This Way Network: Michael Gavlak & Jefferson Drexler

Michael:
Look who’s here, Jefferson Drexler. Oh, I can’t hear you yet.

Jefferson Drexler:
Oh, you can’t hear this?

Michael:
Oh, now I can.

Jefferson Drexler:
There we go.

Michael:
I saw your lips move earlier and there was no sound. But yeah, I can hear you perfectly now.

Jefferson Drexler:
It’s the hat trick.

Michael:
I didn’t spend enough time on my hair. I got up, took a walk and then I did my… I do two shows a morning.

Jefferson Drexler:
I’ve seen that.

Michael:
So you start your day off with the Bible and I get to sit here and just listen to it and take notes for 20 minutes and then run out of time, trying to.

Jefferson Drexler:
I was just bummed that you didn’t get to the Romans part, the end of that passage is awesome as a parent.

Michael:
That’s why I mentioned it.

Jefferson Drexler:
Here’s all these terrible nasty, terrible things. Oh, and disobeying your parents.

Michael:
Oh yeah. Oh, that’s right. It’s on there because that’s where it starts, right? Your parents want to love you and raise you right. And all those other things are not a part of that system. That raising you right. All those other things. And so the disobedient is the beginning of where all those people have ended up.

Jefferson Drexler:
Yeah.

Michael:
Good to see you, my friend.

Jefferson Drexler:
Good to see you. So what’s the flow of this? How does this work?

Michael:
This is the way I tend to describe it, is I’m super busy, I got hired back to my show. The show where if… I don’t want to say it on here, but…

Jefferson Drexler:
Ta ra ta ta.

Michael:
Right. There you go. Perfect. It’s a part of our culture. It’s an iconic, it’s the force be with you, may the force be with you, it’s something that’s ingrained itself in our culture. And I get to be associated with that little tune that you just hummed.

Jefferson Drexler:
Uh-huh.

Michael:
It’s just weird. So, that’s an 8 to 10 hour day.

Jefferson Drexler:
I honestly was shocked that you were still doing this after… I thought it would be all hands on deck today.

Michael:
Well…

Jefferson Drexler:
Everybody get every angle.

Michael:
I worked till midnight last night. So every editor at the show was on last night or yesterday. I started at 2:00 to midnight. So it’s a 10 hour shift, a little bit overtime. And I think Sunday’s automatically time and a half.

Michael:
So, I got a couple of days work in last night. Then they don’t let anybody go on vacation on Mondays, right after Oscars. And then I have the rest of the week off. So I’m super, super busy right now. In fact, I’m not even doing this show and the other show the rest of the week. I pre-recorded Bible every morning, Tuesday through Thursday. So this is an announcement for anybody who sticks around and watches this show, that watches that show. It’s all been pre-recorded. You’ve got me there talking, but it was interesting commenting on the Bible out of order.

Michael:
But I was saying something, the chat session. So I do Bible every morning in the chat session. It just came together right before this job, what my eight to nine hour day, 40 to 50 hour a week. It’s, how am I going to have time to create content or hang out with people? So the content I’m creating is Bible commentary. And the other content I’m creating is my social time, chat session. I get to hang out with friends.

Michael:
So you ask about the flow. That was a long, long answer to your question. What’s the flow of this thing. So for some people watching this, they don’t know who you are. You’ve already been on the network, but you haven’t been on this show. So you’re new to the show, but not new to the network you appeared on. Can you recount the last time you were on the network?

Jefferson Drexler:
Last time I was on our executive producer from Christian Podcast Central, Joel Fieri and I… Because Joel’s the Executive Producer, he’s the one that makes this happen. Without him there is nothing. And I’m the guy that pushes the buttons. So I’m the technical guy. And then in addition to that, I have my own podcast called Parent Like You Mean It.

Michael:
Got it. So you are half of, basically 50% or a flip side of a coin of Christian Podcast Central, right?

Jefferson Drexler:
Yeah.

Michael:
He’s the force behind it, and you are the mechanism. I don’t know.

Jefferson Drexler:
Sure. I always just say, I’m the guy who pushes the buttons and I know which buttons to push at the right time.

Michael:
Well, it’s an interesting dichotomy, because even in your relationship with him, the phrase heaven and earth is this two-sided coin, right? It’s something about existence that is material, earth and something that’s immaterial, heaven. And they’re always existent together. Heaven is everywhere.

Michael:
If you ask astrophysicist those 11 dimensions and it’s a three dimensional donut, some kind of weird description. Where am I going with all this? You have a knowledge base that makes the technical side of things happen and Joel has a knowledge base or he has a will. That’s a spirit.

Michael:
I’m getting real deep, real fast. Sorry. It’s just because I listen to some podcasts and some of them go into these psychological breakdowns or metaphysical… Sorry, metaphysical breakdowns of reality. You as Christian Podcast Central, is that your prime? No, you have multiple roles and tasks. Tell us about yourself.

Jefferson Drexler:
Yeah. I wear a lot of hats.

Michael:
Biggest hat rack I’ve ever seen.

Jefferson Drexler:
Basically here at North County Media Center, which is the studio facility that we’re at, I’m the General Manager there. So we have both Christian clients that come in, ministry-oriented clients. And so I help facilitate their things. But then we’ve got people like Hewlett Packard or ESPN, or other clients.

Jefferson Drexler:
This is what’s really cool, is they come in, I open the door for them and make sure the stage is all set for what they need. They pay a kings ransom to shoot here, because they’ve got these giant budgets. And what’s really fun is that they’re not even aware that the money that they pour into for their studio rental or equipment rental, whatever, helps fund our whole ministry. So I have those two hats that I wear.

Michael:
Because that Joel is both…

Jefferson Drexler:
Christian Podcast Central.

Michael:
Joel, isn’t just with Christian Podcast Central, he also… That’s his… So does he own the property or is he just owns the lease?

Jefferson Drexler:
He owns all this. This is a really cool story. Back in the… I’ll give you the Readers Digest version.

Michael:
You’re sitting in a church, right? Aren’t you?

Jefferson Drexler:
Well, it used to be a church. It actually used to be. This facility, I was the video production pastor.

Michael:
So you’re on holy ground.

Jefferson Drexler:
Facilities. Well, it’s a warehouse. So we, Joel and I met, and he just started sharing some vision of how could this place be used by God? And I have a career in broadcasting. And so I’m, well, we could do this. We could set up that, we can help out these missionaries. And he goes, well, I’ve got missionaries. We can do this and that.

Jefferson Drexler:
And after 10 years starts rolling, it’s been one thing after another. That both of us have just said, all right, God, you’ve given me some resources. You’ve given me a skill set, whatever it may be. You show me the next stepping stool that you want for me to step on and then move and then move. And there’s times when he’s moving us forward and foolishly, we think, oh, well, that’s exactly where God’s sending us. And he’s, no, no, I brought you here so I can move you over here so I can move you back, so I can move you over here.

Michael:
You know what God does? The way he operates perpetually, head fake, head fake. Ha, ha, told you. He’s constantly… He’s got you going over here. He’s got one hand over here and it’s doing this over here. And then he turns you and he’s, oh, that’s what I was really doing, ha, ha. Right?

Jefferson Drexler:
So I spent the last three days running sound op actually. And I’m typically not a sound operator, but I can do it, for a project, that at first I was, oh, okay. I’ll do it because it’s an easy three day gig.

Jefferson Drexler:
Well the bottom line is it’s a promotional video to try to get this effort moving to rescue girls out of human trafficking. And I would’ve never even received the phone call had I not been affiliated with the network and with the people that are here. And then with the North County Media Center, the facility here. That’s how everything just lined up. And I’m, all right, God, thank you for winding me up over the last 10 years to take that phone call, to help with this three day project. And where it goes, I don’t know. I just know I’m trying to be obedient.

Michael:
You have a contact, that is one of the most important contacts you can have. That should be bathed in prayer. Right now, Lord, thank you for this opportunity for Jefferson and for Joel to be associated with this amazing effort that you clearly have inspired. There is no refutation to that argument. Lord, you are opposed to human sex trafficking. Lord protect those young ladies, deliver them in your name. Amen. Woo, sorry. It’s my genius.

Jefferson Drexler:
No, no. Because that was my in my life for the last three days constantly. It’s, oh gosh, we need to pray. We need to pray. We need to pray. Because it’s some hardcore nasty stuff out there.

Michael:
Yeah. It’s evil.

Jefferson Drexler:
Yeah.

Michael:
There’s no other definition. People that say, oh, evil’s just a construct of a human social interaction. No, no, we’ve.

Jefferson Drexler:
Have them do a ride-along, do what we just did.

Michael:
Say that again?

Jefferson Drexler:
I said just have them, those people have them come to a ride-along. I pride myself. I have four sons and we are constantly having a mantra in our house, saying do not be afraid. Bible says 365 times, do not be afraid or have no fear, whatever it is. And we are not fearful people, me and my family. But there were times this weekend, I was, all right, God, if you don’t get me out of this safely, then I’m going to end up with lots of broken ribs and a black eye.

Michael:
So this was a shoot. You went on a shoot?

Jefferson Drexler:
Yeah. We had a film crew and I was.

Michael:
I thought they came into the studio.

Jefferson Drexler:
No, no, this is down… We were going down to Mexico. We were going down to the deepest parts of Southern California.

Michael:
Can you say… Can you name the ministry or who it is? Can you name drop or anything? Or is they prefer not?

Jefferson Drexler:
Yeah. No, we can’t really name. There’s NDAs and things like that.

Michael:
Okay. All right. I actually, now that I understand what you just went through. The weekend before… I’ve got to tell a story. So I work… You work in a…

Jefferson Drexler:
Wait. Does it star Will Smith because then that’s a more fun story.

Michael:
Dude. Knowing where I work, I worked last night. I worked on it. Literally, when I’m done here in the next 18 minutes, I’ll be turning around and I will see nothing about Chris Rock and Will Smith for the next 8 to 10 hours or whatever.

Michael:
So we’re not going to talk about that now please. Oof, that just… Okay. Get me on a tangent. So I had just started working in Hollywood. So you work at a production company, you do what Hollywood does, but outside. And I got my foot in the door 17 years ago, something like that. So right within two weeks of starting my first gig, working on a reality TV show, a friend of mine who is a Christian filmmaker, that’s when he was doing a documentary or an expose on prostitution down in Tijuana in human trafficking, exactly what you’re talking about.

Michael:
And he needed somebody to speak Spanish. Okay, so he needed somebody that could… So we went down and our contact, and my friend has the camera. He’s got a hidden microphone, all that. And I’m a translator, but there’s also a former, a Mexican police officer. And he’s our guide to the district where it happens, where you can just cross the border and go, this deep, dark, ugly side of human culture.

Michael:
And the deal was that I would pay and take a hidden audio camera into that room and talk to her and interview her and get her age, try and get… They said, you just ask her for her birthday. She’s going to think about it. She’s going to think about it. Ask her when her birthday is. She’ll have to think about it. Because she’s doing math in her head and they don’t know math very well. She’s been doing this for years. She doesn’t go to school. She doesn’t know math. And just find out where she’s from and what her family thinks about what she’s doing, if they even know.

Michael:
So I did it. I went in and it was, in the outside world everybody thinks I’m a creep going down there to do something creepy. And I sat in that room across from that girl for 20 minutes. And she said, well, you can’t just leave right now because people won’t… It’s not going to seem like a normal session or whatever. And I just prayed and prayed and shared Jesus with her and then left and then found out that the thing didn’t actually record. I was so pissed.

Jefferson Drexler:
Oh.

Michael:
Right. I was, why God? Why did that just happen? It didn’t record.

Jefferson Drexler:
Wow. Well, okay, let me give you the brief story that we did. we went down to TJ, same neighborhood I’m sure. And to an area where, as our escort told us taxi cabs don’t go here. There’s no street lights, it’s sketchy.

Jefferson Drexler:
And there was one of the guys that was with us, who used to be in the industry and said, I want to get a shot in front of this tire shop where the drug lord and his crew would fill the door panels in my car with drugs and then send me on my way. We start going down this road, it looks really sketchy, but there’s some little things that are changed. And then we look up on the wall and instead of saying the name of the tire shop there, it says.

Jefferson Drexler:
We’ve come to find out the drug Lord came down with cancer, became a Christian before he died, converted his entire family and the neighborhood. Shut down his entire drug operation, turned it into a church. And now his family’s there saying now our fight is not against police or against the law, our fight is against the evil one. To bring God’s word to our neighborhood here.

Michael:
In the depths. Oh my God.

Jefferson Drexler:
Can you believe it? It’s those types of moments where you’re just, God is alive and well, even in the darkest recesses of our world.

Michael:
Dude. Okay. I guess we have to talk about Will Smith and Chris Rock. We have to talk about Will Smith and Chris Rock now, because what you’re saying is… As you’re saying this, what you just talked about was an Apostle Paul type story, right?

Jefferson Drexler:
Right.

Michael:
This is a guy… Apostle Paul was sanctioning… He was literally sent to find and kill Christians or bring some back to throw to the lions. That was the Apostle Paul’s job. Find some Christians and throw them to the lion or throw them in the middle and throw rocks at them until their heads cave in. Do whatever, take the women and children do as you please.

Michael:
That was an apostle. And so you’re talking about a drug dealer, who’s, I don’t care what my guys do as long as I’m living happy. And then he’s confronted with his mortality or Paul has the Damascus Road experience.

Michael:
So as you’re talking about, God takes something that was evil and converts it to the greatest thing it could possibly be, deep. People couldn’t come in there and penetrate that and say, we’re going to cut through the drug culture. It had to come from the inside.

Jefferson Drexler:
Out of God. Yep.

Michael:
It had to come from the inside. And then I reflect on what I do. I’m going to turn around here and Romans chapter one, all those people in that audience I’m looking across. And there’s some good people in there. There are godly people in there. If Chris Pratt was in that room last night, then God’s got his agents all over that, embedded deep in. God’s doing something.

Michael:
If Jim Caviezel could have been in that room. If you’re a known commodity, you can get in, you have access, you can get in that room. I don’t know who was there and who wasn’t. But I am in that room. I am… Metaphorically, that room ended last night, but that room is what I’m going to be… Well, my show, the show I work on, we’ll be working on for the next two weeks, at least. And all of the ones that previously, we have all the footage that we always reflect back. That’s all we do is spend time in that room. This show that I’m on.

Michael:
And I’m a man of God and God doing something. So I’m just excited about the future. What are you doing? What’s next? So you just told us what you worked on. What’s coming up on your agenda?

Jefferson Drexler:
Great question. So we’ve got several different things going on. One, just this afternoon I’m shooting another four episodes of a podcast by a comedian named Thor Ramsey. He’s he’s been around for decades, back with Bananas. And he does a political or news headline satire show now.

Jefferson Drexler:
And so we’ll be shooting that this afternoon. And then we’ll shoot a month’s worth of content. And then I got to edit it all down. And then of course I’ve got an episode of my own, Parent Like You Mean It, that I shot just a couple days ago. That I talk about, my wife and I had a car buying experience recently, and how the changing of words within the car buying… A great deal does not really mean a great deal. And so how important is it that we have real words with real meaning.

Michael:
They have meaning.

Jefferson Drexler:
Right. And then how that.

Michael:
I know where you’re going with that.

Jefferson Drexler:
Yeah. The bottom line is…

Michael:
A very important nominee, right?

Jefferson Drexler:
Right. Exactly.

Michael:
You can’t define that. I don’t know.

Jefferson Drexler:
If we don’t have definitions, then we just simply can’t operate.

Michael:
When you go to relieve yourself, you define yourself a certain way. When you see that word… You go to relieve yourself. Oh, I’m supposed to go in this direction. Wait, you instinctively… Okay. Let’s not go there. We’ll get in trouble. Because this is on YouTube, right?

Jefferson Drexler:
There you go.

Michael:
We’ve talked a little bit behind scenes stuff of what’s going on. We’re building our own thing. Obviously we’re using the things that already exist, but we’d want to have our own thing, so that we can talk freely about a bunch of stuff. We can define words all we want.

Michael:
But as you were… You get clients all the time and then you are a turnkey operation. You really have to do everything and that’s what makes your skill set valuable. When you’re doing it, what do you love? And when you’re doing it, what do you hate? The favorite parts about this production process and your least favorite parts.

Jefferson Drexler:
Yeah. This sounds like an answer without an answer, but quite honestly, the part that I love most is simply working with other people and helping other people see their vision come to fruition.

Jefferson Drexler:
Now, if they need me to just run a camera or if they need me to completely storyboard and direct and create, because I can wear pretty much all the hats of a production, whether it’s sound or… It sounds like I’m laying out my LinkedIn resume.

Michael:
No, this is good actually.

Jefferson Drexler:
I do post production, I can write. Yeah, exactly.

Michael:
Okay. Keep going, keep going.

Jefferson Drexler:
Look here to see. And honestly I enjoy all of those aspects. My foundation was in broadcast journalism. So I had to learn how to be a one-man band and tell stories. And I’ve always loved doing that.

Jefferson Drexler:
What do I hate? I hate the marketing side of it all. I hate having to find the right keywords and talk about the right criteria that people are clicking on in order to get the right Google search or Google analytics. That’s the part that I miss, when I was a boy and used to just tell great stories and people would listen. But there were only three channels then.

Michael:
Yeah. More voices, more places to find those voices. And it’s a catch-22 sometimes. But you mentioned something in your list of your skill sets, storyboarding, do you draw, or do you use a software?

Jefferson Drexler:
I tend to go old school. So I do all this stuff in the digital world and I use computers all the time. And yet when I’m actually starting out writing or outlining, or if I’m at the rudimentary portions of a project, I’ve got a yellow legal pad and I’m actually writing with pencil and notes are going… My son just laughs at me because he’s, you know you can do that on an iPad. And I go, I know I bought you the iPad.

Jefferson Drexler:
And then for storyboarding, I usually get some templated thing or on a whiteboard and I’m just drawing stick figures. But a lot of the stuff I’ve been doing over the last several years has been more unscripted or documentarian type stuff. And then you’re only doing the story boarding once you see the footage that you have. And then you start filling the blanks when you go back and get this other shot.

Michael:
Yeah. It goes in a different order. You can do it in a different order, if you’re doing that. The big budget stuff, you want to be very efficient. You want to know every angle, make sure it’s preset and who’s going to walk across the screen at what time. You got to think it all through.

Jefferson Drexler:
Yeah. And those are the more fun ones to edit too. Because then I’m just painting by the numbers.

Michael:
Right. You visualize it all, you communicate that vision to the people who pull them levers and push the buttons. And then hopefully when that record, that button is pushed, you’ve captured it. So it falls into place, it’s already organized.

Jefferson Drexler:
Yeah. Unless the guy going to go in and minister to a underage prostitute, then they don’t hit record. And it all comes back full circle.

Michael:
God why? God, why, why, why did that button not get properly pushed or whatever? Well, you hit on it, several things. And I wanted to go on tangents. And then I went on a tangent and I forgot what the tangents were. Isn’t that communication. Don’t we all do that?

Michael:
I am about to go on vacation. Actually, I need to say this to the audience. I need to do a little commercial. The things scrolling, the email address. If you want to become a part of what we’re doing here, This Way Network is available and open for everyone. You can become a producer.

Michael:
If you live near Drexler, maybe you can come and work for him. I don’t know. We are open to whatever people want to do. If you have an idea and just come and contact us, reach out to us at thiswaytimes@gmail.com or if you just want to spread the word about this on other platforms, those platform addresses are scrolling below.

Michael:
But I am going on vacation. So audience, I’ve pre-recorded the Bible every morning show that happens before this show every morning. And we have our first guest host of the chat session. So I’m doing Monday. I’m going on vacation Tuesday through Friday. So Tuesday through Friday, this show will be guest hosted by none other than Matt McWaters. He’s one of our producers here on the show. He has his own YouTube channel, a couple actually. He has a couple shows on the network.

Michael:
And he’s back. He’s been doing a job, but he came back and we’ll see what happens. We think he’s going to continue to thrive with us here at This Way Network. So tune in, he’s got some guests lined up. There’s a commercial for you, Matt, for tomorrow.

Michael:
Oh, Don Riddell is also part of our team. Please like, subscribe, tap the bell to get alerts that Bible every morning is coming on and share this everywhere. Thank you. All right. There, commercial over. Boom.

Michael:
Tell us about… Now your Parent Like You Mean It. I love the name. I really love the name, but it also tells me I’m really going to get convicted if I start watching, because I’m a parent. It’s, man, don’t we always feel like failures as parents?

Jefferson Drexler:
Well, I’ll be real honest with you, in full transparency, there is a several month era where I didn’t put out any new content, because we were having some extreme failures under my own roof. And it was one of those deals, gosh, how can I authoritatively give people advice on parenting with intentionality, when I feel I’m barely hanging on with my fingertips here.

Michael:
What a hypocrite I am to tell other people…

Jefferson Drexler:
That’s what I felt, yeah. And I had a buddy of mine tell me… This buddy of mine and I, we have a mentor in common who had a huge moral failing a number of years ago. And one of the things that we kept saying was, everything that he had taught us straight out of the Bible, straight from God’s word, none of that was nullified by his own bad behavior or his own circumstances. The word of God is still true.

Jefferson Drexler:
And so my friend was encouraging me saying, look, Jefferson, if you’re still living out things and encountering things that speak of God’s truth, especially towards parents, you can’t keep that inside. Because God’s giving you those words in order to tell other people. We found over the course of several decades now that, and by we, me and my wife, my parents, my in-laws, that God speaks through his people and you don’t have to be a published author. You don’t have to be a pastor of a megachurch to spread his truths and encourage and guide and give examples of how God wants to work through his people. So I must hit record again and start going.

Michael:
Oh nice. And that’s brave and bold. And I thank you for sharing that. And I really feel this episode is special and rich. Anybody who happens to watch this, I really feel people will be enriched by the words that you’ve just said. Maybe some of the words I said.

Michael:
As you were talking, the real nature of this existence. It’s so biblical to see people you would not think are from God being used by God or saying things, are speaking truth. That’s an enemy king or whatever, but God is using that person. And then the good people King David sleeping with his friend’s wife and murdering him. The bad things, the failures. Yet that as a man after God’s own heart.

Michael:
So, I don’t want to say, some of the worst genocidal maniacs spoke some truth. How did they get as powerful as they did? Because people were drawn to truth. And then there was something behind it. They used that truth telling, drawing power for their own nefarious goals. Well, we just solved all the universe’s problems here, Jefferson.

Jefferson Drexler:
Well, you mentioned David and that’s one thing that, real quickly I’m, okay. We know that David did all those things you just said, and God still used him mightily, through his lineage came Jesus Christ. So assume.

Michael:
Even in the kingdom after those things.

Jefferson Drexler:
Yes. So, let’s make the safe assumption that you haven’t had that kind of affair. You haven’t murdered the husband. You haven’t done all these things. Let’s just assume you haven’t done those things.

Michael:
Yeah.

Jefferson Drexler:
How much can God use you?

Michael:
Good. Yeah. Right. And that’s why the Bible, it’s those stories in the Bible that even the skeptics say, wow, this has the texture of true history. They’re not candy coating it. Their greatest heroes also seem to have done some of the worst things. Moses was a murderer. He murdered an Egyptian before God used him mightily. Right. Gosh.

Michael:
Hmm. Yeah. And then there’s Paul, right? Sanctioned the stoning of the first murder, Steven. All right. So God has something for all of you. Don’t think he’s not using you. He already is.

Jefferson Drexler:
You’re not off the hook.

Michael:
Yeah. You just need to line up with what he’s doing. Hey, good to see you, my friend. You must come back. We barely scratched the surface. I love you. Jefferson.

Jefferson Drexler:
Have a great vacation, Mike.

Michael:
Bye.