By Peter Covino
Entertainment Editor

He wrote the music and songs, directed and produced the show as well.

About the only thing Pastor Jeffrey Smith, of the City of Life Church in Kissimmee, didn’t do was print the tickets for the latest installment of  “The Blink” series.

It has been four years since Smith produced the last part of the series, a major production that takes hundreds of volunteers and months of work.

Part of the reason the latest installment of the mega-show takes four years is because of all the work involved, he said, but that is only part of the reason.

“Since the show is also geared toward high-schoolers, producing a show every four years means there is at least one show for each new group of high-schoolers,” he said.

“Blink The Door” is the fifth installment of the popular series of shows and it is the fifth show Smith has produced during the past 10 years at the church.

And just like the last few shows, it will probably have its share of controversy.

Smith said he knows his intended audience fairly well.

“To get teens interested, you have to deal not only with subjects they identify with, but it has to be presented in a way that will get their attention,” he said. “And you have to work hard to get their attention. Some churches and Christians get ticked at me for the way I present things.”

But with an estimated 85,000 viewers for the past Blink shows, Smith apparently is getting his message across in a more effective way than a typical Sunday school sermon.

“Blink The Door” presents scenes and stories taken from real life. The topics include everything from domestic violence to teen suicide.

The show is not intended for young children, Smith said.

“It has a PG-13 rating. A lot of it is heavy,” he said.

Smith said he is a fan of film and music, and that is pretty evident with “Blink The Door” and other shows in the series.

The production is presented in three different forms of art. There are the drama and comedy skits, the transitional filmed parts, which also serve as something for the audience to watch during set changes, and the bigger staged productions, such as “The Fall of Lucifer,” told with dance and hip-hop.

The latter he describes as a sort of modernized version of “West Side Story.”

Filmgoers also will recognize influences as diverse as the “Final Destination” films to a parody of the “High School Musical” series.

“We did location shooting for the filmed sequences,” he said, and got a lot of help from the community, including everyone from St. Cloud Fire and Rescue to area funeral homes.

The massive show involves some 300 volunteers, but even with all those volunteers it still is costly.

“We have a budget of about $75,000,” he said.

For the first time ever, admission will be charged for the show, but that has more to do with so many people not being able to see the show four years ago.

“We had to turn away about 2,000 people for one of the shows the last time it was performed,” Smith said, adding that the auditorium at the church seats about 1,300 people.

Even with the admission charge, half of the theater seats will be given away for free. The sold tickets are being offered to guarantee seats, Smith said.

But even with sold tickets, “Blink The Door” will not make money.

“If we sell $35,000, I would be stoked,” he said.

Smith, 38, has a long history in music going back to when he was just 17 and was signed to a music contract with a Christian record label. He has toured musically, done some acting and even wrote a few screenplays, so producing “The Blink” shows was a natural transition.

He said his next big project is a film. The screenplay is already written and he already has film distribution set up for it in the United States.

“Blink The Door” premieres at the City of Life Church, 2874 E. U.S. Highway 192, on Sept. 16. Other performance dates are Sept. 17, 18, 19 and 22 at 7 p.m., and Sept. 23-26 at 6:30 and 9 p.m. Tickets are free but are offered on a first-come, first-served basis. Reserve tickets are available online for $20 at www.cityoflifechurch.showclix.com.