From Agnostic to Pastor

My agnosticism and love for all things media began the same year, in the very same class. But wait... I’m totally getting ahead of myself.

My life was a simple one. My family of six grew up in a quaint mobile home park, where our summer days were filled with swimming pools and grilled cheese sandwiches. 

I was a little stinker. My mom tells a story of a time when she took me to the mall and things went terribly wrong. I guess I had wanted to go to the “train store,” a small store in our mall that had a Thomas the train set, but she had the nerve to tell this little 4 year old no.

I don’t remember this, but she says I threw quite the little tantrum in our mall. Now I’m half white and half black (which usually doesn’t matter, but I say it now to let you know - I don’t look a whole lot like my mom). 

And being the little stinker I was, I saw my opportunity to get away... I knew this was the most brilliant plan known to 4-year-old kind... I had made my choice. I was going through with it. So I began to yell at the top of my lungs, “THIS WOMAN’S NOT MY MOTHER... THIS WOMAN’S NOT MY MOTHER!”

I pray my kids never do this to me.

Growing up, the question I received most often was, “why are the girls in your family white and the guys black?”

It was actually really funny to see the puzzled looks on my friends faces as they wondered how it happened. Well the short story is my sisters have a different dad, but I’d never call them “Half-Sisters” - we are all “full” siblings.

At the age of five, I accepted Christ and began to eagerly share it with whomever would listen. But the eagerness soon turned to fear as night after night I would lie awake in bed, wondering if I prayed the right prayer, wondering if I could truly be saved. I prayed the sinners prayer 4 or 5 times each night hoping it would bring me peace… it never did. I was saved, but for some reason I didn’t “feel” saved like I used to.

During my Jr. High years I played basketball and did well in school, but one evening started my graphic design journey. I don’t remember how it was brought up, but somehow I was told that my dad had downloaded Adobe Photoshop on our computer. 

“That’s what the professionals use,” they told me.

I was curious. So I sat at the computer and uploaded a few files. The hours spent mesmerized in front of that old computer and pouring over “how-to” books, would prove that I had been bitten by the photoshop bug.

My high school years were where my faith began to shake. I still remember the first time I was called “slave” (they didn’t mean it maliciously), and wanting so badly to be like everyone else, wanting to fit in. 

So to fit in, I began to break rules behind my parents back. Slowly eroding the foundation of my Christianity. Not knowing Satan was leveling an attack I wasn’t ready for.

The attack came my sophomore year. It was then, in Honors English, where my agnosticism and love of all things media began. 

My agnosticism was fed by many different factors, but the tipping point came when we were reading greek mythology. 

I saw such similarities between what we laughed at as fake and what we held to as sacred, and I couldn’t differentiate between the two. 

“Why do we hold to one and laugh at the other?” I would think.

I found myself actually praying to the different gods we were studying. Finally, I was done being confused and so adopted the “I don’t know” mindset. I don’t know if there is a God, I don’t know if Jesus is who he said he is… I just don’t know anymore. 

But I couldn’t believe evolution. As I looked into it, it just sounded like a poorly written fairy tale. A desperate reach into the dark. How do they account for the impossibility of spontaneous generation? How do they explain the perfect evolution of male and female, separate yet complimentary entities, that couldn’t procreate without getting it right the first time. All of their answers seemed irresponsible and fanciful.

Needless to say, I couldn't bring myself to believe in evolution. So I went from agnostic to theist.

I was at the point where I believed in God, but not quite Jesus. I was very skeptical of a man who claimed deity, a man who claimed supernatural power. I truly thought Jesus might be a deceiver, who was trying to steal God’s glory. I thought preachers were just in it for the money, and that christians were either fake or deceived. 

I was done being confused. I wanted the truth.

I was a 4.0 student and graduated a respected private school with above a 4.0. Now I don’t say that necessarily as a positive thing. For me, that was my biggest hinderance from resting in the gospel. I was too smart, or thought I was. I couldn’t humble myself enough to believe the supernatural. I didn’t want to be fooled. I didn’t want to be a fool! 

God used an apologetics class to begin to clear away some of the questions I had regarding Jesus.

Now here’s the crazy thing… I tried to believe! I came to the point where I knew that it was true in my head, but I just couldn’t shake the doubts. I couldn’t bring myself to rest on Jesus. Every time a new doubt would flare up.

I even came to the point where I thought that I couldn’t be saved.

That spring though, I attended a youth conference and God got ahold of my heart. I wanted to please God, I wanted to do what was right. I repented of the things that I had been doing behind my parents back, and even took my dad to KFC to confess. 

My life was changing. I would literally read my Bible for hours a day. I wrote songs about God. I led a children’s class where I used my love for cinematography to craft short films for them. I was busy!

But my Junior year of high school I came face to face with genuine believers. People who acted like they knew Jesus personally. And they loved Him!

One day, after months of coming to me with their own spiritual questions, one of genuine believers confronted me. It is a confrontation I will never forget.

They looked me in the eyes as theirs filled with tears and whispered, “I don’t think you love God,” then walked away.

I was stunned. And offended. Did they know who they were talking to? They were talking to someone who read their bible for hours every day. They were talking to someone who wrote songs about God. They were talking to someone who faithfully served in church. They were talking to someone who for the past few months has been helping them understand the Bible… and I don’t love God?

But something about that accusation stuck with me. I had always viewed God as someone to be respected but never someone to love. To be honest, I didn’t know whether I could love him? 

The next day, I was sitting in a gym at my brother’s basketball tournament when another believer came and sat next to me. 

“Addison, Jesus has been so good to me. This morning he showed me…”their voice trailed off in my head. I could just see the love for Jesus in their face. I could hear the joy in their voice. 

My eyes began to fill with tears. I had to get away. I couldn’t sit there any longer… “what did they have that I didn’t?”

I paced outside the gym, trying to collect myself, the whole time asking God what I was missing.

I wrestled with this until Sunday morning after the preacher was done. I slipped out the back, snatched a tract off of our old wooden tract rack and stuffed it in my pocket. I vowed not to eat or sleep until I had what they had.

Arriving home, I locked myself into my bedroom and put the tract and Bible on my bed. I started at the first verse… a verse I had read so often. A verse I had memorized - John 3:16. And I got it.

Kneeling there, my heart filled with joy as my eyes filled with tears. HE PAID FOR ME BECAUSE HE LOVES ME! I knew it. I had peace. My sins were all dealt with because Jesus was enough. I couldn’t add anything to what He had done, and the wonderful thing was I didn’t have to. 

I had spent so many hours thinking that it was up to me to hold onto Jesus. But that was never the plan. He died because I could never hold on. He died for all of my mistakes and short comings. He died for all of my doubts and fears. The cavity of debt I felt in my soul was filled. I owed nothing. I was free.

The verse, "we love Him because He first loved us," became so vivid over the coming months. I truly loved God!!!

He spoke to me more clearly than ever before. And as Paul had prayed for the Ephesians to “Know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge,” I knew it!

But I wish I could say I stayed on that High forever.

I did for a long time... but heartaches, troubles, betrayals, and slanders came and awakened the flesh in me. I couldn’t stand to just allow myself to be ridiculed. So the beast woke up. My pride led me to become hard, arrogant and condescending. I was done being a door mat.

But Jesus, through His Word, began to show me that he had saved me to be a door mat. 

Crazy, I know. 

He had saved me to serve. He had saved me to die for others. It was no longer about self-preservation, but about self-sacrifice. I had been called to relive the death of Christ over and over for all around me. 

But how could I?

Philemon is a beautiful book where Paul both demonstrates Christ’s death for sinners and implores Philemon to enact it toward Onesimus. We must take the hurt. We must take the loss for others benefit.

The call of Jesus is a call to a daily cross. A daily dying for Christ’s and the gospels sake. This re-enactment of the gospel is what opens the eyes of the blind more than any apologetic argument could ever do. 

Now I don’t believe I am special. I’m scared to death to begin a blog and YouTube channel because of what others may think. But I’m doing it as a sacrifice to God. I’m willing to take the criticism and the sideways looks if it will but help one person who is struggling like I was. 

Someone searching...

Wondering...

Perhaps, cold...

That is my prayer.

Now about media.

My love for media began that same year, in the same class. 

We were tasked with making a short video about Oedipus Rex (nasty story!), and so Wyatt, Krista, Cassie and I grouped together to make a cinematic masterpiece. 

This masterpiece consisted of one of us haphazardly holding the camera, while the others awkwardly performed improvised lines. In short, I’m surprised we passed.

But on the day we were showing these wonderful works to our class, one group’s video literally amazed me!

I was stunned at how they had different camera angles - like the movies! It looked so good, and communicated their story beautifully and artistically. 

I wanted to watch it again!

After class, I approached one of the guys who had worked on the film and asked him how many cameras they had used.

“One,” he replied.

One camera???

It looked like four or five!!

This sparked my desire to do the same thing. So later that year I began making short films for our church’s children’s ministry, as well different videos for the Christian school my church had. 

That was back in 2008.

I still chuckle at the mistakes that I made (I’ll try to include a link here to some of my early work).

Since then, I have had the privilege of making short films, of filming weddings, working for different agencies as a freelance editor, designing an automated live stream system, and so much more.

I was recently asked to fly (expenses paid) to the other side of the world to film a missionary video as well as travel to a camp to teach media to young people. But the sad thing is - I had to say no to both of these offers.

I felt terrible!

I truly wanted to be able to help, but I couldn’t.

Not long after, A pastor friend from up in Washington came and wanted to see our livestream system. I mentioned to him that I was thinking about making a YouTube channel to help ministries with media so they didn’t have to make the trip themselves (as others have done). He looked at me and just said, “Do it.”

I know that doesn’t sound “crazy motivational,” but it was actually one of those moments when you realize, “this idea might not be as crazy as I thought.”

So here I am.

My goal with this blog and YouTube channel is to help people avoid unnecessary mistakes and train people interested in everything church. Whether it is how to film announcement videos, setting up an inexpensive livestream, or even practical or doctrinal things, Everything Church Pro is here to help. 

I will have two main categories on this channel: “Bible Nerds” and  “Church Geeks.” 

The Bible Nerds are people who just want to know more about the Bible. Want to dive deeper, or share their faith better. I will do my best to help people overcome some of the big questions that held me back for so long! If you are a Bible Nerd, I hope you are proud to be one.

The Church Geeks are the people in church who just love the techy side of things. They love watching different videos and dream of doing awesome things for their church.

Every church needs Church Geeks and Bible Nerds, and I pray this will help take you where you want to go.

Sincerely,

Addison Smith IV