Follow me and I will make you...producers of men

Follow me and I will make you fishers of men. These words were spoken to men who were businessmen and skilled professionals. They had been brought up and trained in a particular trade. These words were used to help me understand the calling on my life in a brand new way. One of the songs God gave us when we moved to Pennsylvania is called “A Brand New Move of God.” I believe we are walking in that right now.

For years I have lived with an internal conflict regarding the calling to be a producer and the calling to be a pastor in a godless generation. I had always pursued a career in TV and radio production because God had called me to that field. For 17 years, that’s exactly what I did in music, radio and television. It was exactly what He told me and showed me. In my insecurity, always in the back of my mind, I was questioning my true skills and abilities, asking, do I really have what it takes to be successful in this arena?

The Lord blessed me to become an award winning TV producer in 1999. Even though it was only a local (St. Louis) public access cable TV station, the judges were imported from major network TV affiliates and they determined my work to be the best Inspirational and Religious broadcast for that year. The award did a lot for me personally especially since, at that time, we had sub par recording equipment, poor lighting, inferior cameras and shaky audio. Combine that with mostly teenaged volunteers working at almost every single station and you have a better understanding of the level of post production work I had to put into the broadcast to edit camera shots and adjust the fluctuating audio to piece together industry-standard material for a weekly 30 minute broadcast on two stations.

Yet, in the midst of producing, God started sending words and prophecies about me becoming a pastor, a shepherd, a prophet and even hints of the apostolic. Thus, the conflict began in my heart. There had never been any desire or hint of a move in that direction before. I starting protesting to God, “Hey, you told me I was a producer; where did this pastor talk come from?”

Now fast forward into 2006, where I found myself in Pennsylvania, answering a phone call from the Press Secretary for the Pennsylvania Department of Education, giving me an opportunity to work there. Part of my interview process involved meeting the Governor’s Communications Director. I still recall walking up the steps of the State Capitol asking myself, ”How did I end up here?”

Needless to say, I was very thankful to do well in the interviews and I developed even more confidence when I was thrown into the fire from day one. I discovered that I could handle the pace and the workload. God allowed me to see that I was indeed, a multi-media producer. It wasn’t just church-world success.

I’ve seen a lot people who are very successful in the church, but they fall miserably in the secular environment because they really don’t have the skills to make it outside of the church. God showed me that I was exactly what He said I was. A producer is a producer, no matter what environment they are assigned to work in. Hear me closely. You are exactly who and what God says you are.

After all this training and experience was established to solidify that I really am a producer, why would God start messing up everything? That’s what He did to a few fishermen one day. He acknowledged that they were fishermen, but he opened up a whole new world by telling them that if they followed Him, He would let them continue to work in the ways that brought them great fulfillment, but He would change their purpose. They would still go fishing everyday, but they would fish for men instead.

My wife was encouraging me one night following a very successful Friday evening meeting with the church family. She had watched me struggle with the producer versus pastor conflict for many years. As she spoke into my life about the will of God, a revelation suddenly exploded inside of me. Just like the fishermen were being transformed into fishers of men, the producer of multi-media was being transformed into a producer of lives.

Suddenly, everything came together in my understanding. That year (1999) of producing an award-winning product despite inferior equipment, means something more to me now. As a producer of lives, I know that you don’t have to have it all together for God to make something awesome out of a church.

Urban Life Church is an assembly of the forsaken, forgotten and fallen. Symbolically and spiritually, we don’t have good lighting. Our emotional recording equipment is erratic. Our relational material is not up to standards, but as the producer of this presentation to the Lord, God has given me years and years of practical experience in how to work carefully, slowly, methodically and patiently with every element that you have in hand; to get the best out of every camera shot, sound byte and special effect to produce an award winning product.

However,the award and reward is from our Lord as He says, “Good job. That’s what I wanted to hear come forth out of that family. That’s what I wanted to see come forth out this church.”

I felt impressed that the Lord was saying to me, “I made you a producer because I put within you the ability to take whatever I put in your hands and make something special out of it. That’s why you don’t just see people where they are now, but you see what I see in them.”

As pastors we want this to be a core value expressed though all of us at Urban Life Church: the ability to look beyond the faults of others and see what God sees in them.

The Lord reminded me how I used to spend hours mixing and re-mixing one section of music, over and over again, to get the best possible interpretation out of a song. Now as producers of lives, we can sit down and mix the various sounds in a person’s life so that we hear the song of the Lord come forth. I recall how I would lower the volume on some instruments while at the same time increasing the volume of a particular vocal part. Now I see how it’s the same in producing lives. The volume of abandonment, divorce, death and grief are lowered. They’re not eliminated completely from the music, because they are a part of the life of a person. But now, they will be settled into the chords of one’s heart while other sounds become the solo instruments. Now grace, peace, faith, hope and purpose take the leading parts and their notes are intertwined to make a new melody.

Similarly, like in a video production, the images are changed in a person’s personal music video as doubt, destruction, devastation and despair become deleted scenes that no longer get replayed. We will manage to get crystal clear images in spite of the fact that the original shots were made in poor dim settings. Most who come to Urban Life come from places where the Word of God was taught in cloudiness or complete darkness. Very little was understood and even less was properly interpreted. It’s a miracle, beyond description, to develop such clarity out of so much that was out of focus.

The main job of the producer is to assemble the people and resources to complete a project. Every person from the technicians to the on-screen actors or the behind the microphone talent, are assembled for a single cause. From that definition alone, I realize and accept the fact that we are indeed producer-pastors.

We will continue to write and produce songs and books personally, but nothing will be more important than the lives we are honored to produce by the skill and gifting of the Holy Spirit.

As Paul wrote in 1st Corinthians 3:2, "You are our letters, written in our hearts, read and known by all men.”