Jason Lee has served at Northwoods Community Church for 16 years in various roles, including that of information technology director and online campus pastor. He currently leads the church’s digital creative team (video storytelling and video production) and mentors others in the organization.
Lee has served in technical ministry roles in churches in Tennessee and Illinois for over 22 years. He’s been involved in Church IT Network (CITN) since 2007 and currently serves on its board of directors.
Church Production Magazine (CPM) sat down to learn more about his church, career, and life adventures in this 5 Minutes With.
Our leaders saw the need to have someone focused on digital processes and problem-solving to help all of our ministry leaders adapt to the new landscape.
CPM: What is a digital innovation pastor?
Lee: Digital innovation pastor is a completely new role that was created at Northwoods coming out of the challenges we faced during the pandemic. Our leaders saw the need to have someone focused on digital processes and problem-solving to help all of our ministry leaders adapt to the new landscape. I get to help build new tools and ministry processes, including developing our mobile application, processes in our church management system, and helping the digital creative team find exciting ways to share the continual stories of life change God is doing in our community. People ask all the time, “What is that?” when they hear my title, and I often tell people I am a digital project manager. Being the digital innovation pastor is probably one of the most fun roles I’ve had because we continually get to tackle new challenges and find creative solutions to help our ministries remove roadblocks and help them achieve their part of our vision to help broken-world people experience complete freedom in Christ Jesus.
CPM: When did you become interested in production and how did you learn about it?
Lee: I became interested in production as early as late elementary school when I would sit next to my dad as he ran audio at our church. I started in junior and senior high, mixing audio and helping with lighting at my local church for weekend services and youth services. My interest in tech continued through high school, being involved in theater both onstage and participating in tech between scenes.
CPM: How has your career evolved into church production?
Lee: While I’ve been in vocational ministry for 22 years, I’ve been in and out of church production roles during that time. I felt called to ministry during my senior year of high school and chose to attend Milligan University (in Elizabethton, Tennessee) to pursue ministry with a dual major in communications (TV & radio broadcasting) and Bible ministry. From that point on, I’ve held technical roles in several different churches, including producer, communications director, tech director, audio engineer, IT director, and online pastor.
I have always had a technical focus and a passion for the church using any technology possible to share the gospel, so my role has continued to evolve. My current role, which is leading and coaching digital creatives, leans a lot on my experience in my prior roles helping our creatives be their best at what they do by implementing processes and project planning. I’ve lived on both sides of the creative and operational side, which has allowed me to build unique relationships with leaders in all technical areas of the organization.
Northwoods Church believes that local churches can be the wellspring of hope in every community. To that end, by the year 2030 we hope to plant 20 regional churches in the United States.
CPM: Tell us a little about your church and what makes it unique.
Lee: Northwoods Community Church started in 1990 with a vision to reach the 150,000 people in the greater Peoria, Illinois, area who did not have a relationship with Jesus and needed a church home. Now, more than 30 years later, Northwoods continues to flourish and impacts thousands of lives every week. Originating in Peoria, campuses now serve the communities surrounding, in Canton and Chillicothe. Online ministry reaches many thousands more through the web, social media, and streaming—not only in Central Illinois but all around the world.
Learn more about The Surge Project at https://surge.org/
Northwoods Church believes that local churches can be the wellspring of hope in every community. To that end, by the year 2030 we hope to plant 20 regional churches in the United States—equipped by training from the Northwoods School of Ministry—and 3,000 churches around the world through our partnership with The Surge Project.
Jason’s partner in ministry is his wife, Natalie, and they have two sons, Jonathan and Nathan. In his downtime, he enjoys water and snow skiing, a hot-air balloon chase team, fishing, and taking naps.
