When he was in the ninth grade, he shared his faith as “Christian #3” as part of a drama for the prison ministry of First Baptist Church, Spartanburg. His mother was music director for the Little Theater, and he had grown up around actors. His birth announcement even had been formatted to resemble a playbill. So, naturally, he thought he was a pretty good Christian #3 … until a convicting thought arose that he couldn’t shake.

“I had, not a vision — I didn’t hear the Lord — but I had an imagination, because my imagination is always dreaming of things,” Britt Dillard recalled. “I imagined that I would see God one day, and he would bring to me an Emmy, an Academy award, a Dove award and a Tony award. (Then) he’d say, ‘Britt, no one in the history of mankind ever portrayed Christianity better than you. … But depart from me, I never knew you.’

“On that day, I gave my heart to Jesus. It’s absolutely never been the same,” Dillard said. “And if you have someone sharing their heart story — that’s my heart story. That’s why I’m a Christian. That’s why I’m a minister of the gospel.”

Now, having served more than 35 years as media minister at Spartanburg First, Dillard knows how captivating someone’s personal testimony can be. These “nuggets,” as he calls them, are short, powerful messages that churches should be posting online because people enjoy sharing them with others.

“When you have those moments, you put that on your phone and you immediately put that on your YouTube channel. You put that on your Facebook page,” he said. “You post those right off your phone. And nobody cares how good the quality is. They just care that this is the moment where I shared my heart. And that is what’s important.”

With that mindset, pastors and media ministers need to honor these stories with the best mini-films they can make. The clips should be short — no longer than 90 seconds, three minutes, or five minutes, Dillard suggested. “Your goal is to find people who are good at telling stories, or at capturing the stories that are being told to them,” he said.

Although Dillard began serving in 1983, Spartanburg First actually has been broadcasting services for more than 60 years. “We started with two cameras, and they didn’t even belong to us,” he noted.

From those two cameras, the media ministry has grown to 10 cameras with a huge editing studio, led by five staff members and a team of volunteers. The crew produces messages for both television and radio, but its ministry also has expanded to include livestreaming services, which are archived on the church’s app.

When he started in television, people would gather around a television set to watch events, like an 11 o’clock service, he observed. “We still have that. There are people who will still gather (around a TV),” he acknowledged. “But for the most part, instead of ‘push TV,’ it’s ‘pull TV.’ It’s the idea that you want people to be able to get what they want when they want it. … They just pull it up on Facebook or livestream, back it up to the beginning, and watch it where they are.”

What most excites Dillard is not the church’s well-equipped studio today, but the media ministry’s impact potential.

“When we’re down here (in the studio), the thing that we’re excited about is the room upstairs,” he said, pointing toward the sanctuary, which seats approximately 1,700. “Well, every single Sunday, would you just guess, how many buildings like that we would have to build, or how many times larger would it have to be to seat the amount of people who watch at 11 o’clock?” he asked.

“193!” he exclaims.

Every Sunday, between its broadcasts on Channel 7, TBN and Daystar Network, a potential audience of 193 of its filled sanctuaries tunes in to hear Pastor Don Wilton’s messages, he estimated. Spartanburg First also owns its own local radio station, 104.1 FM, or Hangar Z, and partners with His Radio, 102.1 FM, to distribute its programming in Greenville.

Dillard noted, “Our media team, I believe, does excellence with a passion for why they do it. They are up here at the crack of dawn on Sundays for sound checks. They walk in the door at 6:30 to get things ready because they know they’re helping multiply this (church’s impact) by nearly 200 times our sanctuary.”

 

Better still is the number of professions of faith the church’s media ministry is seeing.

“And almost every day, somebody calls for the first time and gives their heart to Jesus Christ,” Dillard rejoiced. “Last year, 466 people gave their hearts to Christ through television.”

While the media ministry starts with television and radio, it grows well beyond that to offer a Facebook page, website, e-blasts, podcasts, other social media, and an app that features both its Celebration and its Genesis services, which are geared to appeal to different age segments.

“We’ve chosen to be a place where, at 11 o’clock, you’ll be in a contemporary service in the hangar that is loud and has haze in the room and lights, and Don (Wilton) is preaching in maybe jeans and a sweater,” he continued. “Yet, if you were here at 9:30 a.m., you would be in a traditional sanctuary where we have 1,700 people in the room. It’s crowded. … Don’s in a suit. He’s preaching behind a beautiful walnut pulpit, and the choir and orchestra are what our music is then.”

The 9:30 traditional service, however, is recorded, carefully edited to fit in the time format, and then aired at 11 a.m. The editing, Dillard noted, makes sure Pastor Wilton always gets to “draw the net.”