By Stanley O. Williford
Director of Publications
“A really bad” winter in 1977 helped drive Walter Wright from his home in Germantown, Ohio, to the sunny climate of Southern California.
“I thought, ‘There has to be a better way,’” Walter said of having to deal with the Ohio cold.
The opportunity for a change of both temperature and scenery came when he decided to move to Los Angeles to seek employment in the entertainment industry. He had found that opportunity in an ad in the Los Angeles Times.
The ad said Sony was looking for broadcast technicians to work in the service center.
Walter’s qualifications filled the bill. He had an associate of arts degree in electronics from Sinclair Community College in nearby Dayton and work experience at a local radio station as both a deejay and an engineer. So out to California he flew.
He landed one of the jobs.
“I worked for Sony for 28 years,” said Walter who rose to the level of senior accounts manager for professional services, covering the western region of the U.S.
Many may not know or recognize Walter, because as media manager for both the CCC and Ever Increasing Faith ministries he’s not often out in the congregation. The bulk of his time is spent in the production suite machine room with the equipment that controls all the video and audio. However, he’s not a new face, having been associated with the ministry in some capacity for the past 35 years.
“I started out as contractor,” he said. “I was hired by Mr. Ed Duke (the former CCC media manager) to work as a tape operator for the new Sony equipment the church had just purchased” when it was still in the old sanctuary on Crenshaw Boulevard.
“I was not a member,” he said. “I was a hired technical person. At that time, almost all the technical support was hired. They were slowly phasing out the contractors. I was the last guy standing, so I stayed on.
“I had seen the ministry on TV even before I was hired as a contractor. I had done a demonstration of the equipment for Ed Duke. Dr. Price happened to walk out one day to ask Ed a question. That was the first time I had seen him in person.”
Walter, of course, has seen a lot of the Apostle Price since, especially in places you might not guess. One of his most memorable moments came when he and others accompanied the Apostle to several African nations.
“I traveled with Apostle to Africa in 2010 to Tanzania, Namibia, South Africa (both Cape Town and Johannesburg) and Ghana,” he said.
“The thing that was most striking about those trips was the numbers of people that came out to see the Apostle,” he said. “There were huge crowds, and I remember the enthusiasm they had to hear and see him. Sometimes we don’t know the value, the treasure, we have in our apostle.”
On the other hand, another big event for him came “when Pastor Fred took over.”
“He’s not a stamped-out version of the Apostle. He’s his own version. He’s more technical, and he eats it [the technical portion] up. Things we’re doing in the FaithDome, the upgrades, are really important to him.”
“I’m the chief engineer on Sundays,” said Walter, which means that he arrives at the sanctuary around 6:30 a.m., long before most of the congregation has gotten out of bed.
“I turn all the equipment on and do the routing of signals – video and audio. Then I upload videos and announcement slides that are going to be played that Sunday into the video servers that play out to the Faithvision screens and the online live streams. Next, I have a meeting with all the volunteers around 8:30 to let them know the order service. When we’ve gone over all the technical issues, we have prayer. After that, we break and go to our positions.
“I have a great staff of people to work with here,” he said. “It makes my job so much easier. As a manager you hope to find people that have the dedication and the willingness to serve, and I have that right now. On Sundays I deal with 25 to 28 people that make the broadcast and the live-stream possible.”
And after service, while most of the congregation is either dining at home or at a favorite restaurant, Walter still has an hour or so of work to finish.
“Walter has been working with and for Crenshaw Christian Center and Ever Increasing Faith Ministries in a variety of capacities,” said A. Michael Evans, vice president of marketing. “His staff thinks very highly of his input and his leadership. I find him a valuable asset to the marketing division, of which his department, media, is a large part.”
Walter’s wife, Lynn, works in a related field. She is a former producer for BET, the Black Entertainment Network, but now works as a free-lancer. They have been married 22 years. Walter has two children, a daughter, Shannon, who lives in Ohio, and a son, Shane, who lives in Northern California.
Whether Walter is seen or unseen, when it comes to the various EIF broadcasts of CCC events, he is the man behind the scene.
