Question, what does it take to turn around
emergency LIVE broadcasts in only a few days and with virtually no money? Want
to know the answer – then read on……..
It was Friday and I was having a couple of
days off in beautiful Scotland with my wife and in-laws when the e-mail arrived
from Rory Alec (GOD TV’s Co-Founder) saying “we need to do something to call
the nations to pray for the middle east and Israel NOW” – well that was my
basic interpretation of the e-mail. Unpacking the idea some more, it soon
became obvious that this meant LIVE programming from GOD TV’s broadcast HQ in
Jerusalem and that we needed to get it up and running ASAP – oh and we don’t
have much money to spend………
I was due to fly back home to the US with
the family on the Sunday (after 2 weeks in the UK combining both business and
pleasure), but by the end of Friday had changed the flight to head to Israel
instead with my family heading home without me. We quickly decided on the core
team we would need to take from the UK to get the studio working (also bearing
in mind the practical challenges facing Israel with constant rockets being
fired at it from Gaza) and who we could use from our local Israel staff and
some external people as well and flights were booked, plans were changed and
the momentum took us forward.
We knew a number of things from the start –
firstly, we are NOT CNN or BBC etc and
we will never do the same kind of job that they can do in terms of news (and
certainly not on the budgets we have)– so we HAVE to stick to what we are good
at AND most importantly what God has told us to do. That meant providing a
spiritual perspective that our viewers could engage with and pray into.
Secondly there is SO much propaganda around Israel/Gaza etc that it was
critical we found trustworthy voices BUT also asked them “hard” questions.
Thirdly, for the broadcasts to succeed having the right guests would be crucial
– we needed high calibre people who could speak with authority on the issue.
So, how do you go about making all this
happen with very limited people and no time (let alone little money) well,
there really are 2 key things – first of all you trust that God can do what you
can’t do. Our plans may have surprised us BUT they did not surprise God and it was
incredible to see how he brought things together – from memory, I can only
think of 2 guests we asked to be involved who could not be due to other
commitments – our line up of people both for the studio and on phone or skype
was “stellar” and I know God was totally behind it – we couldn’t have done it
without him. Secondly you rely on the amazing team of people you have – and we
really do have an amazing team, people who will go the extra mile in EVERY
circumstance, people who are excellent at what they do, people who will NOT let
it fail. These are the people working behind the scenes, the GOD TV crew who
are the real heroes of our broadcasts. For instance on our first LIVE broadcast
the audio desk crashed 3 times while we were on air – leading to some frantic
re-planning and major head scratching (while trying to keep the programme on
air) we got through it due to the brilliance of our team and overnight replaced
the faulty parts of the sound desk with spares we had and thankfully didn’t
have the problem again. These 2 things combined – God with us and amazing,
gifted people meant we knew it would be successful.
The programmes really came together so
well, the flow of each, the guests who were on, the videos produced ahead of
time (and at the last minute) just all “worked” and by the end of my final LIVE
broadcast on the Friday I knew we had really “shifted” something in the Spirit
– and it was from then that things really calmed down for a period at least –
still not sure what will happen long term of course.
The decision was then made to put in place
a simple (low key) solution to enable some further LIVE programmes the
following week with us leaving a skeleton team on the ground working with our
super talented local staff – who had not done this before, while the rest of us
after a week in Israel headed home.
I watched a couple of the programmes they
produced (and gave them some feedback to help hone them some) and was
astonished at the quality of what they achieved – it was extremely satisfying
to see the “youngsters” shining.
It was such a good thing to be involved in
and I know we were at the cutting edge of what God wanted to do and through our
programmes we mobilised thousands to pray and their prayers (I believe) made a
MASSIVE difference.
This really is I believe Christian TV at
its best – bringing up to date spiritual content to equip and encourage
believers to DO what they can do (in this case pray for change and peace) and
that in turn is why I still do what I do – despite all the challenges.
So, to answer the question posed is that it
takes: knowing, trusting and relying on God and not you and your abilities and
having the BEST people around possible (the GOD TV team) who you can totally
rely on to do what they do best.
