HD from source to presentation for our Kidz Theatre at the First Baptist Church of Springdale. We are still impressed with the performance of the system and with MediaMerge's customer support.

Category: Best Tech Director

God has blessed Terry Malone with a great combination of technical expertise, people skills, and a desire to honor God by measuring everything he does against a standard of excellence. He has the unique ability to guide volunteers to where they take their responsibility very seriously and balance high production expectations with an environment where people feel comfortable to learn new skills.

Category: Best Technical Production Team

Olivet Baptist Church Ministries Production is the true example of a ministry dedicated to the successful delivery of the word of God to the masses. This volunteer team consists of an Executive Producer, Producer, Creative Consultant, Technical Engineer, Audio Engineer, Artistic Editor, Website Administrator, and Radio Engineer all working together to spread the gospel of Christ.

The FOTW Technical Production Team is comprised of dedicated and talented individuals who not only excel in the area of Audio, Video, Lighting, Staging & Broadcast A/V, but also have a true commitment to bring their individual gifts and talents to form a team in order to make a difference in peoples lives by telling the timeless, life-changing Gospel message in new, fresh and creative ways.

Category: Most Innovative Production

A multi-media presentation of the Easter story integrating audio, lighting, video and live performers. Bringing it all together into one scene utilizing 2 video projectors, 2 screens (12 X 12, and 30 X 20), live performances and a 30 member choir. Transporting the audience from 2006 to 1st century Jerusalem.

One of the major advances that really placed the light on the Olivet Baptist Church media ministry was a community outreach production that was performed by the Drama Ministry. And what a fantastic production it was! But not only that, what made this production stand out was what came out of it, including new technologies that can be used in future productions.

The Dallas Christmas Festival at Prestonwood Baptist Church has been called A Christmas pageant that is pure “Texas-sized” by the Los Angeles Times. And frankly, it is pretty big – in both scope and anntendance.

WFX extends a warm thank you to all of our entrants and congratulates the winners of the WFX 2006 House of Worship (HOW) Awards!