Join Dr. Chrysandra Brunson on “To All the Dreamers” as she welcomes Brad Gray and Joel Edwards, the creators of the world-renowned film, “The Lord’s Prayer.” Brad and Joel share the incredible, God-orchestrated story of how they met in Franklin, Tennessee, and embarked on a six-year, global cinematic journey to unpack the deepest meaning and context of Jesus’s most famous prayer. Discover how this single prayer is a blueprint for daily living, a North Star for understanding God’s will, and a key to pursuing your God-given calling without regret. Get ready to be inspired, equipped, and empowered to live
Welcome, everyone, to The Calling’s radio show, To All the Dreamers. I’m your radio host, Dr. Chrysandra Brunson, and it is such an honor to be with all of you today. You know, at The Calling, we have realized that so many people are afraid to go after the dreams that Jesus has put inside each one of our hearts, and that is just plain wrong, because if God has given us a dream and we’re not living it out, we are wasting it, and we do not want to die with regret. That’s why at The Calling, we love to inspire, empower, and equip people to, after God’s calling on their lives, treat the best kind of eternal legacy possible to have immediate impact on themselves and their families. And we love to do this through so many different avenues, through custom tools and programs, workshops, seminars, but especially through this radio show where we’re able to bring on world-renowned guests to share how they’re going after God’s calling on their lives and how you can do the same You guys were in for such a treat today. I’m so honored to be able to bring to you and introduce to you Brad Gray and Joel Edwards. And you have heard these names most recently from the world-renowned movie that has just released, The Lord’s Prayer. You guys, welcome to the show.
JOEL EDWARDS :
It’s great to be on it. Thank you.
CHRYSANDRA :
we’re so honored and I lo of you were able to come your guys’s names do ring know where you’re streami
BRAD GRAY :
Joel, go ahead, man. You start us off. We’re coming to you live from Franklin, Tennessee, which seems to be popping up all over the place over the last couple of years. Beautiful little town south of Nashville, and we’re at our studio here in Franklin.
CHRYSANDRA :
we love that and i do feel like more people are discovering franklin but it is it is like a treasure box so it’s a little bit outside of nashville which makes it a little harder to get to but people are hearing about it because of what the what god is doing in that city can you guys just share uh what you guys have been working on currently
BRAD GRAY :
Well, it’s funny, this story is a kind of made in Franklin, Tennessee story, truly. So it’s a great place to start. So Brad, I’ll kick it to you because you moved here, you know, left Michigan and did so literally knowing that God was calling you to Franklin, but not knowing exactly what.
JOEL EDWARDS :
Yeah, it’s been nine years ago. My family and I moved to the area after having been a pastor for more than a decade. And my wife and I just sensed over a two week time period that God was saying, I want you to resign and move to Nashville. It was really clear that we needed to move, but for what we had no idea why. And so we actually moved down here in January of 2017. And it wasn’t until three and a half years later that Joel and I met. But my background is I have a business background and then went in to seminary, got a master’s of divinity, ended up moving to the Middle East. I’ve been leading biblical study hiking trips since 2010, served as a pastor for more than 10 years, and just have always had a passion for the word of God being understood in its original context. And so literally everything started to shift and we started having this idea of how could we create the highest quality documentary film and series that’s ever been done on the bible and after being here for three and a half years as senior producer of espn found out about our vision and dream of what we wanted to create so you should talk to evolve studios and Through some really amazing turn of events, we found out that Joel and I were sitting two rows away from each other in the same church for more than two years. And it took a senior producer of ESPN to connect us. And we started working on this project and it’s been six years in the making and it just went out into the world.
CHRYSANDRA :
Oh my goodness. Well, we cannot wait to hear all of these details that has God’s fingerprints all over that story. Joel, what would you have to say to add in how your story collided with Brad’s?
BRAD GRAY :
Yeah, well, it’s all convergence, right? And so here we are, you know, in Franklin, sitting in the same church. It’s a big church, so you don’t always get to meet everyone. But for literally years, and then got connected by a guy who lives in Orlando, who I worked with for years. My story… is one of being moved around a lot as a kid. So getting prepared for documentary filmmaking as a youngster, never settling anywhere. We moved over 10 times growing up and stumbled into television, worked in sports for a couple of years for ESPN, and then it turned into National Geographic and all sorts of cable networks, Discovery. And had a whole career in production, in storytelling, in filmmaking. And, you know, as we have grown and ended up moving our family down to Franklin and growing our business and just growing in scope and scale the projects we were working on, Certainly as I was getting older and raising kids, you start really asking yourself the big questions in life. And that’s what I love so much about this film, The Lord’s Prayer, is that everyone has a relationship with the Bible and with the scriptures, whether they know it or not. Some of us have been raised in the church and reading this thing every day forever and understand it in great depth. and some of us don’t want anything to do with it and we’re like i don’t know about that you know those crusty old words a bunch of guys wrote that stuff it’s not relevant anymore um but it’s very relevant and the entire construct uh that we live in in the western world was defined by these 66 books that make up the bible and the autobiographies of a Jewish rabbi by the name of Jesus have influenced more people, more lives, more societies, more civilizations, more governing laws. I mean, everything’s affected by this. And so, you know, the more you kind of go on that journey and you start thinking about it and looking into it and looking at actual history and then going to the places themselves and understanding the context behind the letters, the context behind the words, it’s kind of this aha moment. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And so Brad and his team and Brad’s whole thesis is all about context, is let’s understand the book in context and let’s go to the physical site, look at the geography, look at what was happening in history at that point, corroborating other histories of other written accounts from other societies and saying, oh, hey, like they all point to the same thing. This is not only factual, but if you really dive into it, there’s so much that gets missed when you look at just solely the religious practice side of things. you look at geography and history and all the other sides of context, it paints this whole new canvas. And so as a professional storyteller and all the different places in the world that I’ve been to and experiences that I’ve had and stories that I’ve been a part of being, you know, being able to tell, this one was very intriguing to me. The idea of, you know, this prayer that Jesus gives that we’ve all heard before, We all know our father in heaven, like maybe you pray it every day or maybe you’ve heard it once at a football game or someone used to say it. You remember it as a child, you know, a grandparent or someone praying at Thanksgiving. But we’ve all been touched by this prayer. And Brad’s thesis on it was like, it’s actually the most buried, most maybe misunderstood, maybe misinterpreted. deepest, richest gem that Jesus ever, ever, ever taught on that we just haven’t paid enough attention to. Maybe there’s more there. Maybe this is more than just a thing that he said to do. And that’s actually really interesting because what does Jesus say? He says, this is how you should pray. It’s pretty clear. Like it’s not open to interpretation. So his whole idea is like, well, maybe there’s way more here. And so when I read their treatment and read their outline, I was like, wow, this is game changer if this is true. If you can really link all the way back to the Old Testament, if you can really link all the early church history and up into where we are today and contextually unpack that, this is going to be an absolute game changer. I also kind of looked at the treatment and I looked at the treatment and I was like, this is aggressive. This is ambitious. This is expensive. We’re gonna have to go to all of these places. We’re gonna have to bring in, to get the full richness of this experience, you need to film it with cinema cameras. We can’t just come in, you know, this is gonna be very expensive production. We’re gonna film in all sorts of different countries and all sorts of very hard to get into locations. So many of these sacred sites haven’t been filmed in before, certainly at a cinema quality level. And so the whole thing was just like, wow, that looks like a very ambitious, very big project. And it was, we’ve been working on it for six years. So we’re in the sixth year now. It was wild. And I think the best things in life are the wild ideas or the big ideas where God is challenging you to live outside of your comfort zone and pushing you to lean in and trust him for the outcome, but also like be open-handed and hearted to learn along the way.
CHRYSANDRA :
and this project has just been that you know times a thousand well it sounds like it’s exactly god’s calling on both of your lives to be able to make this film and to go through all those different hurdles and challenges and to be at this moment is such a celebration so we just honor both of you so much in that So you guys were connected through a friend that heard both of your guys’ hearts of what your calling was. Brad, just with your background of the Lord’s Prayer and just your whole field of experiences, your background and living in the Middle East, what drew you to say this is where we could have a nucleus of a story, be able to tie the whole world together?
JOEL EDWARDS :
Yeah, it really goes to the familiarity of the Lord’s Prayer. You know, when I started, as Joel mentioned, I had this moment, it was about seven years ago. So no thought of doing a film or a television series or now a book. It was all about, I was sitting down reading the Sermon on the Mount one day and Jesus gets to the Lord’s Prayer and he prefaces it with, this then is how you should pray. And I just had this moment of like, oh man, like, I think he meant this. And I was almost… I wasn’t almost, I was embarrassed. I mean, really having been a pastor for more than a decade, leading study trips, grew up in the church. And I was like, this is something I know, but I’m not living. And I’ve got to figure this out for myself. Why would Jesus want us to pray this daily? yeah and when i just did the whole study through that it was abundantly clear this is the most distilled passage in the entire bible for understanding who god is why jesus came and what our purpose is here on earth and when we talk about like pursuing our calling it’s like it’s a calling within the frame of what god has invited us into as human beings who bear his image and also bear his name if you’re a follower of jesus and so it started to revolutionize my faith. You know, and when you’ve been a pastor for a number of years and something’s really messing with you, like you pay attention to that. And I started praying differently. I started living with a more laser focused sense of clarity and calling on my life. And when we started to work on this idea for how could we create the highest quality documentary that’s ever been done on the Bible, it was like, oh, the Lord’s Prayer is actually for everyone. You know, everybody’s familiar with it, whether they’re a Christian or not. they have some familiarity with it. But even as someone who had as much, you know, quote unquote, education as I did, didn’t even understand it, you know, to the level that I needed to.
CHRYSANDRA :
Brad, we’re going to pause you right there because we want to hear all these details. We need to go to a short break. But you guys, you are listening to all the Dreamers radio show. We have the world renowned guests of Brad Gray and Joel Edwards of the Lord’s Prayer. Do not miss a second. We’ll be right back. Twist and shout with Lee & Co. They are the premier oldies band delivering the rock and roll vibes you’ve been missing. Great songs, great memories. Book them at LeeAndCo.com. Hi guys, this is Chrysandra Brunson, host of To All The Dreamers. I am so happy to introduce personal training, nutritional guidance, and behavioral change coaching. Healthy, happy, and heavenly for your wellness, spirit, soul, and body. Contact Mimi Kroger at healthyhappyandheavenly.com. Continue to grow in the calling God has for you through ORU online.
JOEL EDWARDS :
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CHRYSANDRA :
At Ignite Brilliance Coaching, you will get 34 years of science teaching, a decade of university-level instruction, and over 10 years of instructional coaching to empower educators with the tools, mindset, and confidence to thrive. Contact Ignite Brilliance Coaching on Facebook. We are back. Thank you for listening to all the Dreamers radio show. We have the one and only Brad Gray and Joel Edwards of the Lord’s Prayer and cultivating our hearts and our lenses to be able to see Jesus’s intentionality of the Lord’s Prayer and that he really meant it like you both were just saying. And Brad, you were just sharing what drew you to the Lord’s Prayer and will you just take us back into that?
JOEL EDWARDS :
Yeah, and once I had done kind of my own study into it and just saw that this was a blueprint for daily living and realizing, oh, this has just changed my life. When we started to work through how could we create this really compelling documentary experience of the Bible, the Lord’s Prayer was a no-brainer because it’s familiar and powerful. And it also just has this like, you think you know it and then you realize, oh, I don’t know it. And then when you do start to get it, it’s like, I don’t want to go another day of my life not saying this prayer. It doesn’t just become what I have to say or should say. It’s I can’t wait to get into a space where I can really ponder and pray this prayer because it’s the blueprint. It’s the North Star. It’s the anchor place. that reminds you daily this is this is what it’s all about and and because of my you know experience of taking people on biblical study hiking trips now for 15 years and having lived in the middle east location changes everything you know when you get there joel is saying you see it you look at it you walk it and you realize oh my goodness this is this makes so much sense everything lines up and we wanted to to give people that experience because the most powerful experience I’ve ever had was going on my first study trip in 2006. The most powerful thing I do is take people on these study trips. And the realization for Joel and I was that 99.9% of even professing Christians, forget anybody else that’s exploring faith, but professing Christians will never set foot in the Holy lands. And so we wanted to bring that experience to them and not just people in the West, but to people all around the world, which is why we needed to film this in a way that was going to be immersive, experiential, highest quality, teaching centric in a way where people could experience the Lord’s prayer through a plethora of teaching aspects from visual effects to the cinematography to the actual text and be able to understand what Jesus was inviting people into so that we would also recognize it’s as relevant today as it was 2000 years ago when he gave it on that Galilean hillside.
CHRYSANDRA :
and I know that everyone’s just wanting to know all the details. Brad and Joel, can you guys just share both of your guys’ roles within the movie, how that was put together? And then also, we want to know some of your favorite people and places that you guys were able to interact in and with.
JOEL EDWARDS :
Yeah, it’s great. Now, I actually run an organization called Walking the Text. And so myself and two other writers were the ones that came up with the idea of, the initial idea, I should say, for what this has become. And so I get the privilege of serving as the host of the show. I serve as one of the executive producers. And it was our team that brought it to Joel and his team of Evolve Studios. And the great thing about this, and we do jokingly say it was a match made in Franklin because like we came and we weren’t looking for a production company to execute our vision. We were looking for a production company that we could partner with. And so we came with what we had and we basically said to Joel and his team, like you guys bring what you’ve got and let’s create something together that we would not be able to create on our own. And so we come with the content and the context and the background and all the relationships in the Middle East and all of that. Joel and his team come with world class filmmaking and storytelling. And we’re both united as passionate followers of Jesus. And to do the things we did, to go through the things we went through, I mean, it was very difficult to pull this off. And we were dealing with the pandemic, we were dealing with wars, we were literally dodging drone strikes in Jerusalem while we were filming. I mean, it was wild, but because we felt called, To this project, it was like, all right, God, we will go through hell and back if necessary to do what you’ve asked us to do because you’re not asking us to do it flippantly. Like there’s a larger reason behind this. And God just knit, you know, Joel’s hearts and my heart and our teams together. And so Joel serves as the director. He’s the executive producer. He’s the founder of Evolve Studios. And so it’s just been really fun. growing together both of our teams working together to be able to create this and then mark burnett who is the executive producer of shark tank the voice survivor came onto the project last year as an executive producer as well so literally it’s just been a dream to work together and to be able to lock arms for something as incredible as the lord’s prayer and to be able to steward the most powerful prayer in human history in a way that literally hundreds of millions of people can experience this prayer in a way that they likely won’t be able to on their own.
CHRYSANDRA :
I love that you pinpointed that Jesus has been so kind about this film and probably because it’s so near and dear to his heart to bring not just people, but the best of the best of his kingdom leaders to participate in this film. What was the most unexpected adventure while filming a location and a person while trying to tell this story?
JOEL EDWARDS :
I’ll let you answer that one.
BRAD GRAY :
Oh, gosh. I’m sure there’s so many. Yeah, I don’t know where to start, whether it be even how the whole thing, you know, just the impetus of the whole project, the infancy. It’s funny, our friend Martin, who worked at ESPN, I had worked with him for years, and he is one of the most highly decorated, I don’t know, he’s maybe won 15 Emmy Awards for ESPN. I mean, he’s just like… one of the elite storytellers there. And when he called me and told me about the project, he’s like, Hey, I just I really have a feeling like you should look at this. I want you to see this. Even even that was strange because I get pitched a lot of projects but not always from folks that I admire and that I’m looking at. You know, it was just kind of it was fascinating throughout the process. I mean, we tried to we got into Egypt once and then we were not we were disallowed and at one point kicked out. Basically, we were waiting for visas to come in and we sat in Greece. Not a bad place to sit for a couple of days in that airport. But, I mean, yeah, there’s just been multiple twists and turns where we just had no idea what was going to happen. Obviously, you know, the war, we did not – no one ever saw that coming, and that changed things dramatically. Truly a blessing in disguise, though. I think the thing that – maybe to answer your question just as a visual guy – blew my mind is you know if you’ve ever been to the church of the holy sepulcher in into the old city in jerusalem this is the traditional crucifixion and burial site of jesus so there’s golgotha and then there’s the tomb shrine you know where it is said that one of the headstones would have been from his tomb in there you know this is the one of the most sacred places On planet Earth. And, you know, irregardless if it’s a little bit off in terms of the place of where it is, it is the place where literally they would fight over to the death to hold the ground of this sacred church. And so for thousands of years, the church has recognized this as one of the most sacred places. And we were there a few days after Iran had attacked. And so there was nobody in there. It was literally empty. If you’ve been there, if you’ve seen pictures, go Google photos of the Holy Sepulcher packed with people. You can’t see the floor. You can barely, if you’re at eye level, you can barely see anything just outside of other people’s heads. And we were there and our footage that is in the film shows completely empty. No one. And the Greek Orthodox priest let us bring a film camera inside of Jesus’s tomb shrine. I don’t think there’s ever been a camera. in there ever. We worked on the other National Geographic series that had ever filmed in there before and they didn’t even get in there. And so for God just to kind of say like, hey, I picked you for this time. You said yes. So now here you are. You’re going to get to film this thing completely empty. I mean, I’m still I just can’t believe that that’s what happened. You look at the footage and you’re like, wow, it’s amazing. But I’m like, I don’t know if you can really appreciate it because it doesn’t exist. Another thing we had, you know, some incredible local support and everyone there from the local film production side, Orthodox Jews, agnostic Israelis, Messianic Christians, Arabs. a really interesting, diverse set of backgrounds that were on our crew. And they were all so excited about the project. They were all so excited to understand more. There wasn’t this division there on our crew that you see in the news and that you see in our country. And you see people constantly pitting against each other. It’s us versus them, not with our crew. And our crew was as diverse and as different as you could get. And everyone was there fascinated about, man, who is Jesus and what did he teach? And is there more to this? And as we were just filming every day, there was a hunger and just more excitement and interest to continue down the journey and to learn more and to lean in. And that really that really surprised me. You would think it would be the opposite. So it was just it was so special in that way.
CHRYSANDRA :
It’s so powerful. And you guys, we want to have you back sooner than later. I don’t know where time goes. We’re coming up towards the end of our show. But Brad and Joel, we want to know a couple of things before we end real quick. We want to know your tips and wisdom for someone tuning in. And like, oh, this is great that you guys were able to identify this dream that God has found your life. But there’s no way that I can go after the dream that he’s laid on my life. So we want your wisdom on to them and then we want can find this incredible
JOEL EDWARDS :
That’s great.
BRAD GRAY :
Joel, why don’t you… Yeah, well, I would say to anyone who’s wondering what would it take to lean in more and to actually get in line with what God would have for me, just ask Him. Just ask Him and then be willing to say yes when He answers. Fear and anxiety and uncertainty are always the things that are going to quench or delay what God has planned for you. So trust him, ask him, and then say yes. Say yes when the opportunities come before you. That’s good.
JOEL EDWARDS :
I very briefly would say this. If you know God has put something on your heart, you’re not going to get all of the details and all of the guarantees before you need to start moving down the road to making that thing happen. And too often we’re waiting for more details and we’re waiting for some guarantees. Following Jesus isn’t safe. It’s not convenient. It’s not comfortable, but it is worth it. So yeah, no, and the other question you had, where can people find out? The lordsprayer.com has everything. So the film, The Lord’s Prayer, we’ll take them to Angel Studios where it’s being streamed. We just dropped a book on The Lord’s Prayer called Bringing Heaven Here. That’s also found at the lordsprayer.com. And then we have a full episodic television series on the Lord’s Prayer dropping at Easter. So everything at thelordsprayer.com will get people to go where they need to go.
CHRYSANDRA :
We cannot wait. And you guys, I am so grateful that you were able to send me a preview. of this incredible film a is life changing and jus this weekend, next weekend together, watch this mov and brad, how can people g
BRAD GRAY :
Yeah, I’m not a big social media guy, but we’re on Instagram and our website. We’re on the website all the time if folks wanna reach out. And then Brad’s got all sorts of websites.
JOEL EDWARDS :
Yeah, you can actually just start at thelordsprayer.com. It’s got all of our links to our socials and we’ll give people additional resources around the Lord’s Prayer that will help them on their journey.
CHRYSANDRA :
Perfect, you guys. So pull over, look up the lordsprayer.com and be able to find Brad and Joel and be part of this movement. You’re tuning in today for such a time as this. There’s no accident. Challenge you to pray the Lord’s Prayer right now. Whether you are driving, whether you’re at your office, at home, this is the challenge. This is the moment. It will change your life. Till next time dreamers, keep dreaming big.
