Burning Brighter Together
“It was the most surreal experience I’ve ever had in my whole entire life—hearing other people say words that I wrote down,” says Thomas. The event he and I sit down to talk about happened a month before our interview, and still, when he tells me about it, the tears come.
The script Thomas Hester wrote was performed during Base Camp Live at the Herndon Campus in February of 2019. Base Camp Live—affectionately known around Summit as BCL—is a 25-minute family production that kids get to take their grown-ups to after service. BCL helps families learn about God’s word together—all while watching hilarious, relatable characters and enjoying freshly-popped popcorn. Each week, families watch the Clubhouse crew navigate life together.
Thomas runs audio for the shows and also plays Clubhouse character Vinny. Thomas is black, and when he plays spunky skateboarder Vinny, he intentionally wears clothing that gives a nod to his race—whether it’s an MLK Jr. T-shirt or an African pendant. Like Vinny, Thomas is proud of where he comes from and who he is. Yet even above the color of his skin, Thomas knows his faith in the one who created him is most important. It’s something he thinks about often—balancing his identity as a Black-American with his identity in Christ. “[I’m] trying to submit even what I hold most dear to the foot of the cross,” he says.
Thomas first walked through the doors of Summit in 2011, and at the time, he says, “I could only count people—who were not children—that were black on one hand.” He says that he was used to being the minority, but still needed to know that even though he looked different than most of the folks he was worshiping with each week, their hearts were the same. He had long conversations with Lead Pastor John Parker and Waterford Campus Pastor Garry Abbott and found the answers he needed.
“Seeing their hearts and talking to them, and realizing they also care about the things that I care about and what God cares about,” says Thomas, “I can not only be here, but we can also join together going toward what God wants us to do.” And “join together” is exactly what Thomas did. He started regularly serving in BCL in 2016, in the midst of one of the darkest and most difficult seasons of his life. He’d just been fired from his dream job after things just “didn’t click,” and he felt like a failure.
Enter BCL Coordinator Darling Heldt and her husband Brian, or “EB,” to the scene. Thomas says that they became his family and helped him to realize his worth wasn’t in the things he could or could not do. Thomas recalls a specific conversation in the Heldts' car outside of Summit one afternoon. “They were like, ‘Honestly, if you burn down the console, we still love you. We wouldn’t ask you to do it again, but we’d still love you,’” he remembers.
“I can not only be here, but we can also join together going toward what God wants us to do.”
Love from the Heldts and the BCL cast and crew changed things for Thomas. That love allowed him to live out a dream by writing his script for the Clubhouse in celebration of Black History Month. It was years in the making, but fear had always held him back. In 2018, he mentioned writing a Black History Month sketch to Darling, and her response threw him off. “She was like, ‘OK, if you want that, you do it!’” Thomas laughs out loud as he recalls that moment and then proceeds to tell me he often has a hard time taking ideas from his head to the real world. “My struggle is waiting for the perfect time, waiting for the right equipment,” he says, “waiting for the whatever-whatever.”
Waiting for everything to be “perfect” before we take the first step—it’s something with which a lot of us struggle. It just seems like we can’t do the things until... But the truth is, we can. And he did. Darling’s sincere response empowered Thomas to just start, not to wait for everything to be perfect or wait for the fear to go away, but to lean into the imperfections and choose to pursue his passions in spite of the fear.
“It was scary and terrifying, but also great,” Thomas says, with the biggest smile on his face. “The happiest I had ever felt, and I just cried.”
The tears came because people were saying the words he had written. Thomas recalls the first rehearsal that Thursday before the show, and tells me he didn’t even make it through Darling’s first call of “Lights up!” before emotions started leaking out of his eyes. He says that he couldn’t help but pull out his phone and take video of everything because he just wanted to soak it all in and never forget the feelings.
The tears came because families would be watching and enjoying the story he thought up. When time came for the show on Sunday, Thomas says he felt every emotion at rapid-fire pace—from proud to scared to excited to terrified to hopeful to anxious. He wasn’t sure what families would think, but the second he heard the audience laugh at his first joke, he knew it was all good.
The tears came because he felt so loved. He remembers looking out into the audience and catching a glimpse of friends he hadn’t seen in months. They’d come just to support him and cheer him on.
And the tears came because he could celebrate his race and his heritage on stage.
“If we’re talking about a kingdom, or a society, not everybody has the same life,” says Thomas. One of his main hopes for the sketch was that it wouldn’t come across as “corny” or as a one-time-only “very special episode.” He is proud to be black and happy to be a part of discussions on race, but his hope is that all people in God’s kingdom would be able to offer their unique perspectives on all things.
With his unique perspective on Black History Month, Thomas’ hope was that families would be entertained, of course, but that they would also leave the theatre with expanded viewpoints. “Just opening them up to new experiences so people can have those conversations,” he says.
Thomas says that it takes more than one of his hands to count the people of color at Summit now; but cultivating authentic diversity takes time and intentionality, and there is still work to be done. And we get to do that work together. In God’s kingdom, we may all be different, but we are never alone.
Thomas’ heart’s desire is to give people of color a platform to tell their stories, and he humbly admits that he’s not the only person with that same passion. He tells me, “Somebody is doing what you want to do,” and I love this point. In God’s kingdom, having the same spark of passion means burning brighter together, not trying to extinguish each other for the sake of pride or competition. Thomas wants to tell stories, and that’s what BCL does. So he joined in. And in doing so, he's able to help us all better understand what God's kingdom looks like from his own perspective.
God has uniquely gifted and positioned each and every one of us to carry out our kingdom callings—the passion and purpose inside each of us that only we possess. Thomas writes and acts and is a whiz in the tech booth. Maybe you teach, or paint, or build, or calculate. Or, maybe what you want to do isn’t what you’re doing because you’re afraid or because things aren’t “perfect” yet. Take it from Thomas, and just start. And know that there will likely be a few tears along the way.
Asha Junot is the children’s ministry productions coordinator at Summit Church. She likes sweet tea, is exceptionally kind, and loves the opportunity to care for others and dive into their stories. She also has a handsome hound dog with a lot of personality. Her favorite place to be is curled up on her couch under a fuzzy blanket with Bible, journal, and pen in hand and a mug of hot tea next to her.