On the stage and behind the scenes

REBECCA –
“Oh, no! He’ll never darken the door of a church.”
That’s what the young woman said when I asked if her husband was coming to see her at one of our church performances. Her answer echoed in my heart.
The building isn’t the Church! God’s people are! And if the building, where the Church meets, is a hindrance to that lost man, maybe we ought to go outside the building.

BIRDIE –
We were about to do just that!
When we told the choir and youth team that we were going to Jenny Wiley Amphitheater to present a large-scale, life-of-Christ production, the crowd went wild! The church couldn’t have been more supportive.

REBECCA –
We started organizing committees and making plans; all-the-while writing a script that would thrive on a professional stage.

BIRDIE –
And the music!

REBECCA –
Now, here we were in an outdoor arena, trying to learn a different kind of theater.

BIRDIE –
Anyone who knows where God was taking us next knows this was no coincidence.

REBECCA –
How often does someone have an opportunity to literally see God call into existence something out of nothing?

BIRDIE –
The NarroWay Story is a first-hand account of how GOD created NarroWay. Rebecca and I are in the story but it isn’t about us.

REBECCA –
I sometimes feel like I should try to make the story entertaining, but, honestly, the heart of this story was, and still is, “get up early, work long and hard, obey God, sleep little, repeat.”

BIRDIE –
When God said to call the company “NarroWay Productions,” He gave NO MORE INFO.

 REBECCA –
That’s because God knew me! If He had told me what NarroWay was supposed to be I would have taken over from there!

with Teresa Brown

This is the beginning. Three. Armed only with a specific Word from God, a Bible in hand, and a prayer that said: Anything you want us to do, we will do it! BIRDIE –
The day the phone rang was like having a giant bowl of popcorn and tripping on the way to the couch and everything in the bowl just got tossed into the air.

REBECCA –
Something happened that year. I don’t mean a specific “event” or issue. Our spirit was troubled. Something wasn’t right.

BIRDIE –
It was like a homesick feeling. The feeling you get when you want to stay somewhere forever but you know it’s time to go.

REBECCA –
I remember standing in the house and making this statement to Birdie: “By the time we are forty years old, NarroWay will be something.” I don’t remember what we were discussing or why I said it.

BIRDIE –
I felt a whole lot like Jacob in Genesis 32:24-26. The Bible recounts the story where Jacob wrestled with the Lord. The struggle was difficult and long but Jacob would not let go until God blessed him.

REBECCA –
When God has had you long, long, long on the potter’s wheel - shaping, pressing, forming, pushing, spinning - making you into the vessel he needs. There is a struggle when it is time to pry that damp, vulnerable clay off the wheel.

BIRDIE –
We shared an office. On the morning of April 24, 1996 we had prayed out loud for some reason.
I was at my desk at one end of the office. Rebecca was on the opposite side. I prayed first.

REBECCA –
I remember nothing about the prayers except what I declared in my last sentence:

“God, no church is in control of our destiny.
No man (as in human being) is in control of our destiny.
YOU are in control of our destiny and we commit to do whatever you want us to do.”

BIRDIE –
And the phone rang.