Your Story: Easter & Beyond
Stephen Marshall

Stephen Marshall is the Music & Media Minister at Mount Hope Church in Lansing, MI. He is married to Pam Thum. Stephen is an international recording artist, author and speaker. Founder of Live It To Lead It worship conferences and author of A Little Boy’s Prayer the Christmas musical, Stephen is an avid supporter of and coach to leaders in ministry, specializing in those assigned to the creative arts. You can read more about Stephen on his website www.stephenmarshall.net. Also visit www.alittleboysprayer.com and www.yourstoryisamazing.com.

There are two times a year that a person who rarely attends church gets a notion to visit a local house of worship. Christmas and Easter are those occasions when the calendar can actually help call the lost. Whether it’s for the sake of tradition, a vow to a dying mother or some sense of accomplishing penance, visitors who don’t have a habit of coming to God’s house show up on these dates. This is an opportunity we need to capitalize on.     

I became a part of the Mount Hope Church team (www.mounthopechurch.org) in January of 2011. Being a large organization, plans for church wide events need to be scheduled well ahead of time. My position as the new Music & Media minister meant that productions were my responsibility and Easter was coming up fast.

I had written a Christmas production called A Little Boy’s Prayer the year before and had seen how a story could dramatically touch tens of thousands of people drawn to the local church. The combination of the season and an anointed production can make for a beautiful opportunity to reach the community. At this point my predominant experience had been as a Christian recording artist.   Ministering for years in that role, I had experience with special events but never from the perspective of being a pastor and overseeing all the aspects of a church-wide collaboration.

Shutting the door to my office, I got down on my knees and said, "Help Lord!"  I’ve seen many great things done with little to no lasting fruit. I’ve seen simple things done that seemed to leave little impression at the moment, but the Kingdom outcome was significant and lasting. We know God is glorified when we are fruitful (John 15:8). Capturing the essence of what that means and not measuring a spiritual mandate with a carnal ruler is the key. When you and I trust God enough to let Him define success, it makes the next step much easier. There are times He will lead us to do something outside the box of what’s usual or even traditional.

The Holy Spirit is always so good to me and He is a creative genius. When I asked Him for help that day He dropped a title and a concept into my heart that seemed overly simple. The title I believe the Lord gave me was Your Story – an Easter event. The blueprint was basically this, act out a story of Jesus from the Gospel in its period 2,000 years ago and then forward to a parallel real story today of someone’s testimony. So for example we had actors play out the scene of Jesus healing the blind man, the man would sing an excited song of praise, and then a video would come up on the screen of a precious older woman in our church who was legally blind and now could see without any glasses.

Simple. Tell stories from 2,000 years ago and tell stories from today; mix it together with familiar hymns and new spiritual songs, and take the audience on a journey that leads ultimately to the the Lord’s death and resurrection. In the space of an hour and a half the audience heard twenty plus real life stories told by the individual them self. They were stories of healing, deliverance, salvation, family and joy. All the stories were people from our church, from 2 years old to 80, all nationalities, all backgrounds, with the most important thing in common – born again of the Seed of God!

Once I said ‘yes’ to what I believe was an idea inspired by God, I felt like the Lord began to show me His strategy within it’s simplicity. First of all it has the DNA of God’s overcoming formula taken from Revelation 12:11. "And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony." When people begin celebrating openly what God has done for them, it translates as praise and glory to God. Father is honored in a generation that has lost all bearing on what true honor is, and who deserves it.

When you incorporate individual stories into a church wide event the family takes ownership, and that is critical to effective ministry and marketing. It becomes more than just another function or outreach, but a reminder of spiritual identity that says, "This is who we are in Christ." 

Easter is the celebration of the blood of the Lamb so all of our portrayals of Jesus 2,000 years ago establish his perfection, obedience and sacrifice on the cross. The audience hears the Gospel of Jesus over and over from Bible days, to modern day, through songs, acting, through tears and laughter. The world tends to sit on their couch and flip their channel selector over and over from one show to another. At a performance of Your Story, we do that for the audience.

Part of the marketing genius is this, it breaks from a lot of the static of typical words associated with Easter. Not that there’s anything wrong with those words but we sometimes make the mistake of trying to speak the language of Christianity to a world that doesn’t have a clue what we’re really talking about. When you say the word ‘passion’ to a room full of believers they most likely will think Easter thoughts. When you say it to those outside the covenant of Christ, some may associate the word with Hollywood’s raunchy perversion of the term.

The title Your Story is a call to all people. It’s a call to consider your own life, your legacy, your future and the innate revelation for most that it’s presently being written. We have tried to give a Savior to a people who don’t need one. If a person doesn’t believe they have a story or that their life is worth living, why would they need a Savior? The title was not only a marketing device for us as a church but a call to action as a church. Believers became inspired and interested in each other’s story. The question around the church became, "What’s your story?" The greatest marketing agents we have are our people.

This production did some exciting things right in our home camp. It reminded our family of what God has already done for us and made us thankful. It pulled people in our church into an activity that they regularly considered "someone else’s thing." If a church is going to seriously take on the task of winning the lost in their community, the whole family goes to war or don’t bother. That means all the great extensions of a church like youth groups, men’s groups, ladies’ tea groups, Saturday morning Pilates with Jane – all the other groups get on board and make war. Hell does not want to let go of these
human slaves.

As soon as I got approval from the pastor on doing Your Story, I put together what I call a ‘Prayer Sheet’. In the world of public relations a ‘One Sheet’ is a refined statement about the product, speaker or release you want the media outlets to show interest in. A ‘Prayer Sheet’ is an accurate page of petitions that focus on the success of the goal you’re pursuing. With every specific request I would put a biblical references so that all intercessors, pastors, and members could pray accurately in unison with authority. I don’t subscribe to random, thoughtless words that end up conjuring up more confusion and misdirection. Success requires focus and intention. A divided house can not stand.

In 2011 we saw an average of 19% of the audience respond to an invitation to come to Christ each night. This year that average was 12%. The exciting thing about this year is that some of the tools we created over this last year are being utilized beyond the Easter celebration now. We put together a DVD collection of all the testimonies and a devotional guide under the same name of Your Story. Already we are getting reports of people sharing these tools with others and they’re coming to Christ, getting healed, and transforming the environment of their home with these anointed works.

It’s exciting to see people discover the saving power of Jesus for the first time, and still something else is going on. There is the thrill of seeing sons and daughters reclaim their first love again. Sometimes an event like this can refocus a person’s heart onto the bigger Kingdom venture. There are seasons when family events such as an Easter production stretch people and make them needy of the anointing and each other. It’s in those moments that something critical takes place within the family of God; we are knit together knowing that we are submitted to the Lord.

Productions are a lot of work for a small church or a big one. I’m always looking for the multiplication factor. Here’s what I mean by that: if the Lord is directing us to do something, there is a way for that anointed work to live on and on. After all, what’s born of the Spirit is spirit. When the Lord gave us Your Story, the consideration from the beginning was that other churches around the world would be able to use it. That’s why we professionally recorded all the music and tracks and made them available on iTunes. We also put together the script, director’s notes, and stage blocking so it was simple and could be accomplished in a small auditorium. Jesus supplies the modern day stories of life in each church. With technology today a simple smart phone can capture the video and piece those segments together.

What started out as an Easter celebration has become the catalyst launching the Your Story movement (www.yourstoryisamazing.com). We are constantly developing the social media of this idea so that the beauty of what Jesus has done for us ripples far past a once-a-year nod on the calendar. You have access to the overcoming anointing of the living God. The bondages over your community, town, city, must yield to the power of God and the formula is already in your possession. The blood of the lamb and Your Story. The enemy is already defeated and you have the keys to the city.

You can view testimonies from “Your Story” at:
http://www.youtube.com/user/THEMOUNTHOPECHURCH?feature=watch