Veteran stuntman performs for God’s glory
ARMSTRONG, BC - "From reading his Bible for upwards of seven hours a day, Jimmy Broyden had come to believe that Jesus is Lord. But before the action movie stuntman - a drug addict for more than half of his 28 years - could commit his life to Him, he decided he needed a sign.
“Get me off drugs," he recalls praying, “in a way that I'll know it was You."
Two weeks later, Broyden had all but forgotten his prayer, when he rode up on his motorcycle to a red light in North Vancouver. It was just after getting off work, when he would routinely go home and get high.
“I'm waiting for it to turn green," he says, “when all of a sudden, I realized I hadn't done drugs in two weeks. I couldn't believe it. I'd had no desire to do drugs. I pulled over, and I just wept and I bowed my knee right there and said, 'Okay, Lord, I'll follow You.'"
That was in 1993. Broyden has been sober ever since. He and his wife, Sandi, and their seven children now live the rural life near Armstrong in B.C.'s North Okanagan.
Broyden's life today stands in sharp contrast to his fatherless childhood. Born in Toronto in 1965 to a 14-year-old single mother and raised by his grandparents, Broyden decided at age six to become a stuntman. When he was 11, he started doing drugs.
In 1991, Broyden moved to Vancouver and began working with stunt coordinator Bill Ferguson, a Christian who Broyden describes as “a real gentleman."
But while Broyden was soon living out his childhood dream, he began wondering if that was all life had to offer. “At the same time," he says, “I came to realize that there was a God. I just never bought into that evolution stuff."
Once he accepted Ferguson's confident assertion that this God he was seeking is called Jesus Christ, Broyden has never looked back.
Four years ago, Broyden formed his own film company, On Fire Films. Two of his sons, 13-year-old Isaac and nine-year-old Jesse, also began their own venture, Broyden Bros. Pictures, making and selling their own short films. Recently, with the help of what Broyden calls a generous “love gift," they began work on their first feature film.
When he was doing stunts, Broyden says he “enjoyed people watching me perform this feat that they wouldn't consider doing." But now, he believes his calling is to make films where Christ gets the glory.
“I've got stories that I want to tell," he says, “true stories from some of the people from days of old, like Jonathan Goforth, a Canadian missionary from Toronto. I want to make feature films of these folks."
As both a stuntman and stunt coordinator, Broyden has worked on numerous films and TV series, including Air Bud, The X-Files, Firewall and I Robot. His stunts will again be on display with the release in September of Courageous, the latest film from the producers of Fireproof.
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