The First End to my Filmmaking Career

Growing up, my dad would ask us three questions almost every day – have you made your bed, brushed your teeth, had your quiet time? These things were drilled into us. A quiet time is a time by yourself when you read your Bible and pray. At best, it is a practice that is very helpful for the Christian life. At worst, it becomes a rote religious duty. Oftentimes, it’s something in between. 

Nowadays, instead of asking my kids if they have had their quiet time, I ask them if they have had time with the Lord. This keeps it focused on the purpose instead a task. It also doesn’t imply that once you’ve had your quiet time, that task is done and that’s your time with God for the day. Time with God should be constant and you can have multiple times alone with Him in a day.

For me, although it was a discipline, I found quiet times to be helpful in bringing my focus back on what was important and in giving me wisdom for how to live. As I began to obsess more and more on music, God began to challenge me that I was spending more time doing that than spending time with Him. He began to ask me for more of my time.

So I made it a rule that I could not do anything else during the week (besides school and sleep) for longer than I spent time alone with God. My quiet times were usually about 30 minutes a day, which added up to 3 1/2 hours per week – which is not a whole lot of time to listen to music all week. So I decided to beef up my time with God by spending three extra hours on Sundays alone with Him. 

I would climb up the side of the hill that overlooked the camp, find a good solid rocky spot and sit to read my Bible, meditate (on what I had read) and pray. Part of my motivation was so I could have more time to do other stuff but it did have a great impact on my spiritual life as well. It was during those times that I really felt like God solidified His call for me to make films.

Don Stephens knew about my desire to be a filmmaker. One day the ship was given a consumer video camera that he decided to let me use. In those days, video cameras were not the ubiquitous thing that they are now. It fact, they had only just come out in the past year or two and were still very expensive.

Things weren’t digital then. Cameras had something called tubes inside that converted the picture to an electrical signal so it could be recorded on a tape. The tubes were very sensitive. You could not point the camera at a light for very long because it would burn a permanent image on the tube. You could never point it at the sun. 

I was so honored and excited to use the camera. I got it at the camp, read the instruction (yes, I’m one of those), pulled it out, turned it on, recorded a little, then noticed a big black spot covering most of the screen. I turned it off and back on and it was still there. I began to get a sinking feeling. I tapped and shook it a little - no change.

I checked all through the manual and realized that the tube had been damaged. I felt sick. Here was this brand-new, expensive camera and it was broken in the first day, the first hour. I hadn’t pointed it at any strong light source. It was just a defect but I didn’t know if Don would believe me. 

Don is a very gracious man. I don’t know if he believed me or not but he acted like he did. I advised him that it needed to be turned in for a warranty repair but the person who had given it to the ship had not given the receipt. So it sat, useless. My first opportunity to start my filmmaking career was brought to a screeching halt.


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