"There's nothing to watch!"

That’s really the long and short of it: there is entirely too little film and TV that my wife and I feel comfortable watching with our eight children.

We bid television goodbye several years ago (hello, books – and rekindled imaginations!), but we’ve still got that DVD player hanging around. So what to do with that lingering conviction that nearly every time we insert a disc, we’re acquiescing to some level of compromise?

Knowing that many other home-centered families face this dilemma, we embarked upon a challenging course of action. We formed Franklin Springs Family Media to make films our family (and other families) can enjoy.

This is our calling: to produce films that encourage, entertain, and edify the family.

Easy enough, right?

We may have thought so, were it not for our fifteen years experience producing film and video projects. We know firsthand that while it may be relatively easy to get something made, it’s an entirely different thing to make something well. Something, say, our family might enjoy (and that might strengthen them).

This is a unique endeavor, largely because there is really no roadmap to follow. This idea of producing entertaining video geared primarily toward homeschooling families hasn’t been done (at least not that we’re aware of).

From an entrepreneurial perspective, this presents a key challenge: how much should be invested in products geared toward a decidedly niche market? How many units might we reasonably expect to sell? How can we get our products to market?

Wrestling with these questions threatened to ground us in inertia. That, coupled with our heavy workload producing video projects for clients, made it seem as if Franklin Springs Family Media might die on the vine of wouldn’t-that-be-nice ideas.

But God finally pushed us through an open door in the Spring of 2003, when He crossed our path with that of the Waller family. A year later, our friendship with this remarkable family of 11 children having yielded so much fruit in our family, we began filming a documentary about the incredible road the Wallers have traveled.

Fifteen months later, we finished A JOURNEY HOME, the story of Tommy Waller’s transition from 80 hour work weeks to a roll of biblical leadership in his family. Shortly thereafter, the film won The Jubilee Award for Best Documentary at the 2005 San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival.

We hustled our web store into existence, and began to market A JOURNEY HOME at the end of 2005. How gratifying to now be receiving reports from families across the country who have been touched and encouraged by this heartwarming and challenging look at one family’s adventurous journey.

About the same time we started shooting A JOURNEY HOME, we attended a homeschool conference in Nashville, where we were delighted to hear the wonderful Peasall Sisters perform. They’d gone from the anonymity of a homeschooling family to being Grammy Award winners for their songs on the O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack album.

Over the following year, we put together a DVD that features the Peasall Sister’s world class music and tells the story of their commitment to faith and family. THE PEASALL SISTERS – FAMILY HARMONY became our second title for Franklin Springs Family Media.

We also produced REJUVENATE WITH SERENE, a DVD featuring Serene Allison’s engaging and entertaining take on serving our families well by serving them healthy meals.

Now we're putting the finishing touches on THE FAMILY MEAL TABLE with NANCY CAMPBELL (Above Rubies). This DVD extols the value of committing to the family meal table as a high priority. We’re particularly excited about the truths of this piece. God’s work in a family can happen best when the family is gathered on a regular basis. Even too many homeschooling families sacrifice the family meal table in the name of serving their families by involving them in lots of activities. This provocative piece offers a fresh look at a time-honored way of unifying Godly families.

We’re now about the business of planning our forthcoming titles, while spreading the word about our existing DVDs through advertising and marketing efforts, primarily on the internet.

On a business level, we’re excited about this undertaking for a few key reasons. One, advancing technologies make video production more streamlined and affordable than it’s been in recent years. And we believe there is a generation of young homeschooling filmmakers being groomed to tell stories that advance God’s kingdom. Our goal is to increasingly work with these individuals – skilled at their craft, and grounded in their understanding of God and family.

On a family level, we’re excited about the opportunity to fashion Franklin Springs Family Media as a family business. Everywhere we turn, it seems we’re hearing more about the synergy between homeschooling and home businesses. We operate a busy video production office in historic Franklin, Tennessee (Nashville) where we’re doing new projects for Amy Grant; Compassion International (we’re shooting in Ecuador in April); a DVD "making of" for the forthcoming Sony Pictures Facing The Giants feature film, etc. But we’re looking forward to developing Franklin Springs Family Media as a company that we can operate (with our children) from a barn on our land in the rolling hillside of Middle Tennessee.

And on a ministry level, we’re most excited about the opportunity to use our giftings and resources to craft stories that help further turn hearts toward the beauty of a God-honoring family.