Mick Richards

Independent Documentarian
Producer/Director of Building a Difference TV series
Locations: New York City and Jacksonville, Florida

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.

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.

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 series.

Richards expanded his focus to studying national and international missions movements through a partnership with Go To Nations, a global missions organization. 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 journey 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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,” 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.

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.