Meade native, David White To speak at TOC/FCA Breakfast and hold city-wide worship service

The Dodge City High School FCA confirms that David A.R. White will be the 2015 TOC speaker. “What a privilege to have David White accept our invitation to speak at this year’s TOC breakfast. We were concerned that after Alan Robertson – we might struggle to match last year’s event. However, it appears we may once again exceed expectations with David. David grew up in Meade and he has an outstanding story to tell, and his current movie, “God’s Not Dead,” has been a box office hit. We are blessed to once again provide a great opportunity for our student-athletes and community to hear from an amazing leader and speaker “ Jay Gifford, AD-DCHS.

In addition to the Saturday, January 24, speaking engagement with the TOC/FCA breakfast, David will conduct a city-wide worship service Sunday, January 25, at the Dodge City Civic Center.

The breakfast starts at 8:30 a.m. Saturday in the commons area of Dodge City High School. Tickets are $10 and are available through the Dodge City High School Athletic office and the public is invited to attend. The Sunday worship service starts at 10:30 a.m. and is free to the public. A free-will offering will be taken to defray expenses. A praise and worship band is being put together and several area churches have already signed on to participate.

David A.R. White has been a working actor, director and producer in Los Angeles for over fifteen years. He was raised in Meade, Kansas.

At the age of 19, without knowing anyone in Hollywood, David moved to Los Angeles. Only six months after moving, he landed a recurring role in the hit top 10, TV CBS sitcom, Evening Shade for four years. David then went on to guest appearances on such shows as: Coach, Saved by the Bell, Sisters, Melrose Place and many others.

Early in 2006, David became a founding partner in the film distribution/production entity PURE FLIX. Today, Pure Flix maintains its position as the number one Faith based studio, producing and distributing more films in this genre than any other studio. David also maintains his position as one of the most prolific actors/filmmakers in the faith based arena, as he writes, directs, produces and stars in many of the films.

In God’s Not Dead, David stars with Kevin Sorbo and Dean Cain in Pure Flix’s largest film to date. The film co-stars Willie and Kory Robertson from Duck Dynasty. Willie is the brother of last year’s TOC speaker, Alan Robertson. Also look for David’s new Sony Film which he helped create and produced, “Mom’s Night Out.” This movie premiered last Mother’s Day in over 1000 theaters. David’s wife, Andrea Logan White, co-stars with Patricia Heaton, Tracy Atkins and Sean Astin in the film.

David states, "Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety nine percent perspiration." I truly believe & love this quote by Thomas Edison.

He continues, “ Probably from like my freshman year of high school I had this desire to perform and also be involved in the show business industry. And I didn’t know what that was because we didn’t have a drama department in my hometown of Meade, Kansas. My parents always wanted all their kids to go to at least one year of Bible college after high school. I always knew that I was on my way to Moody Bible Institute when I graduated high school. So, I went there just like me my brother and my sister and my dad. Everyone one of them have graduated there. Everyone one of them have met and married their significant others there. After a year, I was the last kid and I called my dad and I said “Dad, I want to leave Bible school. I want to go to Hollywood to be an actor, to be in the entertainment industry. And there was this nice silence on the phone for a while. But my parents were so cool to where they said “As long as you follow the Lord in whatever you do, we support you.” And that was a big step.”

He continues, “I moved to Los Angeles when I was 19 and I was blessed. The Lord opened doors. I was on the sitcom Evening Shade six months after I got there and then recurred on that show for close to four years before the Lord had started putting me into the Christian film genre which, at that point in time, the only ones who were doing it were World Wide Pictures and a couple of other ones that would do fifty-minute short Christian films. So, I had done a couple of those and then God just kept giving them to me from all these different organizations — from Concerned Women for America, Youth for Christ, Focus on the Family…I would play these lead (roles) in different little movies.”

When asked about how he started Pure Flix, David responded; “There are four partners in Pure Flix. We all had a very similar vision for what we wanted to build. Pure Flix, obviously, is an alternative to what is on television and in the movies. We wanted to make…films uplift and inspire the human spirit and to make enough of them to allow people to have a true alternative. Before and when I even started out in the Christian film industry there were so few of these films. There were like maybe three Christian movies a year and they had lower production values. I think we got a lot of flak on the cheese element that was kind of branded on Christian films.

So, I believe that it was our passion to make these on a consistent flow, to make enough of them, so that people had an alternative but, at the same time, to continue to push the standards higher. I think we’re seeing that in a lot of the faith films these days. There are higher production values. We want to get the best writers possible — writers that work in Hollywood, that have been trained for years and years and years but they want to use their talents for the Lord. We want to get the best actors. We have people that work on the huge movies that also work on our films. They come over because they have a heart for this and that is the beauty of the Christian family — that we’re all here to help each other. Because of that, the Christian film industry is changing rapidly on the quality side.

When asked about God’s Not Dead in a previous interview, David explained, “Well, Pure Flix has a movie ministry. A lot of our films are used in churches throughout the United States for outreach purposes. So, we started talking to a lot of those pastors and asking them what did they feel was missing or what would really help the Body of Believers to do a film about? And it, basically, was if we could make a film about what people believe because they felt like there was an epidemic in the country where a lot of Christians don’t truly know what they believe…A lot of believers don’t know what they believe or why they believe. So the fancy word, obviously, is apologetics. We wanted to make a film about apologetics.

Now, the question is how do you do that in a compelling story. Because apologetics can get into a lot of just facts. It can be very dry. That was definitely a challenge. We had the Newsboys as friends and we loved their song God’s Not Dead and we wanted to incorporate that within the film.

God’s Not Dead is definitely an evangelistic movie. It aligns up with the Bible and that’s why so many churches across America have really gotten behind this movie. When its trailer aired on the God’s Not Dead Facebook page, we were the number-one shared trailer for the day in the world. That week I think we shared up to 50-million times because people are hungry for truth. That’s what’s important — that we make sure that truth is being told through the films that we support.

David’s passion has always been to further the Christian faith based genre with excellence in every way. His love for the Lord has governed the projects he attaches himself to. David and his wife live in Los Angeles with their three children.