Melina: Hey, Storymakers! Mel here in StoryMaker Land, and I am so excited to introduce you to my friend from across the pond, Michael Brown , the Executive Director of The Way . Thank you so much, Michael, for being with us. We're so excited to have you.
Michael:Thank you so much for having me. Yeah.
Melina: Well, Michael is a fantastic visionary of how we can tell God's story through all sorts of means, through platforms and digital media. But before we get going, I'm sure that you guys know about The Way, so check them out on all their platforms. But Michael, we'd love to hear about your story and how God... has moved in your life and brought you here to this place that you are now with the way.
Michael: Yeah, so I grew up in a Christian household, but I was a bit of a naughty kid growing up. I love it. My parents are amazing, but my way of exploring my creativity at the time was to rebel against everything they wanted me to do. So I went definitely for a period during my teenage years of working out what life was and what it meant to be fulfilled. And I tried everything under the sun to try and be fulfilled. But then at the age of sixteen, I was at a Christian festival in the UK. We love Christian festivals in the UK. Yes. During summer, there's about six different Christian festivals you can go to. It's great where you can camp and with your youth group. So I was at a Christian festival And my brother was there, who was a couple years older than me, actually. And he had already given his life to Jesus. And I'd already seen his life change quite a lot through that. And I was sitting down at this Christian festival during the talk. and wasn't really engaging. But then as the worship started, I saw my brother praying and I was kind of like, OK, God, if you're real, my brother seems to be engaging in this. Then please, like, show yourself to me. And so during that prayer, I just suddenly felt the Holy Spirit fill me. And I started kind of seeing kind of my life in the last kind of five years of all the things that I was doing to try and fulfill myself. And I didn't feel God be like, this is wrong. I just felt God be like, Oh, I have a better life. This is better. That's amazing. And at that point I was just filled with joy and so much peace. And that's when I kind of, I kind of definitely always believed in God, but that was the moment where I was like, okay, following Jesus is going to be what the rest of my life looks like. So that's my personal story. Yeah.
Melina: I love it so much. We, you know, we are so fortunate to get to explore these stories with all sorts of friends, new and old. And so oftentimes there's such an important moment that happens in adolescence where Um, that's why I think what your work is so special because it's, it's kind of so many crossroads, right? You're like trying to identify like, who am I, who am I apart from my parents? Like, what does the world mean? Uh, where do I find purpose? Um, and so I think, yeah, it's so important, I think for us to share and remember our own stories and adolescence and how God has brought us through. And so you were a kind of rebellious spirit. Your imagination was captured by God's big story, hope and joy, peace, all the things. And then how did you end up just, you know, you're a creative person. So how did that sort of fashion itself?
Michael: Well, growing up, I was really into music. That was my first creative outlet. I was in a few bands growing up. We were big into indie rock. That was our thing. What instrument do you play? So I play guitar and drums. Nice. I wasn't that good at guitar, so I mainly played drums in the band, but I loved exploring creativity through that. I ended up doing that in church, which really was an amazing way of connecting those two things. After finishing school, I ended up interning at a church in central London and during that year the thing that really captured my heart was the youth work that was going on. Obviously I had just come out of being a youth myself so I was seeing all these young people around me maybe a few years younger than me that were going through very similar stuff that I'd been grappling with as a teenager and just felt really cool to help and see if I can help disciple these young people. And so that kind of pulled me into the world of youth work and I became a youth pastor. I studied theology at St. Melissa's College, which is a theological college in West London. And yeah, I was a youth pastor and loved doing that. And one of the things that I found being a youth pastor was that the most amazing way of engaging young people that don't know Jesus is through peer-to-peer ministry meaning like young people sharing their faith with their friends and we used to put these events on where we'd gather a few like maybe eighty or ninety young people and we'd have games and stuff like that and We felt like, oh, we really wanted to have a young person share their faith, share their story at the end of the evening. But a lot of our young people were not interested in standing up in front of. Yeah, it's a lot of vulnerability. Yeah. Yeah, like, eighty, ninety of their friends sharing their faith. And so what we ended up doing was I said to some of the guys in our youth group, I said, how do you feel about filming your testimony? We make it look really great. We try and make it look super creative. And we can film it midweek. And then on Friday night, when we have all the youth gathered for this event, we could show the film because it would just be like an amazing way of engaging them. And they were up for that. They were fine being in front of the camera, maybe not in front of the AT of their friends, but they were fine definitely being in front of the camera. So we did that and I remember filming Three Testimonies the first time we did it and we showed it at this event and it was amazing because it was just them and all their friends and they were very confident about inviting their friends which was amazing and we showed this film and they're just a response afterwards of them being able to be in the same room as their friend and going up to them afterwards and just asking more questions and being like, I didn't know that happened. Some of them were sharing amazing faith stories of how God had encountered them, how they're following Jesus in their lives. And they hadn't heard those stories before. And we were able to create a space for them to share those stories. And that kind of was the start of kind of me working out like the amazing creative ways we can share our faith. Yeah. and i can get so i'll go straight into the story about the way because it's a great story so i i had a friend called mark and another friend called kaylee who was had started a youtube channel called the way and uh and they were basically just sitting on a couch in their in their living room and uh talking about what faith looked like for them and And sharing that on YouTube to help other young people kind of explore those themes and subjects. And I was watching this from afar as a youth pastor and thought it was amazing. So I'm offered to start helping film it because I thought it'd be really engaging for not just youth, people on YouTube but for my youth as well and then when it came down to it I felt God call me to go into it full-time and at the moment at the time that that didn't look very appealing because there was no money in it.
Melina: I know what did your parents say? sometimes parents are all for you know nice sweet jobs like that and then like well that's is that practical were they supportive or how was that what was that how was that vibe I think they were definitely supportive.
Michael: I think they knew that I wanted to stay in kind of ministry. But at the same time, they're like, YouTube, like, what's that? Like, will you ever get paid? And that was kind of scary. But that's kind of what kind of made us what we are now, because we were thinking, OK, like, practically, how do we make this work? So we started reaching out to... We had already started creating a lot of videos that were doing really well on YouTube and reaching a lot of young people. So we reached out to a bunch of charities that we knew that were also passionate about reaching young people. And we were saying, hey, would you like us to create some youth resources for you? And what that did gave us an opportunity to earn some income, to be able to... have our own ministry, but then also support other ministries. And after about a couple of years, Kaylee and Mark started getting really busy. Kaylee became a youth worker. Mark started a company. And they kind of turned to me one day and was like, "oh, Michael, I don't think we're going to be able to be on camera in the way anymore just because we're too busy." And at that moment, I thought, oh, well, that's it. The Way is over. And I kind of didn't know what to do. But then I felt God say, "no, Michael, I want you to carry this on." And through that, started reaching out to a bunch of Christian TikTokers that were in the UK at the time and basically wanting to create a community of young Christians that wanted to share their faith online. And that's where we met Jesse and Xenia, who if you go on our Instagram, The Way UK, you'll see them. And we've gathered quite a few young people that are really passionate about sharing their faith. And back in 2021, when I made that decision, we had about seven thousand young people following us across kind of all our platforms. Now we've just hit over a million followers just across all those platforms that create an amazing community online of young people that are like really open to share their faith.
Melina: It's so it's so cool. I mean, and it's so like cross culture. You know, I think what we especially grownups think about social media and, uh, the dangers and all the pitfalls that are associated with it. You know, you like too much YouTube or whatever. Uh, but God always seems to make a way and an intersection, like whatever exists in the world, God is going to get involved with so that we can have our imaginations reoriented. Right. So, um, you're such an amazing, uh, executive director and visionary of the possibilities of making God's story available right where kids and teens are - you know? It's like yeah we can imagine and hope that maybe they aren't going to be addicted to their phones or whatever but at the moment they live there and also there's creativity that happens there too i think too like when you think about like tiktok or IG and reels and what kids are creating - I mean they're not really on IG as much as tiktok - but When they're creating and sort of sharing who they are or practicing who they are, I think that that's just an opportunity, right? For them, for us to kind of capture them too. Yeah, and I think that just the presenters are so good at like really just being authentic and being aware and connected in a very like organic way.
Michael: Yeah, I think the most important thing for us is that social media is a dark place most of the time, even if it's just comedy videos that they're watching or prank videos or whatever. It feels quite light most of the time, but I think the element of endlessly scrolling and being attached to that screen that basically takes them away from real relationships. it can create quite a dark place. And we're just hoping to be a light in that place. That's our vision, is that we're trying to reach every young person that's online with the good news of Jesus. That's our vision as the way. But the amazing things about these platforms now is they're all discovery platforms. So TikTok and Instagram, you scroll through and it's not your friends that come up, people that you follow. It will just be random videos that come up. And it's given us the opportunity to reach young people that would never kind of have a conversation about Jesus or even explore faith. It's given us the opportunity to get our videos in front of those young people and help them kind of start a conversation about what it looks like to follow Jesus and have a relationship with him. That's kind of the most amazing thing. But I think young people at the moment... like social media is an extension to their life. Like back like I grew up in the 90's, 2000's. So the social media wasn't like such a massive thing. It kind of came in more into my teenage years. And so I always saw it as something like extra and the add on that we could do and use as a tool. But I think what we know now is that it's just a part of like their lives. So telling them to put their phone down, telling them to get off social media is actually quite a kind of a like a it's just it feels it feels wrong to them sometimes because it's that, oh, this is the connection to the world that they have, whether it's to each other.
Melina: Yeah. And to each other.
Michael: So it does feel very foreign for them to to want to disconnect from that. but um but but and that's why we feel like we need to be in that space um but we do also want to encourage young people to get out there and create real friendships real relationships we talk about that a lot on our platforms.
Melina: Yeah that's what I would say is like kudos to you guys because I think there's so many trappings of social uh media where you can try to sort of like feed into the algorithm or what the clickbait is but it seems that the way it's staged so true to like the story authenticity and just like being really clear about messaging. Um, and because it's so well produced and I think you guys have so many amazing ways, um, to be like the backdoor to the heart, uh, then you really tune into what is what you're scrolling into. And then you realize like, Oh, there's more. Um, you know, there's more beyond like, what's in front of me. So I think that that's really fantastic what you guys have been able to like, really key into, which is super unique. And also, what's so cool, I would just say about The Way is that doesn't feel like you're telling kids what to do or how to be. But you're really impressing upon them, like, What is the gospel? And there's, you know, these questions that sort of hook them hopefully into the podcast where they can like dig deeper into like scripture and understanding the Bible, discipleship. It's a really beautiful world that you guys have created.
Michael: I think a big thing for us is trying to kind of get the real the realness of like what culture is saying about these things. Like we often like the most common thing we do is we go onto the streets of London and interview strangers about what their experience of. church, religion, faith is and capturing that authentic kind of reality of what culture says, but then also trying to create like a narrative within that video of like hope and actually what a relationship with Jesus can offer. So we often, the great thing is like we'll often naturally bump into Christians as we're interviewing as well. And so when we're editing those videos together, we try and create like a very clear narrative of, okay, this is what culture is saying. This is maybe where the UK is currently at in terms of its views on Christianity and faith. But actually there's hope and there's like an amazing good news that we can share. So yeah, that's our focus in those videos specifically, yeah.
Melina: Yeah, they're so cool. Well, and then Michael and his team came to New York City and we produced a couple of projects together, which are going to be rolling out this year. We're so excited about. Um, but there's just, I think this thing about like New Yorkers and probably people in London also where I don't know, there's like a willingness to share whether they are engaged or not in, um, and they're used to being asked questions randomly on the street as well. Um, Michael, what has been like the most like encouraging kind of encounter? Have you guys ever seen like a light switch or anyone think like, oh, I want to know more about this, like this thing that I've begun to think about because you asked me these funny questions.
Michael: Yeah, well, there was actually an amazing one when we were in New York last September, when we were filming on the street, when we were having a conversation with this lady. She must have been in her late twenties and she had just moved to New York, but hadn't come to church yet. So she was a Christian, she had faith. hadn't found a church yet and was finding it hard actually. And we were just asking our normal questions about like, like what is Jesus relevant to our lives now and things like that. And after the conversation, she was talking about how, okay, she's actually, this has really prompted her to like, like go out there and probably have a look for a church community she can get involved in. And those sort of stories is like the most amazing because there is a lot of people up in London and in New York that have grown up with faith, but maybe as they've gotten older with the busyness of life, especially in those sorts of cities, you can just busy yourself into like not-
Melina: Oblivion!
Michael: Yeah. And being able to help those young people, especially find a way to be able to connect. In London, we have a lot of like churches that we connect people with, but being able to encourage like a young person in where you are in New York to find a church community is like so encouraging. So, and- we have the amazing we have the yeah it's an amazing time to be able to hear those stories actually all the time and uh it's super exciting to be able to just be a part of like what Jesus is doing so..
Melina: Yeah that's amazing. Well Michael, you know we have a lot of grown-ups who listen parents parents of teens a few you know if you're thinking about like anxious parents who are concerned about like, oh, is faith dead for this next generation? Or is it vibrant? Like, what would you have to say to parents who may be anxious about like, for the future of Gen Z, Alpha, now Beta?
Michael: Yeahit's beta now isn't it twenty twenty five beta yeah i do feel sorry for them because that feels a bit i know after alpha. Yeah, they could be the humility and kindness and gentleness. Maybe that's the gen Z. Yeah, I think what we've discovered, especially with young people, is that they are open. They're definitely open to faith. And they're open more than ever, I think. I think we've gone through a couple of different generations, especially in the UK, where... There was this kind of atheistic kind of mindset of God's not real. Like there's no like it's there's no proof.
Melina: Yeah. And you're ridiculous if you, you know....
Michael: And I think we've gone past that to a point now where most young people, even like the millennials that were experiencing that have actually realized actually that there definitely could be a God. And maybe I'm opening to exploring what that is, who that is. And that's the amazing thing. And a lot of these young people are growing up without experience of the church, which I think in some ways is really, really good because I think church can become like such a normalized thing. And when I meet a lot of Christian young people that have grown up in the church, they talk a lot about having to get rid of their parents' faith and find their own faith. And sometimes that can create blocks in the journey of working out who they are and what relationship with Jesus they can have.
Melina: Yeah, there's a strong association between, you know, parents and God and yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Michael: I think that, but then for Christian parents that are trying to bring up the young people in church, I think it's a real opportunity to just let them explore what that looks like. And I think they will, as they grow up naturally, like be interested, especially in their old years. I think the main thing that I find is on the opposite side of it is that young people just maybe they're at a point in life where they just don't care actually and they and they just want to like get on with hanging out with their friends playing like their xbox playing ps five But there will be those moments in their life where they realise, like, what is the point of this? And I think that's where, as the church, we need to come in and be there to offer hope and offer Jesus at that point to them. I think it's really exciting because the churches, I do feel like the church is growing, especially in the UK. I was in a meeting the other day, one of our funding partners is the Church of England and I was in a meeting with them the other day and they said that they had the busiest Christmas across churches for like twenty years.
Melina: Amazing.
Michael: There's a lot of and it was a lot of it was young men actually going into church for the first time and which is exciting for all those young ladies out there that have been struggling, struggling with the uh with the imbalance in church. Yeah. But I think it's super exciting to hear that actually there's this pull back towards trying to find meaning in life. And I think especially with everything that's going on in the world at the moment, it feels like there's so much lack of hope. And us as the church being able to offer the real hope of Jesus to them is super exciting. I do think that this generation is going to be the most open. I think there was a study that Barna came out with, which was actually called The Open Generation. And it was super exciting reading those statistics of, I think it was over seventy percent of young people um open to faith and exploring spirituality and i think that's the sort of thing that is super exciting to me is that all we have to do is offer it
Melina: ... and that's so cool and i think that's such good advice for parents because oftentimes we're afraid and we think it's up to us And our kids' salvation is up to us in our hands. And so when we have that perspective, then we sort of clench down. And then we want to make sure that they have all the right stuff and they're repeating the right information. So then we feel comfortable about doing our job and stewarding our kids. But really, we have to trust that God's story is a long story. And just like in your own situation where you were in this rebellious experience as a teenager, our kids may go through that. But here on the other end of it, you're in ministry. And that's probably, you know, not a high predictor when you're, you know, when your kids are in being rebellious or not following exactly how you think they ought to go. But God is like so amazing at reorienting people, coming for them, He came for us, He's going to come for them too. And so, For all the grownups out there, all the parents out there, rest assured, if God pursued you, he will pursue your kids also. And so we're so grateful for your ministry, Michael, because it's, it is so authentic and genuine. And actually, so I have two teenagers, obviously you've met them, a fourteen-year-old and sixteen-year-old and, or a seventeen-year-old, Sophia. But then Sophia was telling me the other day that she's been tuning in to your TikTok account. And I was like, oh, that's so cool. Like, you know, I'm just like, okay, cool. I'm just going to be relaxed about it. But, you know, it's just like one of those things where like, okay, like, kids really genuinely are engaging in the content. And so I think it's, you know, for all the grownups out there anxious and worried about like where their kids are landing, this is a great place for them to land for sure.
Michael: Yeah. And just an encouragement that actually this isn't just happening in the younger generations. It's also happening with, we're in the amazing position where now with kind of the influence that we have, we're able to bring on some like, maybe you'd say like celebrity guests onto the podcast. And it's actually amazing to see how open young people are that have big influences, that are open to share their faith. And I do think that actually there's some amazing things happen within culture where um the normal kind of celebrity is actually more open to share their faith we had somebody on our podcast the other day that was from Love Island and they which is absolutely hilarious that um that we had them on but he was he was just sharing about his experience of um coming to Jesus and his realization of um that putting his his life in the hands of Jesus is such like a better option than putting his hands in the He's putting his life in the hands of TV shows. And it was amazing to see his story. And there's so many stories like that out there. And I think actually it's becoming more and more prevalent, these young people that have big influence. And because we're not just the only ones. so many young people in the United States that are sharing their faith all the time and it's becoming more popular over here as well. And which just means that I think the general culture or cultural conversation is changing as well. And with the with like young people like Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez and people like that showing their faith openly, I think it's amazing to see that like we're able to actually as a culture openly speak about our faith more and because in the UK that's not a given sadly. I know in the US there's definitely much more of a faith base there but in the UK it's not it's not massive, not massively popular, so having those cultural voices are actually really important as well for us over here and I imagine in New York as well as quite a secular city so...
Melina: Yeah well and I think two people are realizing that um we want to live integrated lives and when we're compartmentalized and things are segmented about us um and we sort of like tuck this part of us over here and that part of us over there um that's not really living wholly in a like a holistic way and so I think uh folks are more open to like oh i want to know like the whole person of who you are. And so then there's that ability to have more open conversations around like faith. I think when people are able to be more real, And less, you know, I think it can be on the flip side too, where you have these experiences where people feel very comfortable in their like Christian format language. Um, and they need to have the person in front of them encountering with the same Christian kind of verbiage for them to feel comfortable in that conversation. Um, but the reality is, is like we.... you know, we all just, we want to have a high view of the Holy spirit and God's capacity to like move through like Love Island, you know, and places like that, like where, um, you know, where you think, Oh, Would God turn up there? Yes. You know, God turns up everywhere actually. And then we get to testify, which is so exciting. Like StoryMakers in The Way that we're testifying to like the wild nature of God and his relentless pursuit of, um, his creation so it's so cool. Well.. Michael before we um sort of close up shop i just wanted to ask you like what stories have captured your imagination recently or as a kid i love to know like what what's got a hold of your um yeah what what's got you what captured your imagination?
Michael: I think, I mean, it's since I was a kid, right up until this day. The first time I watched Lord of the Rings. Oh, yeah. was was was just the most amazing experience actually seeing and it's so funny because you don't obviously as a child you don't analyze like your experience of watching those films i think the first time i was quite young when i first watched it i must have been maybe seven or eight i think my parents let me watch it and um the experience of watching this like this hobbit which is like the most unlikely person to do this amazing task of destroying this ring this evil ring um and people with so much more power around them like supporting them i think was like an amazing story of like hope actually and actually how like I don't want to analyze it too much, but I remember when I was growing up thinking, that's how God uses us. We definitely don't have all the abilities in the world and all the amazing capacities to do amazing things, but actually through Jesus, we do. Lord of the Rings is actually an amazing... amazing way of exploring kind of what God can do in our stories. And yeah, I think, I think Lord rings is also just very epic.
Melina:Well, all of those worlds. Yeah. Like all of those worlds that Tolkien created. Well, and Madeline, my angle is amazing children's author too. She talks about parenting and she talks about if we were actually capable, then, you know, then we could take credit. but because of our incapabilities and the way that God uses us, then to God be all the glory. And so, and I think that that's what God does all the time, like flipping the narrative and the script, like where Jesus from Nazareth, like what? Born in Bethlehem, like where is that? You know, all of the tiny, the Nazareth principle, I think comes into play over and over. And those are the stories that like really capture us because we're like, what? That's impossible. And then you're sucked into that story. So that's so cool. I love that so much, Michael. Well, Michael, thank you so much for being with us today. Yeah, we're going to be launching some things together, Storymakers. So keep an eye out for that. And The Way came to New York and they did some really great interviews, which will come to play. And I just think this is such an amazing ministry and work that you guys have been called to do. And so follow the way all along and encourage the young people in your life. And I think even for grownups, this space is for you too, especially the podcast. Jake and I have been tuning in and it's been so much fun. So lots of love to you guys. Thanks, Michael.
Michael: Thank you. Bye.
