Friends and Family,
When I graduated from Taylor University this past May, the commencement speaker structured his talk around the John Lennon quote, “Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.”
How true this is.
Plan A:
For most of the past year, my plan for this next year was to move to LA, attend USC film school, and get a job in the film industry upon completing graduate school.
While this plan seemed to make the most sense to me, I deep down had a desire to take a temporary break from school and do some form of activity for a couple years that involved world travel, Christian ministry, and film work. Where would I find such an opportunity? I had no idea, so I continued to plan on going to film school.
Plan B:
Upon learning that I would not be attending film school this coming year, I decided in June that I would stay in North Dakota for the next couple years and start up my own film production company. It seemed that it would be the perfect way for me to build a portfolio and gain a ton of the filmmaking experience that I needed. And so I completed a wedding video in June, started work on some commercials in July, and made a documentary of my trip to China in August.
Things were looking promising for this company. I had a few unsolicited clients, doors were opening for me to travel abroad and do three international documentaries, and just recently, I began meeting with some businessmen in town to learn the logistical steps involved in running a profitable company.
What happened despite these plans:
However, last Thursday I got a call from the executive director of the International Mission of the Evangelical Free Church of America (EFCA) in Minneapolis. He was the person who had brought me on board to do the three international documentaries this coming year, and at the time the call came, plan B was chugging along quite well. Alas, I figured our conversation would just involve talking through the details of doing a few projects for the EFCA through my company.
However this was not the case. To my great surprise, he offered me a full-time job as the EFCA staff videographer for the next 15 months. I will thus move to Minneapolis to start up in October, and while there, I will work on projects ranging from historical documentaries to MTV-paced promo videos aimed at high school students – from projects that take me all over the world to projects created completely on my computer.
As I prepare for this work, and as I look at the whole story of how this opportunity came up while I was making other plans, I really am floored at how God provided the perfect job for me even though I was looking in other directions.
Consider this:
1. Deep down, I wanted to be involved in a ministry this next year:
The Evangelical Free Church of America (EFCA) is the parent organization of 1,300 churches reaching over 300,000 regular attendants and countless others with the love of Christ.
2. Deep down, I wanted to do international travel this next year:
EFCA has outreaches in over 48 countries worldwide, and I know that I will be doing documentaries in at least three – if not more – of them. One in India, one in Indonesia, and one in several countries throughout Africa.
3. I need to build a portfolio and gain experience in filmmaking:
This job will give me many major projects to work on and build my skills in, all the while getting a full 15 months of salary, and not having to deal with the pressures of finding clients and filmmaking jobs every couple weeks.
4. In recent years, I have had a growing passion for curbing starvation, AIDS, and various other oppressive forces around the world:
The video I will be creating in Africa will be used to raise awareness about the African AIDS crisis, and thus to raise funds for the EFCA’s relief work to combat that crisis.
It is so exciting for me to now actually play an active role in combating AIDS. For so long, I have wanted to do something huge to help, but have not known where to start. Now I will start by creating a video that has the potential to call 300,000 people to action in combating this crisis! It will mark the beginning of my lifelong investment in helping with AIDS relief and various other forms of relief work.
5. We live in a media-driven society, and in order for the church to reach that society, it needs to stay up with the times:
Therefore, not only does this job perfectly match my own desires, needs, and passions, but it will also allow me to help out the church in staying relevant to our world through media.
There are countless other reasons that I see this job as a perfect match, and there are countless ways in which I saw God’s Divine hand guide me to it, but for the sake of brevity, I will leave it at that.
In case you cannot tell, I am extremely excited about the work ahead of me, the people I will be working with, and the place I will be living. (I love the Twin Cities!) 15 months down the line, I plan to reapply to USC and move out to California, but given the way life tends to work, who knows if my plans will actually come to fruition. All I know for now is that come October, I will be heading to a job that came about while I was making other plans, and I cannot wait.
In Christ,
Dave
