I will attempt to do this again. I continued to search for a solution to the problem above and finally found what I was looking for, here is the solution in case anyone else gets stumped in this situation:

    Range("AA17:AB19").Select
        ActiveSheet.Shapes.AddChart.Select
        ActiveChart.ApplyChartTemplate ("Full Path\Template.crtx")
        ActiveChart.SetSourceData Source:=ActiveSheet.Range("$AA$17:$AB$19")
The solution was to let it know I was trying to apply a template, give it the full path to the template and finally to get the active sheet worked on, tell it to use the 'active sheet'.