Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
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It's so easy to get offended by what we see on television, but what God would have us to do is to pray that God would bring more Christian filmmakers into the fields to really be a presence there among them. Coming up now on First Person, you'll meet Dan Ruppel, who has a heart and vision for reaching the entertainment world for Christ. I'm Wayne Shepherd, and we'll meet the CEO of Master Media International.
Before we get to today's interview, though, let me thank you for listening to First Person. This is a weekly conversation with people who are committed to Christ and His kingdom in the various arenas of life. If you'd like to listen to these interviews in the car or anywhere on the go, wherever your smartphone goes, please look for and download our free app called First Person Interview, available for both Apple and Android phones. It's in your respective app store.
Dan Ruppel is a successful writer and producer with much experience in television. But these days, his mission is all about encouraging Christians who serve in media and entertainment, as well as building relationships with anyone in that industry by praying for them and making himself available. At our website, we'll place several links you'll find interesting as you explore this ministry, including YouTube videos hosted by Dan and his wife Peggy.
Dan, join me online to talk about what he does. I'm CEO of Master Media International, and Master Media was founded in 1985 by Dr. Larry Polin out of Campus Crusade. You had Larry on this program years and years ago. Oh, did you? Okay, yes. And he's doing well. He retired about six years ago, and that's when I came in as CEO. And Master Media is a relational outreach program.
to the mainstream media throughout really the world, but primarily focused in New York and Hollywood. And what we do is we meet with the top level of media executives, as well as very influential filmmakers. Anyone who has a real voice or effect on our culture, we want to know them.
And the reason I started with saying it's a relational outreach is because it all happens through relationship. If you go to a typical Hollywood executive and you identify yourself as a Christian, they might say, the way I see Christians is you got an ax to grind. You're going to have a bunch of hate for me. You're going to protest. You're going to boycott, whatever. And so we have to back off because the way Jesus would handle it is you befriend people. You
You show people how much you care. And so what happens, Wayne, is often like the first time I go in for a meeting, I don't know this person yet.
I'll walk in and they'll be a little guarded. They'll usually be leaning back, have their arms folded and they'll say, so what do you want? You know, and I say, I say, well, that's a, that's a fair question because I see outside your door, you've got a line of people all the way back to the elevator and you're probably, you know, they're all here until you go home at whoever, you know, whenever you do at night.
And they're probably all wanting something from you. They want you to green light their movie, prove their script, whatever it might be. But I want you to know, I believe you have a hard job.
And I, you know, you have a lot of responsibility. You have a lot of effect on the culture. And I just want to see how you're doing. I want to see if I can serve you. And before I leave, I'd like to pray for you. And immediately their arms come down, their countenance changes. They lean in a little bit.
And they start opening up and they, because once they know you care, you don't have a dog in the fight. You're not there to, to berate them. You just really care. And, um, they open up and, you know, I would say at least 50% of the time.
The conversation seems to go to family. It goes to marriage. It goes to children, a divorce, a regret in their lives. They open up very quickly. And then, you know, it's my great pleasure and pleasure.
to be able to pray with them. And it's great, Wayne, because as I go back a second, third, fourth, fifth time, pretty soon before I can even say something, they go, you are going to pray for me before you leave, aren't you? So what it is, what I see in that is the fact that
They're very powerful men and women with a lot of responsibility, but they realize deep in their heart, they're just mortal. And they think it's like, you know, I could really use prayer. I don't even know who this higher power is, but man, I could use it. You know, even if it's a good luck charm, I'm going to, I'm going to take it because so much of Hollywood and I use Hollywood in this sense that basically the media culture or the media community, it's, it's really fear-based right now.
One bad movie could be your last movie. One bad decision could be your last decision. You know, you can lose your job very, very quick. And so that's what we do. We want to be a Christian presence there. You asked me also why that was so important and now. Back when Larry Pullen founded Master Media,
There were three television networks and there were about six film studios. And that was it. And if you could form relationship with those nine executives, you pretty much canvassed the entire media spectrum. Well, as you know, that's all changed. Really, if you have to set a date, it would be 2005 with the digital revolution. YouTube comes. And what happened is twofold. One, it democratized the media industry.
Suddenly, a little kid in Des Moines can get 3 million viewers on his YouTube channel. So it's democratized where you don't have to go through a gatekeeper to get something in front of millions of people. The second thing that happened is it changed Hollywood from a geographic location to a global concept.
meaning you could do media anywhere. And that's why we see Georgia, Austin, Texas, Nashville, Vancouver. We're seeing places, and that's just the United States and Canada, but all through Europe and Asia and Africa, people are making film and television content all over the world. It's harder to
to make that connection because there isn't those nine people, you know, it's like there's, there's, there's countless people. So the other side of what master media does is we really are, are wanting to be an experienced voice of encouragement to the next generation. Uh,
My wife and I, right before COVID shut us down, we spoke at 16 Christian University in their film programs. We recently brought Act One, which is a master class in screenwriting and producing as a division of Master Media. And another thing we do is my wife is one of the co-founders of a thing called the Windrider Forum at Sundance Film Festival. And for the past 18 years, Windrider, and now in association or affiliation with Master Media,
We take about 350 Christian film students from 35 universities to the Sundance Film Festival every year for a conversation of faith and film.
And the reason that is so important is the independent film movement, which is really spearheaded. The flagship is Sundance. It's the most influential film festival in the world. And what happens is we say the Sundance winner of today is the Oscar winner of tomorrow.
And that's really where the new voices are emerging. And so we want to form relationship with that independent film community early on. So we, we developed relationships with Ava DuVernay, Ryan Coogler before he did black Panther, these people who, you know, one or two years later, they're, they're on the cover of every magazine and they're doing all the, you know, box office breaking films. We,
are forming a relationship with them early on. We ask if we can pray for them. It's a great strategic way to approach it. It really is. And the other thing I like very much, and we'll talk more about this in a few minutes, you have the Media Leader Prayer Guide, the calendar that you put out, which is so encouraging as it tells us who to pray for and why we're praying for them. And we'll get to that in a few moments. But I want to talk about you as well, Dan, because you have your own story to tell.
First of all, I got to take you all the way back.
uh, to Isaac Airframe. Now I remember, and I'm sure some listeners do as well. This was a comedy troupe that you did some very successful albums. And, uh, tell me about Isaac. You were one of the founders, right? You were the founder. Yes, I was. And, and, uh, it goes back to when I was 15 years old, I was not a Christian and I entered high school and in the drama department, the teacher introduced me to a new thing called comedy improv.
And I just took it like a duck to water. It's like, this is awesome. You just get up on stage and you just be funny and you make stuff up. This is, could anything be greater? Sounds like a dream. It was, it was just in line with everything I love to do. And so what happened is, is in the theater department, our teacher formed a little troop and then we did shows, you know, in the theater department for parents and et cetera.
And I got this idea and I said, why don't we form kind of a group, an actual group, not just in the school. But so we took about the best four or five improv players. We formed a group. We started doing like high school assemblies around the area, things like that. And then I got the
Real bold idea. And you might say a little naive too, but I said, why don't we go up to Hollywood and play the comedy clubs? They just opened the comedy store and there were all these clubs. They're beginning to open in 19, this is 1970 ish.
And I said, let's just go up there. So we started playing in the clubs and I would lie about my age. Like I said, I wasn't a Christian because they serve alcohol there. You know, at one time at the comedy store, they busted me and they said, you're not 18.
And I said, no. And they said, well, I said, they said, well, you can go on anyway. Here's what you have to do. I want you to wait in the bushes and there's this little door there and we're going to introduce you. And as soon as we introduce you, you can step onto the stage and do your set and then go right back through the bushes and never get into the bar area. So anyway, so we did that Wayne on into our college years. We were a three man group at that time. And yeah,
We were opening for Lily Tomlin. We were doing really well. In 1975, Lorne Michaels sent a team out to scour the clubs of Hollywood looking for improv groups. And he narrowed it down to my group and Al Franken and Tom Davis. And they went with Al Franken and Tom Davis. And thank God they didn't go with us because two years later, I came to Christ.
And, um, and I, I really came to Christ. I mean, I just fell on the floor convulsing saying, God, and my life is yours. My talent's yours. I'm just all in whatever you want from me, Lord. And I knew the first thing I had to do was leave the group because we were kind of doing blue humor, you know, you can imagine in clubs. And so I show up at rehearsal again, a three-man group. And I said, Hey, I guys, I got to tell you, um, I just gave my life to Christ and I'm going to leave the group tonight.
And I turned to my one partner, Dave Toole, and he says, well, last week I came to Christ and I was going to leave the group tonight. And I turned to my third partner, Larry, Larry Watt, and he said, last week I rededicated my life to Christ.
And so we just said, well, maybe we can do this as Christians. And that was really the birth of what we know today as Christian comedy. And there's much more we'll learn from Dan Ruppel about praying for the entertainment world next on First Person.
I'm Ed Cannon. The Far East Broadcasting Company partners with First Person because we celebrate the stories of people everywhere who have given their lives to Christ and serve Him. Our broadcasters in 50 countries of the world hear stories every day of people whose lives are transformed by the gospel and
who have faithfully been taught God's Word. In addition to First Person, I'm pleased that Wayne and I host a podcast, and we invite you to join us. Listen to Until All Have Heard at febc.org. That's febc.org. ♪
My guest is Dan Ruppel, who is CEO of Master Media International, a ministry reaching the media elites of this country. It's a great strategy for the kingdom to pray for these folks and to just influence them for Jesus Christ. And I think a lot has been accomplished through the years by Master Media and still is being accomplished today. But we're hearing Dan's story as CEO of how he came to this and how the Lord laid this ministry on his heart.
Dan, we told the story of you coming to Christ rather dramatically as a young man from that comedy troupe and had to change your ways. You became a Christian comedy troupe then, Isaac Air Freight, right? And you were off and running, but you became...
a television producer. Tell me the rest of your career. Yes. Uh, after about 15 years of Isaac, you're afraid I was just getting tired of traveling. And the truth is I wanted to coach my son's little league team and I wanted to stay home. So, uh, we, we folded the group after 15 years, uh, a short stint. I went into radio and I co-hosted a morning talk show with my buddy musician, Bob Bennett. And, uh, and then after that, the, I won't go into the long story, but God, God,
miraculously opened the door for me to come in at CBS television to be the supervising producer of the price is right. Okay. And for the next 10 years, I was supervising producer of the price is right. These is, this is back in the Bob Barker years. Come on down. Sure. Come on down. Uh,
and that was a treat to be able to do that show for all that time. And then a couple years later, after I started CBS, David Letterman signed away from NBC and came to CBS, and he wanted to do some shows in L.A., and I got that choice job, and for the next eight years, I did all...
uh activity for the david letterman show outside of new york city sometimes he'd do shows in l.a he'd do in san francisco but then he'd also send his mom to the olympics or the oscars or something i remember those times yes i'd produce all those shows so i did that for the next eight years also yeah
Well, again, you've had such an interesting career there. But talk to me more about your heart today to reach these folks who, you know, it's such an insecure world, as you explained earlier. And people everywhere need Christ, of course. But how often we forget and write off the people who are in the media. You know, we used to say Hollywood, but as you've explained, it's much more than Hollywood now. Talk to me more about that.
It is. And, you know, I really thank the Lord for my role right now. And I'm getting to an age where it's like, you know, I really want to leave everything I have on the field, you know, this last maybe season, I don't know. But what is so wonderful of the Lord is what we didn't interject in this conversation is periodically throughout my career in Hollywood, I'm also ordained and I've been part of four pastoral staffs. So this is a
beautiful mixture of my passion for the media and understanding of the media, as well as my heart for ministry. Yeah, boy, you're a rare bird, aren't you? Yeah, especially when you, usually people don't use pastor and comedian in the same, you know, the same sentence, but unless it's to make fun of them or something. But, you know, so when Master Media called and asked if I would
you know, take over the role of CEO. It was like, this is a perfect fit. This is what my wife and I had been praying for a number of months, really a year for this kind of ministry, and it was perfect. But what is so important about it right now is our media has shifted and
From the time you and I were growing up, we call that broadcast television. And the reason it was broadcast is you remember, Wayne, like on a Sunday night, 70 million people would watch Bonanza. I was one of them. You know? Okay. It truly was America's fireplace. And you didn't have many channels to... So really, the whole nation was watching certain programming. We call that broadcast. We were broadcasting to the...
Okay, then suddenly cable comes in in the 80s.
and the Sopranos in the 90s, and you start seeing more of a narrow cast. Now you're getting a little bit more specific audience. But when digital hit, we call that niche cast. And what it is is now, if I can go into a network and say, I can build an audience, I can prove that I have an audience of 700,000 bowlers who like to eat pizza on Monday nights and wear red shirts. Yeah.
They'll say, oh, that's a hit, 700,000. That's the way things have changed. So the audience is fractured more. They're fractured. And that also speaks into the division and polarization of our world today. Because instead of we are all feeding on the same cauldron,
of our childhood or, you know, our teen years, we're hearing different voices and we gravitate to those voices. And this is really rampant in social media. I'm not even touching that yet. Right. But what we do is we gravitate to voices that we appreciate or can identify with. And that doesn't allow us to understand the world of the other. Right.
to understand, to walk in somebody else's shoes, to understand what they're going through, or maybe, you know what it is, is God, we're all image bearers of God. We are all created with dignity, not that we earn only because God bestowed it upon us, and therefore it's beholden on us to show other people respect and dignity and hear their
what they have to say. And we're not listening to one another because we've siloed and watch only the shows and we're feeding off the same input that we already agree with. And you add on top of that then that Christians are wary. They're concerned about the content
And so we don't interact with it at all, and we abandon the field, so to speak, and we don't even pray for these folks. And that's what Master Media is helping us do, is pray for them. I was thinking of this recently, too, in terms of the Emmys. Where did the Emmys get awarded this year? They went to the streaming services. The networks are really passé almost at this point in time. And so there is a lot of change. And
We as believers need to stay in step with that, not for the sake of anything but the kingdom. We want to see people touch for Christ. Not only that, Wayne, and I agree with everything you just said, but one of the reasons I believe that master media is so important is, as I said, these production companies, networks, cable networks, whatever the entity might be, they are
are getting bombarded with representatives of every kind of community imaginable. And the community that is most present in their office and loudest is the ones that get represented on your screen. That's why you watch a show and you go, wow, I'm getting bombarded with that community. I'm getting bombarded with people that look like that. And I can't relate to that. Why?
Why? Because the voice that is missing is the Christian voice. So when we go into those offices and we say, you know what?
And again, once we've already built that trust relationship, that gives us the right to share with them openly and kindly because we've earned it through caring for them. And I shouldn't say we earned it. I should say it gives us, allows us the seat at the table. And what happens is we say, you know, depending on how you define a Christian, the very minimum of America is 60% Christian. And
And you, depending again, how you define it, it might be as much as 75%, you know, but let's just say, let's just say 60%. Do you want to possibly offend 60% of your potential audience? Why not throw, you know, put some things in there that we would enjoy or we can relate to that won't turn us off. Yeah. But see, they're not hearing that voice very much. Interesting. And the more they're, they're open. Yeah.
Network executives, we kind of sometimes think they sit in the back and go, oh, let's stick it to the Christians. They don't. They're just businessmen. They're trying to make profit for their shareholders. So we need to make a case. We do. And we just need to be a presence. We've sometimes pulled away from Hollywood. God would have us to be a Christian presence wherever he's called us.
Well, Dan, I thank God for you and for those like you who are reaching out to the media folks in this country and really representing the kingdom there. It's so encouraging. You know, it's so easy to get offended by what we see on television and some of it is very offensive.
But what God would have us to do is to pray. As you mentioned, we have our prayer calendar. But not only pray, but pray that God would bring more Christian filmmakers into the fields to really be a presence there among them. And it may not just be a big, huge film executive or a big, huge filmmaker. It might just be a grip, somebody on a soundstage that can really be a Christian presence and bring the love of Christ throughout the media community.
That's Dan Ruppel, CEO of Master Media International and our guest here on First Person. There's so much more to Dan and Master Media than we had time to discuss on the program, so I encourage you to go to our webpage and follow the various links provided, especially for the Media Leader Prayer Calendar, which you can receive each month. That's FirstPersonInterview.com.
Taking the message of Christ into the world, whether it's the media world or the unreached people of the world, is also the mission of the Far East Broadcasting Company. Would you take just a few moments this week to learn more about FEBC? One thing you can do in exploring the febc.org website is listen to Until All Have Heard, the podcast I host with FEBC President Ed Cannon. Interesting information there at febc.org.
Now, with thanks to my friend and producer, Jill Carlson, I'm Wayne Shepherd. Join us next time for First Person.