These are the times that set men's souls ablaze

The life, it is becoming crazy. A lot of things are coming to a head here in the next couple of weeks. It's exciting, certainly a tad nervewracking, but I know God's in it and it's gonna be cool.

Yesterday was a really good day in a lot of ways, culminating in a good service last night. I didn't feel any of the concern and heaviness that had burdened me the previous week. We had what was, for me at least, a sweet time of worship, and we were even able to teach the youth a new song that we're doing at FtF: Chris Tomlin's "Awesome is the Lord Most High."

Dusty preached, and I thought it was a great message, very focused, very passionate. A hard message in a way, though. Dusty is not the type to shy away from stuff like sin and hell and the blood of Jesus (neither is Chris, of course). I'm quite sure he's offended people in the past with his strong invitations to accept Christ. But I think that's entirely biblical.

Things are totally coming together. Chris is, Lord willing, going to go pick up T-shirts today. We're meeting on Saturday afternoon to plan out decorations for the sanctuary. I have finished writing the skits and gotten scripts to most of my actors. Our advertising team is about to hit the towns in the next few days to put up flyers. The prayer team has several different prayer meeting scheduled. The band still needs some more practice, but is on track to be ready by next Saturday.

Filming continues to plug steadily along. We are, as of right now, set to film scenes at Leslie's house tomorrow, and then film Hunt stuff on Saturday. If we can get all of that right here in the last weekend before school starts, I will be a happy guy. It'll leave us with probably three good Saturdays of work, possibly four, before we're done.

That puts us getting done at the end of September, which I had previously dreaded, but now I'm like, let's just get it done. I'm not gonna cry about having to film something in October if that's what it takes.

After we finally get the filming finished, it'll be time to edit, then do ADR, score the thing (I'm expecting that to be tough but deliciously fun), do whatever needs to be done for our final sound mix, and have the world premiere.

So maybe it'll be done by Christmas. That's my current estimate. If not, then January at the very latest.

Making movies is pretty tough. All of us working on the project have learned that over and over thus far, and we'll definitely learn it a bunch more times before we finish. But we're learning some valuable lessons, not just about filmmaking, but about life. At least, I am.

It's been hard, and to be honest, I've brought a lot of the difficulty on myself. But I know God wants us to do this, and so even though it's frustrating at times, I believe it's all worth it. Regardless of whether we produce a good film or not.

So will it be a good film? I really don't know. It won't be anything approaching the quality of something you see in the movie theater. Some parts may fall on their faces, with cheesy dialogue (written by me) and hammy acting (done by me). But I think other parts will connect with the audience, hopefully. I think you'll find yourself laughing at Shawn and Travis at least a few times, focusing in on Clyde's inner struggle, identifying with Eric's heartfelt prayer.

And if you do, I'll sit back and praise God for using this film to affect its audience in some small way. If there's any glory to be found from this movie, He gets all of it.