Dean Smith wants to help people learn how to forgive.

Smith, a speaker and pastor from Enumclaw, will be at Maple Valley Presbyterian Church on Sunday talking about his own journey which led to the making of a film called “Live to Forgive.”

“I’m preaching both sermons that morning and, of course, the movie at night,” Smith said. “If there’s people out there who have given up on forgiveness, I believe this is the perfect time to get inspired to do it, but, also to learn how to do it.”

Mark Fisher, a pastor at MVPC, met Smith last year at a mens retreat.

“I was a speaker there and we connected,” Smith said. “He ended up watching the movie. He had his leadership team at Maple Valley watch it and it all kind of came in at the same time to their staff.”

Smith’s journey began when his mother was murdered by his step-father, Bob, when he was 12 years old.

He explained that Bob beat his mother to death with a baseball bat.

After his mother’s death, Smith was adopted by a pastor in Enumclaw, bringing something to his life he hadn’t previously had: a sense of stability.

“Before that time, my step-dad, Bob, he was my fourth different step-dad and there were a number of other father figures in between,” Smith said. “My life was really unstable and crazy and constantly moving. Then all of a sudden my mom was murdered and I became a pastor’s kid. I became a Christian. I looked like I was super happy, and I was for the most part, but … on the inside I had this very deep seed of bitterness.”

For a while, Smith said, he was able to cope but when he started college that lingering effects of his mother’s murder began to seep out.

“When I got into college I just couldn’t suppress it with humor and not thinking about it anymore,” he said. “I got into drugs and alcohol and got married at 22 then got divorced at 22 thinking I could have a loving relationship with a woman when I had so much hate and anger. I had become a loser in my own mind… knowing this unforgiveness was eating me from the inside out.”

So, in 1999, he explained, he tried a new approach.

“I threw my hands up in the air and asked for help from God,” Smith said. “I knew it was going to take a miracle but I was going to give God the opportunity to do that. I started praying, I started going back to church, I stopped doing drugs for the most part. It was a process. I got to the point where I was no longer angry. I was bitter-free.”

But, that wasn’t enough, Smith said. He felt a pull to do more, so, he began to pray for Bob.

“At first, it was pretty insincere,” he said. “After a while it became more and more sincere.”

By 2005, Smith felt compelled to contact his step-father, who had been out of prison since 1997 and was living in Tennessee.

“I remember almost negotiating with God, ‘why Lord should I have to contact him to prove I have forgive him,’” he said. “I felt, over time, that He actually wanted me to help Bob forgive himself.”

So, in 2007, Smith picked up the phone and made the call.

“I say, ‘Hey, Bob, it’s me Dean,’” he said. “There’s a long pause, and he says, ‘I knew this day would come.’ He told me later he thought I was calling to tell him I was coming after him to kill him. I told him I called him to forgive him… and we became friends that day, believe it or not.”

For a year he had monthly conversations with Bob.

Smith was serving as a minister in his church and every time he would talk with Bob, they would do a little Bible study over the phone.

“I thought things were going great for about a year,” he said. “Then he stopped calling me back. I was hurt. After all that I had done, why isn’t he calling me back?”

Another six months pass. Then Smith got a call from Bob’s girlfriend informing him the man who murdered his mother had tried to kill himself.

“I prayed for him,” Smith said. “And I knew this was my opportunity to help him and because of the freedom God had given me, I knew that I could. I decided to fly across the country in April of 2008 and I thought it would be cool to capture this on film.”

Next thing Smith knew his idea for a small video camera morphed into a film crew coming along armed with high definition cameras to document the journey.

“When we got there we couldn’t have imagined we would get the footage that we got,” Smith said. “There were some conversations that the world has never seen.”

At the end of the process, when all of the conversations were on film, it was cut together and he started showing it to people it took on a life of its own.

It has become a ministry and a movement, Smith added.

Now the movie is available in Christian retail stores across the country and will soon be available in other parts of the world.

“It’s a miraculous story,” Smith said. “Turns out it’s really inspiring people to believe that forgiveness is possible and to take that first step and enter into the process of forgiveness.”

Smith will be giving the sermon during the 9 a.m. and 10:45 a.m. services on Sunday at MVPC with the movie set to be shown at 6 p.m.

He hopes people will come learn about his journey and take something from it about their own path to forgiveness.

“If there’s people out there who have given up on forgiveness, I believe this is the perfect time to get inspired to do it, but, to also learn how to do it,” Smith said.

More information about the movie, the ministry and the movement can be found at www.livetoforgive.com.