Certainly it was going to take a good year, 18 months for momentum for the film began picking up. This was my sentiments as we wrapped up the film a few months ago. I was hoping to be able to concentrate on my other projects and jobs I had lined up waiting for me to finish up so I totally assumed I had some time to chillax when it came to ground events for the film.
I wasn’t able to attend the premiers in Grand Rapids but I got a bird’s eye view of the entire week through texts, posts, and images Scott and Cesar were sending back to the Athentikos team. As I watched everything unfold, it dawned on me that my earlier sentiments were not only way off base, but making such assumptions was limiting God’s faithfulness, power and His ability to use our limited resources and create something so much more grandiose!
As Scott and Cesar returned from Michigan and we began a last minute campaign surrounding the Nashville premier, it was evident by the report of online ticket sales that Nashville would not generate the buzz and attention that Grand Rapids accomplished. But I had to stop and think, “here I go again,” thinking that God wasn’t good enough, knowledgeable enough, skilled enough, to pull something great out of this event! I stopped dead in my tracks and thought, “No! It’s going to be awesome! We’re going have such a great night and God will bring amazing results because of it! It may not be in the number of seats we sell but God will do amazing things!” The following is an email I sent to the team:
This is awesome, it’s exceeding my expectations! I feel bad that I sometimes put God in a box and think he can’t do amazing things using anything we create but I’ve been reading and listening to allot of stuff that is getting me inspired, energized and excited about what’s to come. This news fuels that inspiration! If we are 100% about seeing this film to fruition then lets not pray to God as if he is a 99% God! Of course there will be setbacks, things won’t go our way (when in this process has everything gone our way???) but God always reveals that his plan is better… we’re getting a small glimpse of that now with the news from this past week. Great job guys! As always, it’s been an amazing experience that I hope will continue on!
And you know what, I was right. God did show up… in a huge way! I saw people there I didn’t expect to see… as of that morning we had only sold 110 tickets after it had been on sale for just over a month. That night, we more than doubled it and ended up selling 240 tickets total! Which for the Belcourt theater is not far from full capacity. Afterwards, we had so many people come up to us, telling us how much the film impacted them. I heard feedback that I never expected like how the film got a married couple to talk about how they serve and how they give. How they look at their lives different now. Comments like a person not worrying about their life as much, giving them confidence which in just one day, felt like it was the attitude adjustment they needed to land a job. Amazing feedback that just surpassed my small minded expectations!
We’re all victims of this sad trait as Christians. We fall into the trap of thinking God isn’t smart enough or knows better than we do. So when we attempt something great, anything actually, our enthusiasm and optimism stops short of the finish line. As a creator, my visions are always large in scope and most of the time, in the end, the vision is scaled back… and thats ok. But it doesn’t mean I have to stop thinking large.
