Calling the nations to pray

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.