Curriculum Design
Elevate was a children’s curriculum designed to teach scripture in an age-appropriate, applicable way.
The design for this product was a concept I call “Three-Tiered Teaching.” In the first tier, live teachers connected with children by introducing a “problem of the week” to solve.
For the second tier, we examined this problem through a Bible story, using narrative techniques to provide context and make the experience memorable. Although we employed animation and creative elements, we always respected the sacredness of scripture, ensuring the Bible was presented with reverence.
In the third tier, humor played a role through contemporary sitcom-style skits, usually with two or three characters, which followed an 8-episode arc. These skits applied the problem in fictional, but often closer to contemporary settings.
Finally, the session returned to the first tier with the initial problem, where the kids, now equipped with new knowledge and understanding, helped the teacher address it.
From this environment, we transitioned to a small group time that allowed children to explore the application of their knowledge through interactive games and object lessons. We followed the small group time with a review game that used gaming to keep the kids engaged in their learning.
This curriculum was used by an estimated 5,000 churches, reaching 100,000 children and resulting in around $2M in annual sales.
When marketing our curriculum, we noticed that most sellers used a “scope and sequence” spreadsheet outlining lesson content and order for the year. While valuable, these spreadsheets didn’t capture the the experience we wanted to convey. Instead, we focused on immersive world-building to communicate our teaching contexts, using maps to illustrate the fantastical worlds where our series took place. This approach allowed us to highlight both the how and the what of our curriculum.
This endeavor required significant collaboration, with a core team of 39 people across writing, art, animation, video, and post-production, supplemented by contractors.
Environmental Design and Worldbuilding
In the early 2000s, I began my career as a Creative Director for a large multi-site church. Our central campus featured an 80,000-square-foot children’s ministry building inspired by Disney theme parks. Its central atrium, modeled after Disneyland’s “wagon-wheel” design, became our canvas for creating exciting, interactive elements. We believed a church should inspire and delight, crafting environments where children could learn about God’s love in a fun and engaging way.
Each year, our summer event, “Adventure Week,” introduced a new narrative that shaped the immersive environments we spent months designing. Instead of hiring professionals, we tapped into the talents of our congregation—architects, engineers, artists, and more—to bring these visions to life. The process felt like building our own theme park, a collaborative effort that was both rewarding and inspiring.
In 2003, our theme was a space station. Transforming our building into something that felt like it was in space was a huge challenge, but our team’s collaboration was incredible. People worked by day at their regular jobs and then spent evenings—and sometimes nights—building bulkheads, a command center, and even a centerpiece rocket. The addition of video screens and “news” broadcasts over the sound system completed the experience, creating a story that felt alive. Through this effort, we wanted the kids to feel that life with God was an adventure everyone was invited to join.
What we didn’t realize at the time was that we were forming a collaborative team that would continue working together for years, pushing the boundaries of what we could create.
The following summer, we decided to take the kids on a cartoon-style race around the world. Instead of diving deep into one location, we created representational versions of different international destinations, aiming for a theme park that feels similar to Epcot’s World Showcase. One of my favorite elements was the use of sound. We hid media players in strategic locations throughout the building so that as visitors moved from one area to the next, the music would change to reflect the new location. It took trial and error to balance the sound, but the result was an immersive experience that was worth the effort.
Next, we turned back time to the old west, transforming our building into the main street of a western town. The centerpiece was a mountain with a waterwheel and a “mine shaft elevator”—a massive undertaking led by my boss, Mike Johnson, who was a master builder. We used lighting to create a warm orange glow and added evergreen trees and a Western soundtrack to complete the atmosphere. On this project, I learned a valuable lesson about clarity over cleverness when I had to change the event’s title from “The Strange Secret of Sasaparilla City” to simply “The Secret of Sasaparilla City.” The original title, though interesting, opened an unnecessary loop in the audience’s mind, and simplifying it made the story clearer.
For our fifth summer, we took on our biggest challenge yet: creating our own theme park. We divided the building into several “lands,” each with its own theme—an undersea world, a jungle, an underground quest, and a fantasy kingdom. As our team had grown more skilled over the years, we were able to push our creativity further, combining sound, lighting, and other tricks to bring each land to life.
However, as we rehearsed a live show set within our theme park, something felt off. Everything looked good, but it lacked the authentic feel of a real park. That’s when I realized we were missing the small yet crucial details—lampposts, trashcans, park benches, and even a mobile churro stand. Once added, those elements made our theme park come to life. The lesson here is that details matter. They’re what makes a space feel real and complete, and they’re often what makes the biggest difference.
Immersive Experiences
We transformed our camp experience into an immersive, week-long alternate reality game to make it more engaging. We divided campers into three mixed-grade teams, each led by a pastor playing a narrative role. Themes like the Wild West, Space, and Video Games set the stage for yearly adventures.
The game featured goals, rules, and feedback loops tied to activities like Bible study participation, obstacle courses, scavenger hunts, and team-building challenges. Even meal times included events to earn points. Each day ended with a camp-at-night event featuring stage games, quizzes, and cutscenes that advanced the story and raised the stakes.
While devotionals, sermons, and Bible studies remained competition-free, review questions added a fun, interactive element. Campers loved the immersive experience and returned year after year, eager to dive into the next story.
Product Design
I had the privilege of leading the team behind Incredible Islands, one of the first MMOs designed for spiritual formation. This groundbreaking game gave children a unique way to explore faith through interactive gameplay, Bible stories, scripture memory, and practical application in both virtual and real-world settings.
As part of the leadership team, I crafted engaging experiences, cast a vision for the project, managed the backlog, tracked key metrics to guide development, and collaborated closely with marketing. Incredible Islands wasn’t just a game—it was a pioneering effort to merge faith and fun, leaving a lasting impact on how we approach spiritual growth in the digital age.
Narrative Design
I had the opportunity to develop LeonEl, a character created by OneHope, as a mascot for their events. They wanted to give him depth and meaning, so I crafted a backstory, complete with a fictional world and supporting characters.
From that backstory came the book A Royal Family: Stories with LeonEl, distributed across OneHope’s Latin American region. It was exciting to help shape a narrative that would inspire and engage children, giving LeonEl a story that reinforced the values and mission behind OneHope’s work.
TruPlay wanted a strong narrative foundation to connect their video games, digital comics, and animated shorts. I developed the backstory for Rhym, creating a history for its locations and shaping the world’s lore.
By defining how things came to be, I gave the team a solid foundation to build their stories. Beyond worldbuilding, I also wrote for their games and animated shorts, helping bring Rhym to life across multiple media.
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