Is Hollywood Against Christians? Depends on What You Believe, Says DeVon Franklin

DeVon Franklin, President/CEO of Franklin Entertainment, wants Christians to know that Hollywood is not a bad place.In fact, striving for a successful career within the entertainment industry can lead to a fruitful life, says Franklin, whose book, The Hollywood Commandments — A Spiritual Guide to Secular Success, comes out later this month.“Too often we say Hollywood is against Christians or Hollywood is against that,” said Franklin during a session at Proclaim 17, the NRB (National Religious Broadcasters) International Christian Media Convention in Orlando earlier this year. “Let me tell you something, if you believe that, that’s what’s going to be the reality. I don’t believe that. I believe that if God has already gone before me he’s going to make a way.”Franklin, who has worked with some of the biggest names in Hollywood, said his desire to work in entertainment came early in his life, but words of discouragement from others, including friends and relatives were common.“You can’t go into Hollywood. Are you crazy? This is the devil’s playground,” he said, referring to what he was told. “It’s Sodom and Gomorrah. In fact, get the anointing oil, we are going to pass the demon out of this boy."In his message at NRB (below), he said, “What I really want people to understand is that if God is for us who can be against us, and we have to begin to shift our mentality and know that if God gave us this ambition and this dream that we have to live it out in the authenticity in which he gave it to us as an honor to him because he is the one who gave us the desire and the gift to begin with.”

About The Hollywood Commandments

Publicity about the book reads:You can be wildly successful without losing your faith. In fact, your secular success will strengthen your faith if you allow it. Too often we believe that success in secular environments contradicts the core principles of faith, but the opposite is true: Your faith was designed to thrive in the secular world and to transform it as a result. You may never experience the true fulfillment you were created for until you pursue the secular ambitions in your heart.New York Times bestselling author DeVon Franklin knows this to be true. In The Hollywood Commandments, the prominent Hollywood producer and spiritual success coach reveals 10 life-changing lessons picked-up from his over-twenty-year career in the entertainment business. You won’t learn these lessons in the church yet they will help you achieve an amazing life and thriving career that glorifies God. The Hollywood Commandments will help you:

• Identify how to use what makes you unique to propel your career.
• Overcome fear and build the courage to pursue new opportunities waiting for you.
• Gain the confidence to make important life decisions with greater peace and clarity.
• Negotiate the life and career advancement you deserve.
• No, you don’t have to work in Hollywood for this book to work for you, these "commandments" apply to every walk of life! If you are stuck, looking for the secrets to advance your career, or have a feeling there’s more to life, this book is for you.

On the Web: devonfranklin.com

Piles of Bureaucracy; Does God Care About Spreadsheets?

Work has always been a tricky environment for me when it comes to dealing with questions like “How does God use what I do?” or “Does what I’m doing day in and day out really matter?” or “Am I making God’s world a better place?” What I spent most of my career years doing looks nothing like the work we do at church, on mission fields, in hospitals, or in inner-city work for the poor or marginalized.Editor’s Note: Contributing writers at Pacific Crossroads Church in Los Angeles recently announced a blog series for this month that “seeks to address the struggle so many of us feel in connecting our workplace lives to our walk with Christ.” The writers state in their introduction to the series: Pacific Crossroads Church has partnered with PCC members Steve and Margaret Lindsey to start an exciting new project called the Center for Faith + Work Los Angeles to minister to this need. The center will launch this month and the 1st Annual Conference is Saturday April 1st. You can find out more and register for the event by clicking www.faithandworkLA.com.Previous articles in the 4-part series can be read by clicking: The Daily Grind, Get Rich (and/or Die Trying); But What Is God’s Will? and here: ‘I May Have Carpal Tunnel and Tennis Elbow.’  Also, Together LA’s interview story on Steve Lindsey and the center is found here: Ministry Launches to Help Firmly Place Faith Alongside Your Work. 'Piles of Bureaucracy'is the final article in the series.I remember being mid-career as a systems engineer designing satellite communications electronics. As one project wound down, I transitioned to a new group to work in an unfamiliar area on a large research and development project full of future cutting-edge technology. It was an exciting challenge but a bit daunting, as there was so much to learn. I was surrounded by world-class talent, and I wondered whether this narrowly trained engineer could broaden enough to keep up. It took about two years of learning, design work, and trial and error before I saw results confirming my work was paying off. Needless to say, I was elated! My boss, a brilliant systems design engineer himself and pioneer in this field, was also pleased (though I often wondered if he inwardly smiled to himself “What took that guy so long?!”). But something bothered me. Did it really matter?I think, as Christians, many of us experience the struggle of a long-fought-for-result, pouring our life’s energy and passion into our work, feeling the hopes and fears of whether or not our labors will be accepted, and sensing the nagging concern along the way: “Does God really care about all this?” That was certainly a question I struggled with. Sure, I knew that we work in relationship with a bunch of people God loves and cares about in whatever our work context, and that God can use those relationships for his Kingdom. But what about all those thousands of hours of diligent and focused engineering, the results of which remain mostly unseen by anyone? Certainly no one would ever see the details of my contributions with hundreds of lines of simulation code, massive data files, test results, volumes of work stored on some server somewhere, backed up on another server somewhere, likely never to be accessed again. And what’s worse is all that work was likely to be repeated in the fairly near future by smarter engineers with better tools on a newer project that will outperform the best work envisioned in my project.The words of the preacher in Ecclesiastes haunted me during times like these: “All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.” (Eccles. 1:8-9)But, then again, there were also those moments... pure joy, deep satisfaction, a sense of worth and purpose, being part of a larger enterprise, building something, something new, better, more efficient, more capable, and never done before. I could have sworn that in some way God was there, he cared, and it mattered. But why would he care? Yet a gnawing sense that my contributions somehow did matter was very present and very real. Though I’m perfectly capable of regular self-aggrandizement and pride, I don’t think most of what I felt was rooted in a sense of superiority or selfishness. It’s hard to describe, but I think it was closer to a sense of deep gratitude. In some way, I wanted to thank God. To sing about it. Party over it with my believing friends, and not just the office buddies. But I didn’t feel like I should. It didn’t connect well with my concept of what God wanted from me. I didn’t have a language yet for what God thinks of the daily grind of our hard work. You know, the stuff you do when you’re not sharing the gospel, you’re not showing compassion to a colleague in need, you’re not doing some extra-curricular service project, and you’re not leading or attending a workplace Bible study. The stuff you do well when no one is looking; hours fly by and you are buried in a spreadsheet, a complex problem, or tedious piles of bureaucracy. In fact, for a lot of us these kind of efforts take up much of the best of our actual career life. Is it possible the Lord of Glory cares about this too? Is my joy somehow a sharing in his joy?I now think so, and have been on a journey exploring God’s good purposes for our work. Come share the journey with us at the Center for Faith + Work Los Angeles.Note: This post originally appeared on Pacific Crossroads Church website blog.On The WebCenter for Faith + Work Los AngelesMinistry Launches to Help Firmly Place Faith Alongside Your Work

'I May Have Carpal Tunnel and Tennis Elbow' [Faith + Work Los Angeles]

Editor’s Note: Contributing writers at Pacific Crossroads Church in Los Angeles recently announced a blog series for this month that “seeks to address the struggle so many of us feel in connecting our workplace lives to our walk with Christ.” The writers state in their introduction to the series: Pacific Crossroads Church has partnered with PCC members Steve and Margaret Lindsey to start an exciting new project called the Center for Faith + Work Los Angeles to minister to this need. The center will launch this month and the 1st Annual Conference is Saturday April 1st. You can find out more and register for the event by clicking www.faithandworkLA.com.Previous articles in the series can be read by clicking here: The Daily Grind and here: Get Rich (and/or Die Trying); But What Is God’s Will? Also, Together LA's interview story on Steve Lindsey and the center is found here: Ministry Launches to Help Firmly Place Faith Alongside Your Work. Below is the third article in the series.What line of work are you in?I’m a graphic designer specializing in branding and packaging.Have you ever struggled with finding meaning in your work?Prior to becoming a designer, I was trying to build a successful career in something that would utilize my expensive math/econ degree. It was a struggle to put so much energy into a vocation I didn’t connect with. It’s one thing to not like your job, but it’s another when you feel passionately for something you can’t seem to pinpoint.Now that I’m currently doing work in line with my calling, I struggle with expecting it to bring more meaning to my life than it was meant to. I use it to replace other aspects of my life that are lacking (such as relationships…and sleep hahaha). Life was meant to be an amalgamation of different things that bring meaning, and many times I cherry pick those things.What are the challenges you’ve encountered being a follower of Christ in the workplace?In terms of being a designer in the industry, I struggle with wanting to be accepted as knowledgeable and relevant in our post modern society that often promotes poly/a-theism and praises a life without restraint in order to experience life to its fullest. While I believe it’s important to understand the world around us in order to create effective brands, it can be very hard to decipher when to engage and when to pull back. My job is to creatively find ways to communicate messages, and if I don’t believe in the message, it’s hard to design well.Naturally, I want recognition and affirmation as a designer because it is to some degree reflective of who I am and what I care about. Thus, there are times I’m not able to fully engage with other designers or work on projects because there is a conflict of worldview. This can lead to feeling ostracized and “not with the times.”How would you like to see your faith better integrated with your work [life]?I would love to meet more Christian designers who I could grow with not just in faith but also in design skill. I would love to be with fellow believers to attend events where we are the minority. We are called to be salt of the earth and not in a Christian bubble, but sometimes it would be encouraging if I had some fellow “grains” by my side. Do you sense God in your workplace as mostly present and active or missing and passive?For the most part, I get to emulate what the Father did best: create! Thus, when I’m working on projects that I love – and when I feel that my role as a designer isn’t being denigrated to a slave or a machine – I feel the joy of creation that connects me to God’s world. While I love working for pro bono projects that have a direct philanthropic cause, I find just as much meaning in designing for the marketplace as long as the process in doing so remains humane (which often it does not. Ha!).Does sharing your faith feel easy and natural or hard and awkward in your workplace?Sharing my faith feels like all of those things: easy, natural, hard and awkward.The easy and natural part: I’m social and don’t have a hard time talking about life and sharing the same hobbies as non-believers (in LA, I love the urban hip hop and art scene). I love narratives and love to engage people in their passions. I also love to see coworkers be surprised that I am a Christian and that they, too, can have Christian friends and not feel conflicted or judged. As a woman in my mid 30s, I’ve realized that the types of conversations that I have with my coworkers have slowly become deeper. It’s exciting when the Lord creates an opportunity to dialogue about the meaning of life with people.The hard part: It’s one thing to share, but it’s another to invite someone in. Though I will take every chance I can get to talk about God’s role in my life, it’s not often that I can get to engaging the listener to converse about how it may impact their life. There is a strong resistance to faith/religion in secular urban cities, and I will sometimes “not go there” due to my own insecurities and fears. During the past couple of years, I’ve discovered a vibrant relationship with the Holy Spirit that has changed my life. I often pray to the Holy Spirit, our Helper, to work in these microscopic seeds of evangelism that I often feel get tossed in the wind. Thus, whenever a coworker is receptive and inquisitive about God, I find my own faith awakened and excited by hope!Is it ever hard to connect your actual work with God’s greater kingdom purposes for this world?OF COURSE. As much as I love to create, I have to bring home the bacon and don’t always get to choose how to do it. I have many global corporate clients that abuse their power and often make my work feel meaningless and even stupid (i.e. treating designers like robotic hands rather than creative thinkers). It’s always hard to put in endless time and effort into a product that I don’t believe should exist on the earth.Do you experience your job as mostly “just a job” or a “calling” in life?It’s both. With soul-sucking corporate clients, I have to tell myself that it is just a job in order to stay sane and not make a bigger deal about something I can’t change (because if I dwell in my annoyance, I will get fired in a hot second).I ultimately know that this is my calling. Some examples proving this: I can work 70-80 hours a week and still feel energy. I think I may have carpal tunnel and tennis elbow, and yet I can’t help but keep going (my 50 year old self regrets this already). I dream in vivid colors and wake up in the middle of the night with ideas for projects. Every time I can’t solve a design problem for days on end, all the madness is still worth it once the breakthrough occurs and something finally comes to life. Only a calling would allow me to continue working so hard and sometimes without return. I thank the Lord time and time again for the arts that are not just my vocation, but also the source for beauty and freedom that has brought much healing into all aspects of my life. Our God is SO COOL!!! 😀Note: This post originally appeared on Pacific Crossroads Church website blog.On The WebCenter for Faith + Work Los AngelesMinistry Launches to Help Firmly Place Faith Alongside Your Work

Ministry Launches to Help Firmly Place Faith Alongside Your Work

God cares for every area of your life, and although it may seem obvious, He cares about how you live out your faith at work and inside the workplace. That's an area of our lives that could use more attention from churches, said Steve Lindsey, who is the visionary behind the Center for Faith + Work Los Angeles (CFWLA).CFWLA is a gospel-centered non-profit dedicated to transforming our relationship to work, fostering human flourishing, and renewing Los Angeles, states the organization. Lindsey recently shared his vision with Together LA, and about the group's first conference to be held in Santa Monica on April 1. The CFWLA is partnered with Pacific Crossroads Church for "cultural renewal to equip, connect and mobilize the church, sent out to care for the world of work."Lindsey's answers to four questions about CFWLA from TLA are below.TLA: What inspired you to start this ministry?Steve Lindsey: My interest in integrating faith with vocational life goes back to the '80s (though I'm not really that old). I loved early exposure to Francis Schaeffer’s teachings that God cares about every area of life. Yet my vocational work seemed under-addressed in church contexts and ministry, and felt lacking any ultimate value or purpose to God beyond providing for my family and church or being a platform for evangelism. After much reading, prayer, research, and discovering the pioneering work of the Center for Faith and Work in NYC at Redeemer Presbyterian Church (Tim Keller's vision), my wife Margaret and I saw that such a center located in Los Angeles could be just such a catalyst for transforming our view of work and it's pivotal place in God's kingdom.TLA: How is the Center for Faith + Work Los Angeles unique?Lindsey: CFWLA is unique in its addressing the needs of working believers in three primary ways: 1) In-depth theological and spiritual formation tailored to our vocational calls, within a rich and transformative community environment, 2) Envisioning God's redemptive purposes for our life's work inclusive of our vocational careers, and 3) Enabling the initiation of concrete expressions of social, cultural, and spiritual renewal in our city through our world of work.TLA: What is the most important thing people interested in attending your conference need to know?Lindsey: Come prepared to be fully engaged and receive an exciting vision for your vocational world and the future vision of CFWLA! Also, our website www.faithandworkLA.com is designed to make information and access simple to all of our events and offerings.TLA: How can Christians in LA come together to love on the city in terms of CFWLA goals?Lindsey: Loving the city well involves seeing God's love for all of creation more clearly. Our cities, communities and places of work are all extensions of God's creative work in the world. But so much has been broken and lost and in need of His restoration and redemption at the individual, social, and institutional levels. At the Center for Faith + Work Los Angeles we believe that the gospel affects everything, and as Chuck Colson once said, "Transformed people transform culture." Anyone longing to see God's hand more tangibly at work through their vocational contexts is encouraged to seek us out.

Get Rich (and/or Die Trying); But What Is God's Will?

Editor’s Note: Is this a 'get rich' story? Read on to find out! Contributing writers at Pacific Crossroads Church in Los Angeles recently announced a blog series for this month that “seeks to address the struggle so many of us feel in connecting our workplace lives to our walk with Christ.” The writers state in their introduction to the series: Pacific Crossroads Church has partnered with PCC members Steve and Margaret Lindsey to start an exciting new project called the Center for Faith + Work Los Angeles to minister to this need. The center will launch this month and the 1st Annual Conference is Saturday April 1st. You can find out more and register for the event by clicking www.faithandworkLA.com.The first article in the series can be found here: The Daily Grind. Below is the second article, which was written anonymously, in the series.

Get Rich (and/or Die Trying)

No one is paying me to write this blog.This being a guest weekly blog for a church, that shouldn’t surprise you. But what may surprise you is I do get paid to ghostwrite about 100 blogs a month, which more than meets my daily bread needs. It surprises me at least, as, two years ago, I didn’t even know this was something one could get paid for. And it’s not what I expect to be doing two years from now. It’s my classic LA “day job” as I work on my own artistic projects, and I thank God daily for providing me with plentiful freelance work that uses my talents, pays my bills, rarely if ever stresses me out, and gives me the time to pursue the creative projects that I believe God has led me to pursue, knowing that whether I ultimately make bank on those projects is an outcome I cannot control.Sounds kind of serene when I put it that way, doesn’t it? It certainly does to me, but of course I do not always choose to put it that way. I’m about to hit the big 4-0 and haven’t had a full-time job since I left a 250k/year position with full benefits and stratospheric mobility almost six years ago to pursue a creative life of unrelenting uncertainty, no job title, and very high co-pays every time I need to roll into Kaiser. And, if I haven’t hit my 10,000 hours of doing creative work for “free” yet, I’m awfully close. Which, depending on your perspective, is noble or kind of stupid from the outside. From the inside, it’s often head-against-the-wall infuriating. When I see someone’s brand new condo or house or family vacation across the world, I wonder if those monuments of the good life will ever be within my reach and if maybe, just maybe, this six-year, headlong campaign in the war of art has been little more than a kamikaze mission in a losing battle on behalf of the unsympathetic cause of boy-who-wouldn’t-grow-up artistic vanity.But then I remember what it was like when I was about to hit the not-as-big 3-0 this time ten years ago. I was six months into a career that I had spent years in school for and knew at my deepest core was wrong for me from day one. To put it bluntly, I was miserable doing it, and while the money was great, the job was all-consuming in the worst way.So why did I do it? Because I didn’t know who I was back then – and I certainly didn’t give a second thought to God, much less his will and how my work might fit into it – and so “work” (with no preceding “Faith &…”) all came down to making the most money I could. Which meant no following the creative trail of breadcrumbs God has always set before me, and certainly no pro bono church blogs. To quote Lucinda Williams’ “I Lost It,” the prevailing attitude in my life back then was, “Everything’s paid for. Nothing’s free.” And the prevailing result of that approach was perpetual failure in beseeching the counterfeit gods of all-that-money-can-buy to grant me the fulfillment I so desperately sought.How I got from there to here is too long of a story to tell here, but the most important shift was in my attitude. I’ve gone from “nothing’s free” to “I don’t want nothing if I have to fake it.” That’s a change that’s occurred in my life through learning to let go of what I thought was a need for certainty, earthly riches, and the adulation of others (all colossal works-in-progress, friends) by letting the Holy Spirit in to put the spotlight on God, not me.That too is a topic worthy of volumes, but a line that pretty much encapsulates it for me is one I recently read in Experiencing God by Richard and Henry Blackaby, which implores the reader to stop asking, “What is God’s will for my life?” and to start asking simply, “What is God’s will?”When I get anxious that all my “free” work won’t lead to my preferred outcomes, I have to make that mental shift away from “my career” and back to what I can do to accomplish “God’s will. Period.” It’s an hour-to-hour practice for me. Ideally, over time it will move steadily towards a moment-to-moment practice. I don’t know the future, but I hope that this will be a lifelong pursuit of true riches.Note: This post originally appeared on Pacific Crossroads Church website blog.On The WebCenter for Faith + Work Los Angeles

Faith + Work Los Angeles: The Daily Grind [First in a Series]

Editor's Note: Contributing writers at Pacific Crossroads Church in Los Angeles recently announced a blog series for this month that "seeks to address the struggle so many of us feel in connecting our workplace lives to our walk with Christ." The writers state in their introduction to the series: Pacific Crossroads Church has partnered with PCC members Steve and Margaret Lindsey to start an exciting new project called the Center for Faith + Work Los Angeles to minister to this need. The center will launch this month and the 1st Annual Conference is Saturday April 1st. You can find out more and register for the event by clicking www.faithandworkLA.com.

The Daily Grind

A few months ago, I was on the phone with a customer service agent for my cable company. To pass the time, the agent asked, “So what do you do for a living?”“I’m an ER doc,” I replied.She then paused, and apologetically whispered, “Oh, I’m so sorry.”I seem to get that response from just about anyone who asks, but the job is not all bad. It is a privilege to participate in God’s work of bringing the chaos of post-Eden existence back to wholeness and peace: setting broken bones in place, quieting the ravages of an infection on a body, reversing the course of heart attacks and strokes.Yet, the job takes its toll.“Hey doc, your first patient is an 85 year old male here for altered mental status. We don’t have any information about him other than that he became confused and vomited an hour ago.” It could be a head bleed. We need to check a sugar level and get him to the scanner. What’s his code status? Is his family coming? No time, get him to CT. “Doc you have a patient in room 16. She’s a 75-year-old female with blood in her stool. She feels weak and dizzy.” The most common cause of her bleed would be the colon, not to mention the blood thinners she’s on. What’s her blood pressure? Low. She’s going to need a blood transfusion. I’ve got to keep a close eye on her. “Doc you have a patient in room 43, a 3-year-old boy who ran into a coffee table and has a laceration on his forehead.” Sigh. Why do boys love running into coffee tables and cutting their foreheads? He’s screaming so loud I can hardly think. His parents are debating and now arguing if they’re ok with him getting stitches. I’m going to have to come back. Is that CT scan back yet? What’s the blood count for the bleeder?“Hey doc, your patient in 3 wants to talk to you. He’s wondering why he’s not getting a MRI today, because he looked up on Google...” Sigh. I was just there and explained in length. “Hey doc, that patient in hallway G is getting agitated and wants Ativan because she thinks she’s in alcohol withdrawal.” Sigh. “Hey doc, can you write a work note for room 9?” Sigh. Yes, but not right now. “Hey doc, the parents of the kid with the forehead laceration are wondering why you haven’t sutured it yet.”SIGH.Sighs are the sound a soul makes when it’s pressed and squeezed by the day’s trials. Sighs are the brain’s reminder to the lungs, “You haven’t taken a deep breath in a while and we’d really appreciate the oxygen up here.” Sighs are the sound the Israelites collectively exhaled when they heard from Pharaoh what many of us hear in our work, “Work is hard? Too bad. Now do more, with less.” (Exodus 5:7-8)Work existed in Eden before the fall (Genesis 1:26, 28) and therefore work itself is not a curse. Yet it sure feels like one. Not only that, when the shift gets busy and stress increases, so does my irritability, impatience and anger. Complaints rise and cynicism grows. By the end of a 12 hour shift, my mind and soul are drowning in toxicity. Burnout lurks right around the corner. So what’s a doc to do?Rankin once spoke on how the pressures of life reveal our true selves – “When you squeeze a toothpaste tube, toothpaste comes out.” Stress reveals who I am. The difficulties from my job don’t make me impatient, unkind and angry, they show me that I am those things. Ouch. That’s hard to accept. Yet, the gospel is first bad news about self, before it is good news about what God has done.As I continued to process these thoughts, shift after shift, I stopped blaming my job for my anger. Instead, I started to ask my community group for prayer. I confessed to close brothers how embarrassingly deep my sins run. Through gospel community, I began to see in my own context, that God was using my most difficult days for my good (Romans 8:28). Like a construction excavator, with each trial, God was taking a deep scoop out of my self-reliance, creating more space for his grace to fill.As I’ve started to see that in my very trials, God was not punishing me, but rather teaching me to sing, “Lord, I need you, oh I need you, every hour I need you,” I’ve learned to receive the grace portioned for that day (Exodus 16:15-16), especially on days that I fail. From that fullness, though I work in the chaos, I begin to find my purpose aligning with his – not working for a paycheck, or because I see work as a necessary evil, but for his purpose – to use my time, talents and energy to share the grace that I’ve been so richly given.What grace indeed.Note: This post originally appeared on Pacific Crossroads Church website blog.On The WebCenter for Faith + Work Los Angeles