The air on the National Mall was already hot by 6:30am. Not at a podium. Not in the crowd. Behind a lens, watching, and participating in, one of the most historically significant public gatherings in recent American memory through a viewfinder.
The air on the National Mall was already hot by 6:30am.
You could feel it was going to be one of the hottest days of the year.
Everything was set. Everything had come together. The stage looked great. The house seating looked great. The fences were up, the security in position, the generators humming. Everything in order. Everything ready.
That's where I spent May 17th. Not on a stage. Not at a podium. Not in the crowd. Behind a lens -- watching, and participating in, one of the most historically significant public gatherings in recent American memory through a viewfinder.
I teach camera operators that they are worshippers first. I've said it hundreds of times. On Sunday, I lived it.
This was not a typical worship service. There was no single church style. No one denomination's fingerprints on the whole thing.
It was something different.
It was an affirmation. A remembrance. A declaration.
Organized by Freedom 250, a public-private partnership tied to the White House and the America 250 initiative, the event was designed to mark our nation's approaching 250th birthday with a public rededication of America as One Nation Under God. From 10:30am to 6pm on the National Mall, thousands gathered for what organizers called a National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise, and Thanksgiving.
The lineup was unlike anything I've seen assembled on one stage.
House Speaker Mike Johnson opened with a formal rededication prayer. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spoke. Rabbi Meir Soloveichik represented the Jewish tradition. Cardinal Timothy Dolan delivered a message. Jonathan Roumie, who plays Jesus in The Chosen, spoke about prayer and America's identity. Sadie Robertson Huff brought her story. Robert Jeffress, Jentezen Franklin, Jack Graham, Jonathan Pokluda, Samuel Rodriguez. Chris Tomlin led worship. Blessing Offor and Aodhan King performed alongside military bands and ceremonial choirs.
Different voices. Different streams. Different traditions. One God.
I've produced a lot of worship. I've been in a lot of rooms where something significant happened.
This one was different.
Not because of the size. Not because of the names on the stage or the hundreds of media credentials in the press pen. But because of what it was actually trying to do.
This wasn't a church trying to get you to believe something. This was a nation trying to remember something it already believed.
There was less preaching and more testimony. Less persuasion and more declaration. People weren't being told who God is. They were gathering to say out loud, together, what they already knew: that He has been here from the beginning.
That is a different kind of gathering. It carries a different weight. A different sound. You feel it in the room before anyone speaks.
What struck me most was the unity.
Southern Baptist and Catholic. Jewish and Evangelical. Charismatic and traditional. Reformed and Pentecostal. They were not blending their theologies. They were not pretending their differences don't exist.
They were choosing something larger than their distinctives.
That is rare. And it is genuinely beautiful when you see it.
The through-line was not a worship style or a doctrinal statement. It was the simplest possible declaration: that this nation was founded on the conviction that its freedoms come from God. That 250 years later, that conviction still stands.
Somewhere in the production day, it landed for me.
The gathering was itself a demonstration of what it was celebrating.
Thousands of Americans from different backgrounds, different traditions, different theological streams, gathering freely on the National Mall to honor and worship God in the way they understood how. Nobody was required. Nobody was coerced. Nobody had to agree on everything to stand in the same place for the same reason.
That is the freedom America was built to protect.
It is the most American thing imaginable: free people, freely worshipping, freely declaring what they believe about the source of their freedom. On the ground where the founders walked, in the shadow of monuments to the people who made it possible.
I got to watch all of it through a lens.
I've spent 25 years behind cameras at moments that matter.
Worship services. Concert films. Stadium openers. Race broadcasts. Thousands of live shows at every scale.
Every single one has required the same thing from me: presence. You cannot capture something you are not actually in. The shot that carries emotion is the shot made by someone who felt it. That is not a technical principle. It is a spiritual one.
On May 17th, I was behind a camera on the National Mall as my country remembered itself. As faith leaders from across the theological spectrum declared together that we are not finished. That we are rededicated. That the next 250 years begin from the same foundation as the first.
I had a camera. I had a job to do. I did both things at once.
Worshipper first. Camera operator second. Still the right order. Always will be.