Timothy Mahoney
16 min read ⭑
“As I was driving down the highway to cool down, I said to myself, ‘I wish I had a father.’ I then heard this voice in my heart — which I believe was the Holy Spirit — saying, ‘Haven’t I been more of a Father to you than any earthly father? Trust me!’ That was a new beginning for me.”
QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT
There’s much more to food than palate and preference. How does a go-to meal at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind the web bio?
I started to travel overseas to the Middle East in the last two decades. My first trip was to Egypt just after 9/11. I was there with a small film crew to investigate evidence concerning the historical credibility of the Bible, specifically the Exodus of the Israelites out of Egypt.
Before I left, my wife, Jill, asked me, “Are you sure this is something God wants you to do, or is this something you are doing yourself?”
I held her close, looked into her eyes, and said, “Yes, I believe that I’m supposed to go and that this is something God wants me to do.”
She paused and then said, “Okay, because if something happens to you and you don’t return, I need to know that it wasn’t something that was just you. I need to know that God wanted you to go.”
If I didn’t return, I would have left my wife to raise four teenage kids alone. It was a risk, and several times on that trip, I was very concerned about our safety, whether real or imagined. But the calling on my life to be an investigative filmmaker was full of risks that led me to that trip to Egypt. And Jill had to live with those risks, which was remarkable because she didn’t always see the potential and just had to have faith.
This was my first trip to the other side of the world, and after a week, I began to long for home and things familiar. That’s why they call it a foreign land in this part of the world. One of those things that were foreign was the language, spoken and written. Arabic was a mystery to me. I didn’t know what people were saying or if there was a problem with filming in specific locations. Some languages can sound harsher, and at times, we were dealing with confrontation.
The other foreign challenge was writing. I didn’t realize how much I longed to read English, so I knew what signs were saying. I was dependent upon my Egyptian fixers to guide our crew and the filming safely through Egypt, and they did a marvelous job. Yet, I felt an uneasiness that lasted until I got on the plane to return home.
After almost a month’s leave and a stop in England to see the British Museum, we landed back in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I knew what I would do and immediately took my wife for dinner at Famous Dave’s, which is known for its barbeque ribs. It was the taste of home.
Now, Jill comes along when we travel and helps monitor the sound. And on every trip over the last 20 years, she and I will go to our safe neighborhood Famous Dave’s for barbeque upon our return. It was a way of re-entering my world.
Rio Lecatompessy; Unsplash
QUESTION #2: REVEAL
We’ve all got quirky proclivities and out-of-the-way interests. So what are yours? What so-called “nonspiritual” activities do you love and help you find spiritual renewal?
I come from a musical family; my mother had five sisters and six brothers, and they all loved to sing and play instruments in the parlor at my grandmother’s home in southern Wisconsin. I was about 5 years old when one of my aunts brought a mandolin over to our house. I sat in a big chair in our living room and played and strummed until my fingers felt like they were going to bleed.
My mother was the pianist at our church, and during this church’s Sunday night services, church members joined in the worship music with their own instruments. This was about the time that I was introduced to the Hawaiian lap guitar, so I began to play. After a year of lap steel, I learned about a new instrument called the pedal steel guitar, which is played in a lot of country music. The instrument is unique from others because it has pedals and knee levers that allow you to press them to raise or lower the strings.
I learned the instrument fairly quickly and left home twice when I was 15 to travel with Gospel groups for a few months. That cured me of wanting to be a road musician, but I still liked to play music and started receiving requests to play on a few records.
By the time I was 18, I had done a number of albums and demos as a steel player. One of the songs, “I’ve Got Jesus, and He’s Got Me,” was regularly played on the major radio station in Minneapolis’ WCCO AM! I I had a lead steel guitar turnaround. It was fun hearing it on the radio. This song came out during the Jesus People Movement when a revival swept across America.
I continued to expand my interest in stringed instruments and began to play a pick-style guitar, dobro, mandolin, banjo, dulcimer and fiddle. Uncle Mander McPherson was a songwriter and inspired me to write songs. I was prolific from my high school years until I was about 30.
At that point, writing songs was replaced by writing scripts. I’ve found that we channel our creative energies into different outlets throughout our lives. After years of not playing as intentionally because I was making films, I returned to playing music and recently helped form a new band. My wife gave us our name — EasyReaders! She came up with that when she saw us in the basement for band practice, all of us using reading glasses to see the music.
QUESTION #3: CONFESS
Every superhero has a weakness. Every human, too. We’re just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite and how do you hide it?
Being a filmmaker and an entrepreneur is about dealing with risk — the risk of making a film and not knowing if people will like it or spending money to create a product without knowing if it will sell. I’ve always worked on how to survive and make enough money to pay the bills for our companies and be profitable. The problem with these endeavors is that some things are more successful than others.
That’s why it has been hard to relax and take a break even when I really need one. This was definitely a problem when our kids were at home. I didn’t feel like we could take a family vacation, so we didn’t take many. I’ve felt awful about this and have had to ask for forgiveness.
When we took time off for a vacation, I would bring work along so I could keep up with the work and the cash coming in. I think my problem went back to the question: “Do I trust God with my life?”
We have a film, “Patterns of Evidence: Journey to Mount Sinai,” coming out in over 800 theaters nationwide as a Fathom Event October 17-18. And I’m concerned about its success.
That raises the question, “Who is our provider?” It’s a challenge to do what you can to make things successful and have other parts of your life successful as well, such as your family, physical health and spiritual health.
Hebrews 11:6 says, “And without faith, it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him” (NIV). I believe that God has called me to be a filmmaker, yet I do sometimes struggle with questioning how things will work out financially. And for that, I need to look back at my past and, more importantly, look at the Scriptures and see that God is expecting me to have faith and trust him today — that he loves me and cares about the details.
QUESTION #4: FIRE UP
Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your obsession? And why should it be ours?
I didn’t see a movie in a theater until I was 18 years old. It was my senior year of high school when I heard that there was a film called, “The Hiding Place,” which told the story of a Dutch family who, because of their Christian faith, decided it was their moral obligation to help Jewish people flee from the Nazis. So they created a hiding place in their home as a transfer station to funnel Jews out of Holland. The family was caught and sent to concentration camps, where all the family perished except Corrie Ten Boom.
The cinema was powerful, and so was the film — so powerful that I decided I would return and see it three times in one week. The cinema was not on my radar, though, as a potential career. Instead, I had an idea that I would go into radio, and I used to hang out at the local station just to learn how the magic worked.
Two years later, while listening to the radio, I heard an ad that a local college had a degree in filmmaking. By then, I had gone to many movies and loved the experience. Also, one evening at the end of a movie, while I was watching the credits, this thought came into my mind: Someday, you are going to have a movie in the theaters. So I enrolled in the program and spent an amazing year learning filmmaking. During that time, I also met my future wife, Jill, and after a year at film school, we got married and bought a house, so I didn’t return to finish my degree.
For the next decade, I painted cars, a trade my family was good at and that paid the bills. But what about my dream of being a filmmaker? I convinced my wife that we should have a recording studio in our basement as a way for me to get into the media business. It was a multi-year process to build the studio and acquire the gear and a business partner, and it gave me hope that someday I would find a way to become a filmmaker.
But as time passed, I was concerned that I would get too old and miss the opportunity to transition from painting cars to making films. So I took out a family loan and all the cash we had in the bank to make a documentary on bear hunting. My cousin Matt McPherson was an inventor of archery equipment, and I needed to make something, so we headed to Canada. The project took a year to complete, and it opened the door for me to get a job at a local ad agency.
I was successful at selling, but the owner and I started to have differences. Because he didn’t want any partners, I took a significant risk and resigned to start my own agency, Mahoney Media Group, Inc. Having an agency lets you make videos and commercials, but it isn’t filmmaking. What it did for me, though, was provide a more robust understanding of marketing and advertising, essential disciplines a film needs once it’s ready to go to the marketplace.
My personal faith led me to a deeper interest in the Bible. And my first opportunity in filmmaking came with a New York Times bestseller, The Bible Code, which I helped turn into an NBC/PAX television special as an associate producer.
After that, I began hearing about new biblical evidence at the bottom of the Red Sea and in Saudi Arabia, which was startling and exciting. The more I learned, the more I felt that it could be a worthwhile project that would capture my interest as a filmmaker and a person of faith. The other factor was that I loved uncovering mysteries, and history was full of them.
So why is it so hard to make films?
The truth is that filmmaking has many, many layers of technical, creative and management activities that make it a unique art form. It took me 12 years after starting my own company to learn that I could really jump into making a film. It would take another 12 years to complete that film, “Patterns of Evidence: The Exodus.” We were able to win a number of film festival awards, and the film was then given a 650 theatrical release as a Fathom Event on January 19, 2015. From there, it went on to Netflix worldwide and into many forms of distribution.
I am on my sixth Patterns of Evidence film, “Journey to Mount Sinai,” which releases October 17 and 18 in over 800 theaters as a Fathom Event. What is unique about this film is it has an interactive Score Card that we created, which will allow the viewer to enter into the investigation and keep score on each of the Mt Sinai proposals. To learn more about this film and the interactive materials, you can go to patternsofevidence.com.
QUESTION #5: BOOST
Cashiers, CEOs, contractors or customer service reps, we all need grace flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it’s God when it happens?
I never planned to share the events of my childhood. My upbringing was both tragic and embarrassing. Tragic because my father was so unwell mentally from the events of his past that he began to threaten my mother with death. She felt he would eventually explode and kill our entire family. So we fled from him and went into hiding.
It was a miserable time for me going from one school to another as we tried to find a place to call home. And it was embarrassing to live on welfare. The result of a broken home for many of us is a “father wound.” This wound can be found in many characters in movies like “Star Wars” with Luke Skywalker and his father, Darth Vader.
On the one hand, I loved my dad, but I was afraid of him because of his violent temper. So when we left him for our own safety, I still had a hole in my heart for a dad. Fortunately, several good men in my church stepped in and became the older brothers I needed to look up to. But I still needed a father in my life, and many times, I inwardly wanted someone to talk with about the challenges I was facing. Someone who would care and just be there.
The first time I realized that I had a heavenly Father who loved me was when I was leaving the ad agency. I had just gotten into an argument with the owner and left the building, realizing that I could no longer work there if I were going to have any self-respect. But what was I going to do? Go back to painting cars? I had a wife, four kids and a mortgage. As I was driving down the highway to cool down, I said to myself, “I wish I had a father.” I then heard this voice in my heart — which I believe was the Holy Spirit — saying, “Haven’t I been more of a Father to you than any earthly father? Trust me!”
That was a new beginning for me. I started to pray more to my heavenly Father, and it comforted me to know I had a Father who cares about the details of my life.
I also started praying more specifically, talking to my heavenly Father for guidance. I learned to appreciate Proverbs 3:6 all the more — “In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths” (KJV).
I found that sometimes in the early morning hours, between my deep sleep and waking moments, my heavenly Father would speak to me. One time, he told me, “It’s time to go back to Egypt.” I was afraid to go back a second time because of the unrest in the world. But that morning, the fear left. And if I had not gone, I never could have made the first film, “Patterns of Evidence: The Exodus.”
What I’m learning about myself is that, in my own strength, I can go a long way — but not to the level that God is calling me to. You would think that by now, I would have figured out that God is my Father, and he’s got my back. On paper, I believe this, but there are some days and weeks when I still get fearful, and a sickly feeling of discomfort comes over me. At those moments, I wonder if I’m going to crash and burn with the project. At times, I listen to thoughts that are not good and think they are my thoughts, but now I realize that they are from the enemy of my soul, whose goal is to remove me from my true destiny.
Yes, I believe we all have a destiny once we come to know Christ — if we don’t get distracted during this life journey. Ephesians 2:10 tells us, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (ESV).
I need to be energized daily with God’s words of encouragement and truth. I need to be in good friendships with other people whose faith in the Lord is solid. And I need to remind myself of his calling on me — to be a good husband, father and grandfather. I feel his call to be a filmmaker, yes, but also to become the head of a new studio, making films about people with heroic faith. And all this takes faith!
QUESTION #6: inspire
Scripture and tradition beckon us into the rich and varied actions that open our hearts to the presence of God. So spill it, which spiritual practice is workin’ best for you right now?
One of the most inspiring and difficult spiritual practices I have participated in is a silent retreat. There is one here in Minnesota put on by the Jesuits called Demontreville Retreat House. The retreat is an exercise first developed by Ignatius of Loyola. It features a series of talks and provides time for personal reflection and solitude. The concept is built on entering into a time of quiet reflection and meditation. After going through an orientation, participants are invited into two days of silence.
During the retreat, I have withdrawn completely from the world. And that takes a bit of doing because our culture is inundated with so much busyness and so many distractions. The setting where our retreat is held is beautiful, with a lake to view and woods to wander in as we reflect on our lives with the Lord and our relationships with him and others.
The hard part is being comfortable with the silence. But once you learn the discipline of silence, it prepares you to hear the voice of the Lord through Scripture, teaching and prayer.
During one retreat, we were encouraged to think of all the people in our lives who were there when we needed help. As I reflected, I thought of my Uncle Mander McPherson who was a significant influence at strategic times in my life. He taught me how to play guitar and inspired me to write songs. He helped redirect my life to find a different person to marry. So I wrote him a letter and told him how much he meant to me. I would learn later how much that letter meant to him.
When we read the Gospels, we see that Jesus went on silent retreats, too. Because it is in the silence that our heavenly Father speaks to us.
QUESTION #7: FOCUS
Our email subscribers get free ebooks featuring our favorite resources — lots of things that have truly impacted our faith lives. But you know about some really great stuff, too. What are three resources that have impacted you?
For 30 years, I’ve been meeting with a group of people who have a calling to media and films. The association is called International Christian Visual Media. This is where people like Dallas Jenkins, who is now in full production with the “Chosen” series, attended. Each year, I’ve been blessed to meet and become friends with directors, composers, writers, actors and distributors who all have an interest in and calling to faith-based films. If you’re interested in finding a community of faith-based filmmakers, check them out.
Another great resource is Genesis Impact from Genesis Apologetics. This video reveals some of the incredible flaws in the theory of evolution. Here are some more details from Genesis:
“Millions of people stream into Natural History Museums every year where they are presented the idea that life evolved on earth over millions of years. Is there a different view? Yes, there certainly is, and we believe the Bible presents the viewpoint about origins and earth’s history that actually fits the evidence.
“This movie takes on the leading 12 evolutionary icons presented in museums: the Human-Chimp 99% Myth, key ape-to-human icons like Ardipithecus ramidus, ‘Lucy’ the Australopithecus, Homo habilis, Neanderthals, Darwin’s Finches, the fossil record and transitional forms, Continental drift and Pangea, Dinosaurs, Whale Evolution, Historical vs. Observational Science and Deep Time based on Radiometric Dating. Staged as an interaction between a secular museum docent and a well-versed creationist, the actors go head-to-head on contrasting views over these major evolutionary icons. The “Genesis Impact” movie (released this Fall!) is just the start — for those who want to dive deeper into a biblical worldview on the 12 leading ‘evolutionary icons’ presented in museums, we are developing 12 training videos and a museum guidebook.”
Another resource for people interested in faith-based films is the Christian Worldview Film Festival. It’s a great place for Christian filmmakers to be encouraged in their biblical worldview, grow in the craft of filmmaking and network with others in their field.
QUESTION #8: dream
God is continually stirring new things in each of us. So give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?
During this past year, I knew I still had a series of Patterns of Evidence films that I needed to produce to complete the work I believe God has called me to do. Patterns of Evidence films uniquely show the historical credibility of the Bible through a scientific approach to matching biblical information about events and places with archaeological and historical evidence.
To date, we have made five films in this series:
Patterns of Evidence: The Exodus
Patterns of Evidence: The Moses Controversy
Patterns of Evidence: The Red Sea Miracle
Patterns of Evidence: The Red Sea Miracle II
Patterns of Evidence: Journey to Mount Sinai (part 1)
Our latest film is coming out on October 17 and 18 and will be in over 800 theaters. It’s an investigation into the real location of Mount Sinai. You can get tickets at patternsofevidence.com.
I believe that the work of Patterns of Evidence is unique because it provides multiple viewpoints, allowing the viewer to determine if the evidence convinces them that the events of the Bible are historical.
Patterns of Evidence films are available in over 17 languages in digital format. There is no other ministry in the world that has developed this quality of film presentation concerning the historical credibility of the Bible.
Our films are funded by donations through the Pattern of Evidence Foundation. We’re getting ready to produce the next “Patterns of Evidence” film, “Journey to Mount Sinai II,” but we haven’t funded this film yet. So this is where I have to have great faith, spend time alone talking with my heavenly Father, and ask others like you if they would like to join in the mission of this ministry. A mission to preserve, educate and pass on the historical credibility to the next generation. If you feel led to donate to help us produce this new film, you can do so here.
Faith.
It’s a simple idea — but much harder to walk out, isn’t it? When the world and our past experiences tell us one thing but God’s Word tells us another, it can be difficult to choose faith.
But contrary to the popular cliché, faith isn’t blind. At least, not the biblical kind. Instead, we can see evidence of our God all around us — tell-tale signs of his power, his love and his truth. Paul even says we are “without excuse” because of the overwhelming evidence around us (see Romans 1:20, ESV)!
And yet, we can choose to trust that evidence or not. We can choose to “taste and see” that God is good (Psalm 34:8) — or we can rely on our understanding. Thankfully, our heavenly Father is patient with us, gently teaching us how to see him and cling to him no matter what the world says. If we’re willing, he can lead us into adventures with him that are greater than we could ever dream.
Will we let him?
Timothy (Tim) Mahoney is an author, director, producer and host. He founded Mahoney Media Group, Inc. (1989), an advertising and production company, and in 2014, he founded Thinking Man Films and Media, an investigative documentary and media distribution company. He is the director of the Patterns of Evidence Foundation and the Historical Faith Society. A resident of Minnesota, he has been married to his wife, Jill, for 44 years. They have four married children and eight grandchildren.
