Dea and Kathy’s daughter, Carissa Hawksworth, shares her personal testimony this month…

“Growing up, every member of our family worked to support the mission of Warford Ministries. I remember selling Christian books and t-shirts at the back of my parents’ meetings when I was about 12, excited to use the credit card machine and give people exact change. Whether we were organizing things for a crusade or praying for people late into the evening, each member of our family was involved in the ministry, which was a key aspect of our family’s identity.

As I grew older, I did not feel that I had the same evangelistic call and gifting that my father had, or the gift of service that my mother showed. Because of this, I was doubtful as to how the Lord could use me to further His Kingdom. I’ve always been creative and appreciated storytelling, film, and books, but those things seemed “unholy” or less important than the key roles of traditional ministry. My initial goal had been to enter the film industry, but at the age of 17, I had an encounter with God where I knew that I was called to follow in my family’s footsteps of a life of ministry. Still, when I began attending Life Pacific College in 2003, I really wasn’t sure why or how I would be able to further the family’s mission of spreading the Gospel around the world. How could God use my artistic gifting to do that? So, I put aside the dreams of using these things to follow God’s call and our family’s ministry code. Life Pacific College reached University level. While attending Life Pacific University (LPU), I met Carole Shelton, the Arts Director, and a professor at the University. Rather than seeing my artistic gifting as something that could get in the way of ministry, she encouraged me to view it as a ministry. She challenged me that if God was the great Creator who made so many beautiful things, He would want to use those beautiful things to invite us to encounter Him and connect to Him. Slowly, I came to see my artistic gifting as something I could use for the Lord. Just as some could use storytelling to spread false doctrine or create horror, I could use it to help people to know more about God, find healing for themselves, or work to better understand how to love and serve others. It became my life’s goal to find ways to use the arts in ministry.

After graduating from LPU, I took a job as a Children’s pastor at a church. There, I began to experiment with how to use the arts to invite the kids to come to understand God better. I started writing stories that could be used in VBS events, where each night contained a play and a cartoon that would teach an important Biblical truth in a creative way. Inspired by the Parables of Jesus, I worked with a team of individuals to craft stories that would invite the hearer to understand key themes through everyday terms. For example, the parable of a search for a lost coin was translated into a story about a child looking for a lost toy, enabling children everywhere to understand these concepts of God’s Kingdom. During that time, I worked with dozens of volunteers to minister to hundreds of children through the arts. We used VBS events to help raise money for Water Wells in Africa, partnered with Foursquare Mission’s Press to write tracts for other locations, and shared the Gospel with hundreds of children at expansive events.

Wanting to know how to better use my storytelling skills to help this ministry, I decided to attend Regent University (Pat Robertson, founder) to get my Master’s in Theater, with a focus on Theater in Ministry. For almost 2 years, I worked to learn how to act, direct, and write stories that would speak truth and life to those who hear them. I kept working with the team to craft better methods of connecting with the children we ministered to through the arts, and we eventually began writing weekly skit series that our church used to help children encounter God through the arts. Over this 7-year period, I truly developed my understanding of teaching, as I wrote concurrent curriculum to help aid the volunteers in teaching Biblical truths.

When I became pregnant with first son, my ministry focus changed to being a mom. My oldest son had serious health issues as a child, so I stepped back from a season of ministry with the church to focus on caring for him. However, God used that season and my master’s degree to open a door for me to begin teaching a course at LPU. There, I began teaching classes on how to use the arts to help people connect to God, ourselves, and each other. While there had been theater events at the school for some time, I worked to integrate the Biblical model I had used at the church and the University. There, I began staging theater productions that were secular in nature, but that could be used to tell “parables” about how we should operate as Christians. In every playbill, a devotional lesson, relevant scripture passages, and a discussion guide invite viewers to not only watch an entertaining show, but to allow the Lord to use it to speak into their lives. The program started small, with just a few students. While in the past, I had worked with volunteer experienced actors, most of the students at LPU had no experience with theater. I began to make the process of the production not only about crafting a good show to teach people vital lessons, but about crafting the actors to use their gifts for the glory of God, and to see that every ability He has given them can be used for His purposes.

As I spent time investing in the students, I would pray that God would allow me to know who needed what role. Each time I worked to cast a production, I would ask the Lord what He wanted to reveal to His children through this process. Often, it’s incredible to see how important this aspect of casting is. At times, I will feel led to put a certain actor as an individual who was working to forgive their dad, not realizing that the very person I cast has been abandoned by their father. Over the course of the four months of rehearsal, this student was able to forgive and reconcile with their parent. At times, I would feel led to cast someone as a strong, noble character, not realizing that they felt weak and unseen. Time and again, I have watched God use the rehearsal process to help students to heal from past wounds, or learn new aspects of their personality, gifting, and abilities.

As I became a full-time professor at LPU in 2021 and was moved to an Academic Dean in 2023, I recognized that I needed to pursue my education further and felt led to get a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Higher Education, Leadership, and Administration. I knew that this degree would help me with my teaching and administration duties but again felt that this would mean sacrificing development of my key passion, using the arts to help people to understand God, themselves, and each other.

Managing a PhD while working full time, volunteering as the Chairperson of a K-8 Christian School and helping with Foursquare Scholars Association was not an easy task to take on. Additionally, my children were still young, and I was concerned about managing my job, schoolwork, and family. God gave me a word when I began the program to both know “He would make this easy” and “Not to give up on the the call of the arts.” Over the course of the past three years, I took many classes to allow me to better understand how Higher Education can work, from how to write academic policy to the accreditation process. While physically and mentally taxing, the Lord truly did “make the process easy”, providing me with strength, support from my family, and support from my work to be able to complete a 4–7-year degree in only three years.

When it came time for me to write my dissertation, I debated on what I should write about for many days. Finally, in a conversation with a professor, she asked, “What makes Your heart feel full?” I shared about my passion for seeing students use the arts to get to know God better and to develop skills for their personal lives. I shared about a student who had grown in confidence, found healing, and understood their identity through interacting with a program that teaches these elements through the arts. She encouraged me to do my research on how this process works, and I decided to focus my dissertation on how transformational leadership can be used to develop skills in students through the performing arts.

Writing the dissertation took a full year, but the time felt encouraging in addition to being stretching. I was able to interview students who had come through a performing arts program that was directed by a transformation leader and was amazed at how much this process can not only grow students in their social skills and self-confidence, but also how it can be used to heal them, teach them, and develop them. The results of my study only reiterated what the Lord has been trying to teach me for the past 20 years of my life since I first went to Life Pacific College: that He wanted to use my skills and my experiences to do something mighty for His Kingdom. While others may be called to preach the word of God from a pulpit or evangelize on the streets, my call from God is to use the arts to help people find Him. I teach my students that God will use any gift, experience, or story in their life to further His kingdom, if they will let Him.

As I write this, I am flying to my graduation for my PhD at Liberty University. There, I plan to take a few days of prayer and solitude, to ask God how I can now use my skills to further develop and expand His Kingdom, both in Higher Education and through the arts.

I would encourage you to do the same. Take some time to sit with God and look at your gifts, your stories, your experiences. Perhaps you have the call to be a traditional pastor, a teacher, a prophet, or an evangelist. Or perhaps you feel like I felt: that I didn’t have a gift that could be used for God’s kingdom. But 20 years after leaving traveling with my parents, I continue to expand the impact of our family’s ministry by training up Christian leaders for the future church, in the workplace, and in the world.

I continue to develop students through the arts, helping them dig deeper into their relationship with the Lord and find healing in the process.

I will persist to use every gift God has given me to help people to connect with Him. If you choose to allow Him, I know that God can and will use your gifts and stories to further His Kingdom in ways far beyond what you could imagine!

This summer, LPU is sending me to Japan in June to attend a National Foursquare Gospel Church Conference. Pastors, staff, church members, and youth will be attending. I will speak at the event and introduce LPU, encouraging leaders and their congregations to pursue in-person or online education through our programs in church ministry, theology, worship arts, psychology, business, or leadership. We provide further education from the Certificate level to our newly developed Doctor of Ministry. Imagine sending trained missionaries, evangelists, and teachers who already know the Japanese language and culture, from L.A., a historic revival center, back to their home country, Japan, to spread the gospel !

My husband, Andrew, and I have supported Nathan financially monthly while he is in Japan and, of course, with our prayers. As Nathan’s big sister, he seeks my counsel quite often by digital means. I look forward to spending a lot of time with my brother. We’ll vacation and see famous sites together as a family. But Andrew and I will also give our testimony, teach, or pray for individual needs where God opens doors and leads. Nathan and a pastor have arranged some of these for us and my parents also! Thank you for being an extension of Warford Ministries, my dad and mom’s ministry, and my brother Nathan’s missionary/evangelist work. We expect a good report for you in the next newsletter! Thank you each one for your prayers!

Carissa (Warford) Hawksworth