Five Stone Media

My Amplify Story actually started a few years ago on a tour bus in Washington D.C. I met Richard Voelbel who was one of the founders of Amplify. He heard my story and encouraged me to call Amplify when we returned and I ended up presenting at an Amplify meeting in September 2017. 

At that time, we had created three films about the life and story about a guy named John Turnipseed that we were taking into prisons and halfway houses, but we weren’t sure what was next. What we did know is that the men and women we worked with were at some point victims of some kind of family trauma in their lives before they were engaged in criminal activity. We wondered if some kind of trauma storytelling would be in our future. 

Fast forward a year, and as a participant in Amplify’s Learning Academy, I was introducing myself and the work of Five Stone Media when another participant in the room said this was really interesting as she was a retired trauma therapist who had been praying for an organization like us to come alongside her for two years. She offered to bring therapists and survivor stories of trauma to us! 

Since that point we now have 30 therapists involved with us along with a team of pastors. We have done 35 interviews of trauma survivors and have a new curriculum called Life Support which launched in February 2020. Amplify has been an important part of our lives for the past few years. Thank you for investing in people like us and creating a space for meaningful connections to be made!

Steve Johnson, Executive Director