With over two decades of experience in the documentary and television industry, Mick Richards has distinguished himself as a multifaceted artist, seamlessly blending his talents as a producer, director, writer, cinematographer, editor, and composer. His career began in the corporate sector, where his creative abilities quickly became invaluable to non-profit and missions-oriented organizations.

Early Career

Originally from Jacksonville, FL, Richards founded DeepLight Productions early in his career, focusing on corporate production, marketing, and locally-themed television programming such as Health Week, Dining Out, and Sports Extra for ESPN-2. He later transitioned into the building, design, and real estate sectors with themed television shows like New Homes & Designs, Before You Buy That House, and Open House, while also serving as a Board Member for the Northeast Florida Builders Association (NEFBA).

Richards was soon contracted to produce a local home makeover program for Builders Care, the non-profit arm of NEFBA that aids in repairing homes for the elderly and disabled. The series highlighted families facing significant struggles, showcasing how a community of caring volunteers and the construction industry came together through Builders Care to transform lives.

“Building a Difference” TV Series

This experience deepened Richards’ connection to storytelling that highlights how lives can be transformed through community care and transformation. Inspired by these stories, he began developing a series that would serve as a platform for showcasing extraordinary community outreach and creative missions movements, demonstrating the powerful impact of collective action. These local shows were reimagined for a global audience, leading to the launch of the Building a Difference documentary TV series, first on Trinity Broadcasting Network and then expanding to 25 other non-profits networks. Building a Difference received the Seal of Approval from the Parents Television Council for the episode “Page-Bailie Bunch” episodes.  The Dove Foundation gave the documentary a positive review, writing, “This is a wonderful inspiring documentary about a group of fantastic people and volunteers who help to make a change in one family’s life. … This is truly an amazing story of encouragement and it will encourage others to help those in need.” Volume One was released in 2009, and Volume 2: The Goodall Family was released in 2012.

Global Media Missions

After a profound spiritual experience in Honduras seeing extreme poverty up-close for the first time, Richards felt the call to expand his focus to studying national and international missions movements through a partnership with Go To Nations, a global missions organization. If he was to ever understand and tell the story of “the heart of a missionary,” he knew that he must try to become one and walk in their footsteps.  He joined the organization as a media missionary, embarking on a two-year exploration of missions and community transformation across Central America, East and West Africa, India, Thailand, and the Philippines. This project resulted in a comprehensive media campaign, producing over 100 pieces of media for Go To Nations and laying the foundation for a new documentary series focusing on creative missions movements.

Experiencing transformation through the lens of his camera had a profound impact on his personal life. He quickly  discovered that studying missional solutions to the pain and suffering of diverse cultures was bringing answers he had been seeking on his own spiritual journey. For him, the call was not just understanding the ‘mission’ or become a ‘missionary’; it was evolving into a deeper pursuit—understanding how to ignite and build a missional ‘movement.

He later led a small team of young missionaries on the Movements of Compassion Tour, an initiative of Building a Difference, which eventually brought them to New York City for an extended mission. In NYC, Richards quickly became deeply connected with various creative missions movements, such as Urban Hope NYC, CitiVision, Hope Day Network, and Love New York, producing media to promote these causes. This work allowed him to build an extensive library of powerful missions footage from NYC.

The Jesus Week Movement

Richards was then invited to serve as the Director of Saturate NY Metro, an organization dedicated to uniting churches across every zip code in the NY Metro area through creative city-reaching strategies and free resources. This role led to an opportunity to help develop the missions strategy and organizational structure for the Jesus Week Movement, a “saturation to transformation” movement focused on city missions and community transformation. As Co-Founder of the movement, he was soon operating as the Executive Director, where he coordinates with over two hundred churches and four hundred regional leaders to establish church and prayer coalitions throughout the Northeast. Additionally, Richards spearheads regional outreach initiatives each summer and leads communication efforts, fostering connections among regional initiatives and leaders, capturing these efforts on film for the growing independent documentary project.

Media Production and Movement Building Leadership

In addition, Richards took on the role of Media Coordinator and Project Leader for Saturate USA, an organization aimed at mobilizing people as “missionaries in their neighborhoods” with a goal of reaching 120 million homes across America. He created media and led Saturate projects in cities like New York, Long Island, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Chicago, the Twin Cities and Florida, helping churches adopt zip codes, receive free materials, and develop strategies to strengthen local church and prayer coalitions.

Chicago Film & Media

Richards also served as Media Lead with the Firebase Movement’s Love New York and Love Chicago initiatives, adding to his extensive film archive of creative missions movements. He then produced and directed a short film on the Love Chicago movement as a result.

Richards spent three months in Chicago as a Cinematographer and Second Unit Director for Chicago: America’s Hidden War, a documentary film that made the Oscars shortlist in 2021. While in Chicago, he served as Media Coordinator for Jesus Summer, a 40-day outreach event, capturing footage for a Chicago Missions Story as part of his developing documentary series.

A “Saturate” Experience: First Coast United

In the summer and fall of 2019, Mick Richards launched and led the “First Coast United” initiative back in his hometown Jacksonville, FL, as part of the “Saturate” experiment. The goal was to unite churches, organizations, and leaders across the First Coast area to adopt every zip code in four counties and mobilize church members to personally deliver Gospel material to every home. Richards assembled a leadership team, pastors advisory council, and worked closely with hundreds of churches to build a comprehensive strategy for the initiative. He documented the entire process on film, capturing its growth as a successful model for other cities. As a result, hundreds of churches came together, new relationships and partnerships were formed, and impactful media pieces were created to showcase the initiative’s progress. A highlight of this collaboration was the unprecedented partnership of 23 churches in a single zip code, working together to reach every home as a united force. Additionally, the First Coast United radio show was launched in partnership with Pure 107.3FM, further amplifying the movement. This groundbreaking story is planned to be featured in an upcoming documentary series.

The Fire

Early March 2022, on the very morning Mick Richards was preparing for a filming trip to Nigeria, tragedy struck. His Staten Island rental home, which also housed his post-production studio, was engulfed in flames. The fire consumed everything: his camera equipment, editing studio, music composing station, and all his personal belongings. When the firefighters finally allowed him to sift through the charred remains, it wasn’t the loss of physical possessions that devastated Richards—it was the loss of his life’s work. Twenty five hard drives containing his entire library of documentary footage spanning decades of work, plus every backup drive in the home, were burned and melted beyond recognition. Picking up each scorched drive, waterlogged from the firehoses, Richards felt his heart sink under the weight of an unimaginable loss. His life’s mission—capturing God’s divine work through media and storytelling—seemed irreversibly destroyed.

In a dark moment of desolation, Richards faced a profound spiritual crisis. How would he ever continue his mission when every story, every God-ordained moment captured on film, and every movement-building strategy data and documentation, had been reduced to ashes and erased from existence? The thought that these irreplaceable treasures, capable of changing lives, might be lost forever was devastating. Yet, despite the overwhelming emptiness, quitting was not an option. Richards gathered every melted hard drive from the smoky, muddy ruins, meticulously cleaned and dried each one, and sent them off to a data recovery company, holding onto a fragile hope. Maybe, just maybe, one or two drives could be salvaged.

For weeks, Richards waited in a nearby hotel, transitioning to a new place to live, even questioning his purpose in moving forward, while enduring the deafening silence from the data recovery company. In the meantime, his partners and supporters, both locally and globally, lifted him up in prayer, believing that somehow, against all odds, something could be restored. Then, three weeks into this surreal experience, the phone rang. On the other end was a shaken voice from the data recovery team. “I don’t know how to tell you this,” the representative began, clearly stunned. “In all my years, I’ve never seen anything like this. Our technicians believe they can recover 100% of the data from all 25 drives. It’s a complete miracle. I have never seen this before.”

That phone call wasn’t just the miraculous recovery of invaluable footage—it was the restoration of Richards’ spiritual calling. What could have marked the end of his journey as a media missionary became a powerful testimony of resilience, faith, and the miraculous grace of God. Richards moved forward with renewed purpose, from the ashes of a tragic fire to the flames of a “holy fire,” knowing that no tragedy, no opposition can erase the mission that God has called us to…as long as we are willing to stay faithful to that mission.

“The Holy Flood” Film Premiere

During the summer of 2023, Mick Richards spearheaded the Jesus Week Movement’s bold and aggressive outreach initiatives across seven regions, launching seven distinct 9-day events from June to August. Over a span of 10 weeks, Richards personally visited and filming as many outreaches as possible. This added a wealth of new content and powerful “God stories” to the vast collection of footage he has been capturing since 2017. By the fall of 2023, Richards began the intensive post-production process for a 13-part documentary series, highlighting missions movements in New York City, New Jersey, and Philadelphia.

On June 1st in Springfield, NJ, Richards premiered a 2-hour, 45-minute film version of the series, called “The Holy Flood,” (a name borrowed from Pastor David Beidel’s book on how his “Saturation” strategy was birthed out of the devastating effects of Hurricane Sandy in 2014), which showcased the impactful work of the collaborative efforts of nonprofit organizations and churches throughout the Northeast. The film was met with overwhelming praise, earning a standing ovation from the audience and many accolades to come. Following its success, the film has been submitted to the ICVM Crown Awards in five prestigious categories: Best Documentary, Best Evangelistic Presentation, Best Director, Best Editing, and Best Cinematography.

Upcoming Projects

Currently, Mick Richards serves as Executive Director and Co-Founder of the Jesus Week Movement, and as a media missionary with Go To Nations. As a documentary filmmaker, he is developing new documentary film projects under DeepLight Entertainment, completing an independent documentary series on community transformation, and continues to produce creative film and media, collaborating with global non-profits and missions movements. His series on global missions movements, featuring the work of Go To Nations and GloDev, moves towards completion with powerful stories taking place in Honduras, Peru, East Africa, West Africa, India, Thailand and the Philippines.