Tim Frakes Productions

Candace Minster – Spiritual Journey


This story reminds me of summer. Candace Minster is an Environmental Education Coordinator at the White Violet Eco-Justice Center, a ministry of the Sisters of Providence of St. Mary-in-the-Woods, Indiana. I recorded this story for 30 Good Minutes, WTTW, Channel 11, PBS, Chicago on a blazing-hot summer day.

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Honoring MLK, KKK Cross Sculpture at Chicago Temple

If you are in Chicago’s Loop, stop by the First United Methodist Church at the Chicago Temple and check out a sculpture based upon a cross that was burned on the lawn of Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi in the autumn of 1963. The students were being encouraged by Ed King, the campus minister to go into the city and to try and desegregate the churches on Sunday morning.

That not only led to the arrests of the students, but also led to the KKK burning a cross on the college lawn. Ed King kept the cross and gave it to the United Methodist Church who were in the process of trying to desegregate the denomination nationally. So, this cross became the symbol for the desegregation of the United Methodist Church in the 1960′s.

Eventually, the cross was taken to Pittsburgh at the general conference and walked around the conference hall.  It became a rallying point. Later, the cross was given to Gerald Forshe, a pastor in Chicago, who brought home.  He took it to Jack Kearney who was a very well regarded sculptor in town.

Kearney took that charred wooden cross, encased it in a kind of skin of metal, so that it wouldnt disintegrate. On it, he placed the obviously African American, distressed, truncated Christ. And so Jerry has had this sculpture for over 40 years in his own possession.

But when Jerry was very ill last spring he wanted to make sure that First United Methodist Church at the Chicago Temple received it and put on public display. The cross is a gift to the church that we can make available to people who visit and want to know the story. This cross not only referrers back to 1963, but it, holds a great deal of power for us today.

This summer, First United Methodist Church at the Chicago Temple had a guest who came to worship. He was a retired university administrator from Mississippi. He saw the figure on the cross and immediately said, “That is James Chaney.” James Chaney was one of the three young men who were murdered as they tried to register voters in Mississippi in 1963.  Chaney was the only African American among the three. And so at least for that person, he saw in this figure, that historical moment.

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Cook, Write, Pray


Despite challenges, Tom Christensen has learned to trust God in every circumstance. Here is the testimony of a single parent, letter-carrier turned chef, author and cancer survivor. Tom is a member of Lombard Bible Church, a part of the Christian and Missionary Alliance.

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Carrie Newcomer – 30 Good Minutes, Spiritual Journey

This is a spiritual journey I produced for 30 Good Minutes, WTTW Channel 11, PBS, Chicago. Singer and songwriter, Carrie Newcomer, drawn to the social justice and peace focus of the Quakers, writes songs about the sacred in the ordinary things of life.

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Sayira Khokhar Spiritual Journey, 30 Good Minutes


Sayira Khokhar – 30 Good Minutes – Spiritual Journey
This is a spiritual journey segment I produced for 30 Good Minutes, WTTW Channel 11, PBS, Chicago. Sayira is a young woman who grew up in Chicago and tasted the backlash of anti Muslim sentiment in the years following 9/11.

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Parker Palmer Spiritual Journey, 30 Good Minutes


This is a spiritual journey segment I recorded and produced for 30 Good Minutes. Renowned educator and Quaker writer, Parker Palmer, says one of the biggest things he has learned in life is that the direction of the spiritual journey is not upward but downward, to what Paul Tillich called the ground of being.

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“I begged him not to die.”

This is a story about grief I recorded in June 2010 for Hope for Life, a ministry of Herald of Truth in Abilene, Texas.

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Moody Radio Testimonial: Carolyn Keith


Here is a story I recorded and produced for Moody Radio. Carolyn Keith’s life forever changed with the accidental death of her son. Through this tragedy Carolyn has learned what faith and hope are really all about.

Moody Radio owns and operates 35 radio stations with a Christian perspective on the news, interactive talk, teaching and inspirational music.

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Chris Fabry, Moody Radio

Writer and broadcaster Chris Fabry is host of Moody Radio’s “Chris Fabry Live!” I produced this short video as part of a series for Moody Radio in 2009-2010. I recorded Chris during a live broadcast the day after I returned from Haiti following the January 12, 2010 earthquake. With dust from the rubble still in my throat, I sneezed while filming during a live segment. At the break I apologized. Chris responded by putting me on the air to talk about Haiti!

Eskimo Testimonies


Every now and then, I think back on a visit Jim Quattrocki, Bob Elliott and I made to Alaska’s Seward Peninsula in September, 1994. Eskimo Testimonies is a 7-minute video we produced for Mosaic, the video magazine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

We spent 12 days touring Eskimo villages like Brevig Mission, Wales and Shishmaref, meeting its people and recording their stories.

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