Hollywood Prayer Network

You’ve said that Washington D.C. is the seat of power, but Hollywood is the seat of influence. What influence does Hollywood have in other countries?

Anywhere [my husband and I] have spoken to or gone to see missionaries across the globe —from Asia, China, India, Africa — the first thing they tell us when they see we’re Americans is how American film and music have impacted their mission field. When missionaries come back from the mission field, they tell us how they fight against the American media. So much has impacted the culture they’re working and ministering in that they often find it’s a detriment to their work. My sister lived in Saudi Arabia (her husband opened a five-star hotel in Riyadh), and they told us how MTV impacted their culture more than Desert Storm or any of the American physical presence there. She said that one of the greatest battles going on in Saudi Arabia now is the military police stealing satellite dishes from the top of the royalty palaces and putting them on their own homes because they want to get American media. Everywhere we go, we find that the only city that has really infiltrated the hearts and minds of people around the world is Hollywood. There was a great quote from a known film producer named Joel Silver, who produces many big action movies. He’s quite well known in our industry, and his movies are all over the globe. Someone said to him, “Well, Joe, you know so many people. You’re known around the world. Why don’t you go into politics?” He said, “What? Give up my influence?’

Isn’t it? Even Arnold Schwarzenegger was quoted as saying, “I had more influence as an actor than I do as governor of California.”

Oh, absolutely! And then the people in them get lifted up as experts on anything because they’re celebrities — they’re known for the films and TV shows they’ve been in.

I wanted to get your background as well. You started HPN in July 2001. How long had you been there working as a TV producer and at other jobs?

I went to USC, graduated in 1980, and jumped right into the industry as an assistant to a couple who owned a TV production company. I started working with them and then a few years later went on my own. With a partner, I started creating projects for TV movies and moved into working in post-production with animation. Through all these years being in the industry, my husband (who is a composer) and I realized early on that we were really in a mission field.

So in about 1983 we started a prayer group of about six other Christians, another woman, and Jim and I, and we met monthly. That prayer group has met monthly for twenty-three years. We meet at our home now; we’ve met at a few places in between. But being here we’ve always known the power and the importance of prayer.

As I worked, I got more into documentaries and specials in television. And as I worked, I found the need to communicate to the Christians outside Hollywood, how we don’t want them to hate Hollywood. We don’t want them to think it’s Sodom and Gomorrah. We want them to join the Christians here in prayer and belief that God is going to redeem this land. That’s when I really started understanding that I wanted to start a prayer network to get people outside Hollywood praying for professionals in Hollywood.

Did you also feel that you did not have enough prayer support as a Christian in Hollywood?

Oh, never! I never have enough prayers! There were many friends of ours who came out here against the wishes of their pastors or families, and they knew people weren’t praying for them. They didn’t even want them here. It’s such a competitive place to live. It’s such a hard place with subtle temptations. Christians really need prayer here. It’s like any foreign mission field, where you go into a culture and you start learning the lay of the land and trying to fit into that society. Prayer is so crucial! Christians come to Hollywood and don’t have that prayer support. Many go home discouraged, having given up, being unsuccessful. Other believers stay but compromise their faith and morals in order to get work. We watch Christians fall a lot, and we see that the ones who are praying and being prayed for have the strongest foundation to continue.

I’ve started in your intercessory program and have made contact by e-mail with a professional in Hollywood.

We have to be doing that. There’s power for the person here to get those e-mails and to feel that support. Often times we have stories of professionals that say, “I was about to give up, and I got an e-mail from my prayer partner and felt like, ‘OK, I can keep going.’” That’s the difference you can make. It’s such a tough place and so many discouraged people.

Part of what I noticed on the DVD, The Hollywood Tribe, is that it puts a human face on Hollywood?

It really does. And that was our purpose, to say, “These are real people. These are people who God love and who we ant you to connect with.”

Someone on the DVD said, “I can’t tell my peers what I’m thinking or feeling.” They have maybe hang ups or personal problems, but they can tell a prayer partner about it. Why can’t they tell their peers in the industry? Is it perceived as weakness?

It is! There’s a tremendous front that people have here of being successful, of being strong, because it’s so competitive. It’s really a survival of the fittest. You can’t go into a job looking desperate for work. You can’t go into a business setting and look like you’re sick or discouraged. Even women who are pregnant cover up that they’re pregnant because they’re afraid they won’t get another job. It’s really amazing that people are defined here only by their last project. The last project, the last image, the last meeting has to be a strong and successful feeling, and Christians fall under that pressure.

Christians as well as non-Christians, absolutely. For so many Christians here, the only people they can be honest with is somebody out of town, and so their prayer partner becomes that line of desperate honesty of “I’m sinking or I’m struggling and I need help.”

It really is. It’s like looking at the star through the gauze on the lens; she looks younger. Everybody’s trying to appear to be better and stronger and more beautiful and smarter than they are. One of the fears of artists in Hollywood that we talk about a lot is, “What if I’m found out for who I really am?”

Why the wall of resistance from the church? Why doesn’t the church view Hollywood as a people group to be reached through prayer and compassion?

Because it’s a spiritual battle. Christians are either lusting after Hollywood and feeling guilty about following TV shows or celebrities, or they live out the joy of the big glitz and glamour when they know they shouldn’t. Or they’re afraid of Hollywood and hate it because it’s a threat to them. It’s a compromise morally, and they don’t know how to handle that. Instead of facing the giant and praying and knowing that the giants are not too big, they back off. They get rid of their television set. They want nothing to do with it because they’ve been told to flee from evil, which is true. But flee from evil in their own life, not the evil of some place else. And so they get rid of it and run from it. There’s this understanding that because Hollywood is morally compromising in some of its movies and TV shows that we should stay away. It’s unbiblical to not pray for people who don’t know the Lord and to not pray for the impact to be turned to good, to turn this over to the Lord, face it head on, and not be afraid of it. But much of the church is very afraid of Hollywood and hates it.

Your DVD said Hollywood is a people group to be reached through prayer and compassion.

Yes! And why we have people on that DVD is for what you just immediately caught. When you put a face to a place, it becomes more real, it becomes more personal. You see these Christians pleading for prayer, and you go, “Wow! There are good people there. Maybe this place isn’t hopeless. Maybe I don’t have to hate all of them.” And when you start praying for people, you can’t hate them anymore.

I received an e-mail newsletter from [Christian journalist] Dan Wooding sometime ago about someone he knew who was reaching out to the Osbournes and that we should be praying for them. I said that to a Christian I know and got my head bit off.

It is amazing! It does blow your mind! And you think, It seems obvious to me. What’s the problem? To this day we still run into people like that. Just a few months ago, I got this horrible handwritten letter from a gentleman. It said, “I just had somebody pass on that DVD of yours, and I have to write you and tell you, Pray for Hollywood — please! People are dying in Iraq!” I mean, it’s wild!

On your DVD, Larry Poland of Master Media said that if you’re a missionary to a cannibal tribe, you wouldn’t march around them or boycott them.

Oh, it’s so much easier because then they don’t have to deal with it. They don’t have to figure out what to do. They don’t have to admit their own involvement with it or lack of involvement. It so infiltrates culture and it’s such a powerful influence on children and everyone. Christians have to do something about it, and it’s easier to push it away and say, “It’s evil.” They want nothing to do with it.

Or the mass boycotts. That’s so destructive here. Oh, I wish Christians could see how that breaks relationships between God and people because people who don’t know the Lord here only know Christians as representing the Lord. And when Christians write hate letters and boycott and picket, they view God as being judgmental and angry and against them. Honestly, the people in Hollywood are so vulnerable and insecure, and they want so badly to feel important. Artists in general are very insecure people because they’re expressing so personally who they are through their art. They feel exposed all the time. And then when someone points a finger and tells them their work is no good, they feel like they’re no good. All they get from the church is “You’re no good,” so they get angry back. There’s this vicious circle of people being angry at each other. And the only ones who should be discerning enough to break that circle are the Christians. We’re to love them, not hate them!

That’s it. There’s always an arrogance with a lot of Christians: “Of course I’m right. How dare they act like that and make shows like that.” It’s just wild.

You say on your DVD that we should see Hollywood as Nineveh, not as Sodom and Gomorrah. Our October-November issue is on Acts. How would you connect your ministry with the book of Acts?

We are going out to all the places of the world, spreading the good news. We know Jesus has sent us out to speak to the Greeks and the Jews. Our job is to reach the parts of the world that haven’t heard the good news. We see ourselves as missionaries here, as tentmakers. My husband and I have a ministry that we’re involved with. We have a class in our home called How to Talk About Jesus Without Freaking Out. It’s based on a book we wrote about how to share our faith and be culturally relevant in this mission field. We train Christians in a ten-week series. For sixteen years we’ve been training Christians how to be bold in sharing their faith, how to be like Paul in living as a tentmaker, using the gifts God has given them to be the best they can be in their craft and then building relationships and sharing their faith along the way.

I think he’d do the same thing. I think he’d set up camp, he’d move in with somebody, he would make his tents, and he would meet with people and share the gospel along the way. He would love the people around him, and he would build up other Christians to do the same thing.

I don’t know if you saw one of the special features on the DVD where Jim and I compare Hollywood with the Maasai tribe. When we go to churches and small groups, Bible studies, and we share with them, we say that you understand foreign missions, that you send people out, you pray for them, you support them financially, they come back and they give you the updates of what’s going on. You’re involved in their lives as missionaries. That’s what we’re challenging you to do to missionaries in Hollywood — to pray for them, to send them out as missionaries, to support them, and then to hear the updates, to understand the culture, the language, to know that in order to have an impact, you can’t send letters in from the outside. You can’t drop in every once in a while and try to get someone to act like a Christian. You have to tell him how to become a Christian by building one-on-one personal relationships. We lay out to people in churches how Hollywood is similar to a foreign mission field and that we approach our life as Christians here as we would if we were sent to Africa or to India or China. We move into the culture; we respect the people and their culture. And as we get to know them and understand them and start speaking their language and acknowledge their traditions and their lifestyle — not that we agree with it, but we respect it. Then we gain the opportunity to tell them what we know and watch people transform.

We have so many success stories. My husband and I met a young couple who are a producing and directing team. They were producing what we call “totally unnecessary films” — kind of R-rated exploitation films. As we built a relationship with them, they naturally thought that Jim would like to do music for one of their films. They offered him the job, and he turned them down. He said, “I don’t want this to be judging you. I don’t want this to have a negative impact on our friendship, but this is just something I feel like I can’t do. It’s not right for me. Some day as I stand before God, I really want to know that I chose the projects that were best for who He created me to be.” They were shocked. They had never experienced anybody else turning down work, because everybody in Hollywood is desperate for work. On a Monday the lady called back and she said, “Karen, I spent all weekend questioning, Am I a moral person?” It started her spiritual journey, and in the next couple of years, she became a Christian. We see this happening all the time.

There was a friend of ours who’s an actress. She would show up on the set and bring her Bible because there’s a lot of down time, and she would read it. She said there was this young man who came up and asked her what she was doing, and they started a friendship. He’d come and ask her what she was reading. “What’s is about?” She started reading some passages to him. Then he got really interested, and suddenly he wanted to come to church with her. He became a Christian. This is what happens over and over again when we start sincerely loving people here and letting them know who we are.

Oh, it doesn’t get out at all! It’s not interesting! It’s not some horrible mass family suicide or something, not vital information.

You’re saying that we’re too focused on the product as Christians and not on the people.

Absolutely, absolutely! We want as a church people to stop making product that offends us,. We don’t take it a step further to say, “If I care about the people making that product and I reach them with the love of Jesus, then their hearts will change. And if their hearts change, they won’t be able to make that bad product anymore.” That’s the step that Christians haven’t taken yet. They’re starting to. We’re getting encouraged that more and more people are wanting to pray and wanting to be a part of making a difference, but it’s a new thing. We’ve been struggling for decades to try to have Christians take that next step to say, “Don’t worry about the product. Worry about the hearts of the people creating the product.”

On the DVD you mentioned your missionary friends in other countries. What do they think of your mission work in Hollywood?

Lisa and Byron Gordon are the missionaries to the Maasai tribe, and they’re going back to an even more remote tribe in Africa. They are so supportive of what we do. We get together and talk about our mutual mission fields. We are passionate about each other. They have a son who’s in a rock band. They’re the ones who really started telling us about how America was negatively influencing their mission field and started our whole mindset years ago. They’re incredibly supportive of what we do.

Hollywood is such a different mission field. Usually missionaries go over there instead of coming right here.

We sit around and talk about all the similarities. We have another friend who’s a missionary to the Turkana people in Africa. When we were together a few months ago, he said, “You know, I discovered something. In Turkanaland, I see evil tangibly and physically in front of me. When I go up to a witch doctor, I see his eyes turn red. I see the Devil manifest himself in people.” He said, “The incredible negative power of Hollywood is, you can’t physically see the evil. It just permeates in people’s hearts.”

Oh, my goodness, yes! In our mission field, they worship the creation. They’re extreme activists, environmentalists. They don’t worship the Creator; they worship the creation.

How extensive is Hollywood Prayer Network’s international outreach? What other countries are you in with local chapters?

Oh, it’s growing so much! We have a local chapter in Thailand, we have one in Canada, we have one in England. We just started one in Bollywood, India. I had a two-hour meeting yesterday with a young lady who is Indian and is starting a non-profit to work as a sister ministry with Hollywood Prayer Network in Bollywood. They produce actually more films annually than Hollywood does.

Because they are passionate about films. They make them cheaply. It’s their artistic outlet there, with all the oppression going on. They make them without any sex, violence, or language. They don’t even kiss sometimes in the movie. They fade to black before the romantic couple even kiss. Their films can go into places around the world that American films are not accepted, so they have a bigger distribution. They don’t have as many Hollywood stars; they’re Bollywood stars. Some of them are more well know around the world than ours are because they get to places that our stars aren’t allowed. We have an Indian film festival in Hollywood once a year at the big Arclight Theater, where they show Indian films. It’s a big success.

Very involved. He’s a composer. He writes for films and television shows. He mentors men and is involved in the prayer work, and he and I really work as a team in what we do here.

Twenty-three years. We have two boys, 12 and 16. Our 16-year-old wants to be a director, and our 12-year-old is a professional actor. We are excited about raising them as the next generation of missionaries in Hollywood. We pray for them, and they pray for people in the industry. They pray for their work. It’s really exciting as the four of us to walk this journey together.

It’s so amazing. There are Christians who have been here for years in Hollywood and don’t know about the ministry. It’s so bizarre. I just feel like we have so much more work to do!

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