Nearly 5,000 people are on the network’s email list; “people who want to create art but keep an ethical and moral code to our lives,” Covell says.
And the ministry has put together nearly 650 prayer partnerships, in which a Christian outside the industry is teamed up with someone on the inside.
Payne was going about his business in Illinois a year ago when he saw a blurb in some random church publication about HPN seeking prayer partners.
“And I thought, ‘Now there’s something I’d be interested in,” he says. “I’m an Anglican Priest. But I’m also an old thespian.”
Payne has stood on many a community theater stage, once playing the lead cowboy, Curly, in the musical Oklahoma. Yet he is “disgusted” by many of the movies they make these days.
“They exploit women, that’s what they do,” he says. “And they portray religious people as, you know, strange.”
Yet now he prays up to an hour most every night for the makers of those movies, and specifically for his prayer partners, two Hollywood writers whose names he doesn’t feel comfortable divulging. The writers email Payne when they need divine intervention. One of them recently asked Payne to pray that his writers block lifts and his manuscript sells. There’s been no word on whether Payne’s prayers have been answered, he says, chuckling. “But nevertheless, to me, it’s a form of ministry.”
This is very creative. If this is the same Lew Payne I knew years ago when I was a young adult, I’m not surprised with his involvement in this prayer ministry. As a I recall, he was always impressing us young ‘uns with the importance of prayer in changing lives. I went into ministry, in part, because of his influence and prayers. I pray and hope God uses him to the same effect with the people in Hollywood.