Visible School sets sights on growth at 10-year point

Battle Victorious

Around this time every year, Christians around the world celebrate the humble birth of Jesus Christ in a lowly Bethlehem manger.

Ken Steorts, founder and president of the Visible School: Music and Worship Arts College, can imagine how He must have felt. Though the devout Christian would never compare himself to the Messiah, he knows a thing or two about humble beginnings.

Battle Victorious

Tonight's free concert will feature school founder Ken Steorts, duo Battle Victorious, students and faculty.

In 2000, Steorts left Skillet, the hugely popular Christian rock band he had helped form four years earlier in Memphis, to start a Christian music college. Steorts, who based his vision for the school on a similar institution he had seen in England, admits he didn't know the first thing about starting a school.

"It was a metal frame building in Lakeland. I always called it the ugliest building in Lakeland because it had been there forever," says Steorts of the former catfish restaurant that served as the school's home until earlier this year. "(Getting started) was a lot more than we thought it was going to be, from getting accreditation to getting light bulbs, but we had a dedicated group of people who believed that this option should exist for Christian students who are trying to be great musicians and also bring their world view to bear on their craft."

Now as the Visible School enters its 10th and potentially biggest year, the staff, faculty, students, and alumni are amping up to celebrate the season and how far they've come tonight with the second annual "Rock 'n' Roll Christmas Show" at the Lifelink Church on South Cooper in Midtown.

The free concert will feature performances by Steorts and the duo Battle Victorious, themselves recent Visible School graduates, as well as current students in the band the Appleyard, and new faculty member (and former music writer for The Commercial Appeal) William Lee Ellis. The concert will be preceded by an open house where people can learn more about the school.

"It's a good hour-and-a-half where there's a lot of tradition and even a Christmas story reading, so it's a family-fun time," says Steorts, who plans on tearing off his own emo version of "Silent Night" among other selections. "I think the show demonstrates how the school is not only focused on the Christian message but also that this is a college of musicians and it's a fun time."

Tonight's concert is part of a new, higher profile the Visible School has assumed in the past year as it transitions from its old suburban Lakeland campus to a new facility in downtown Memphis. This semester, the school and its about 100 students moved into Lifelink Church, which recently took over the old Galloway United Methodist Church building in the Cooper-Young neighborhood, famous for being the site of Johnny Cash's first performance.

By next summer, however, Steorts plans to move to a new downtown campus that includes the wedge-shaped former bank building at 200 Madison and nearby dorm space at 670 Madison. When the $6 million refurbishing project is completed, Visible School students will enjoy new resources such as a state-of-the-art auditorium, recording studio, eight classrooms, five rehearsal rooms, 10 personal practice rooms, a library, and dorm space for 72 students.

"It'll be the first time we're in a facility designed for what we do, actually designed for sound," says Steorts.

The school is in the middle of a $3 million capital campaign for the new facility, which will be matched by an anonymous donor to make up the project's total $6 million price tag. So far, Steorts says, the school has raised about $1 million.

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Visible School's Rock 'n' Roll Christmas Show

7 p.m. Friday at Lifeline Church, 1015 S. Cooper Ave. Admission: Free. For more information, visit visibleschool.com.

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