Alan Robertson, the “beardless brother” of the Duck Dynasty clan, and his wife Lisa recently sat down with Lumination to discuss faith, family, Duck Dynasty and their newest book, A New Season. The Robertsons were on campus to speak at Lipscomb’s Summer Celebration.
A&E’s Duck Dynasty aired its first episode on March 21, 2012. The show has since broadcast 101 episodes over nine seasons, and it holds the record for cable’s most-watched nonfiction telecast for the Season 4 premiere. On August 14, 2013, the Season 4 premiere drew a total of 11.8 million viewers.
Lumination: What’s your latest book, A New Season, about?
Lisa: It’s about our family; It’s about us when we were growing up, and the things that shaped us — the mistakes that we’ve made — both in our life and our marriage. It’s also about what God can do when you completely turn your life over to Him and allow Him to reshape you and redirect your path. It’s really about love, forgiveness and redemption. It’s a great book! Everyone should read it.
Alan: There’s a teaching aspect to it as well — “Here’s what God taught us to help you in your relationships.” It’s a little bit of a teaching book as well as a book just about our lives.
Lumination: What’s the biggest lesson a college student could learn from your book?
Alan: The best thing about our book is that it teaches you what not to do. If you take a college kid or a young person that’s entering into marriage — if they can learn some things about what not to do or what to do, there’s no way that they’re not going to have a better survival possibility for a relationship. It’s kind of like college, you come to learn, and with a relationship, you’re learning. I encourage all young people entering marriage to seek premarital counseling and commit six or eight weeks to it.
Lumination: What do you think the best thing is that you’ve learned about each other after 32 years of marriage?
Alan: This should be the rest of the interview! You tell them all the great things about me.
Lisa: I’m trying to think; she said the best thing . . . .
Alan: I know! And you can’t even come up with anything.
Lisa: I think the best thing I’ve learned about Alan is that whenever the chips are down, he’s got his boxing gloves on, and he’s going to be right there with me. Whatever it is, we’re going to solve it together. He’s not going to flee and run away; we’re going to do it together, and we’re going to be together.
Alan: I think Lisa is right. About 15 years ago, it was either make it or break it; we were either going to stay together, or we weren’t at that point. I think that today after we made that decision, there’s an “ironcladness” about both of us. We’re not going anywhere. We’re still imperfect people, and we still make mistakes.
Lumination: How long did you pastor, and what made you decide to stop being a pastor at your home church?
Alan: Well, I don’t get paid to do full-time ministry any more, but I still kind of do just because of the nature of the show. Whenever I was a preacher, I never got invited to Lipscomb, Harding, Abiliene or Oklahoma Christian to speak. I’ve been invited because I was on a TV show and became well-known.
I would have loved to be invited to these places when I was a preacher because I thought that was the pinnacle of what I wanted to do, but I realized that God has His own way of opening up paths of ways for you to do ministry that He wants you to.
It was a hard decision for me to leave my work of 24 years since that’s all I’d ever done. But, because we had this whole other thing with national television, He was going to broaden out my ministry scope to be much bigger than I could ever imagine. My ministry opportunities have just broadened and changed basically. Instead of having one church that I was responsible for, it’s just now a broader scope, and it’s been very rewarding. If I wind up back in the pulpit again, though, that will be okay!
Lumination: Speaking of the show, Season 10 is premiering soon. What can we expect in this upcoming season?
Lisa: Craziness.
Alan: I know we had some funny stuff in there. We have a big competition between the wives and the brothers, which was very interesting how that turned out. A promo they’ve been doing is there’s a statue that Willie orders, which is very unflattering of his gut.
I feel that, creatively, we’re doing some of the best shows we’ve done so far with this season that’s about to come out and the season that just finished airing a couple months back. We’ve rebounded and are coming up with some really funny shows, and I think people are seeing that. I laugh as much on our set as people do watching the show. In fact, I have to watch it because I end up laughing so much in-scene!
Lumination: Do you feel like you face any extra pressure or demands from being on a reality show?
Alan: I think you do; I mean everything takes more time to develop since people want to know more about you. Also, so many great opportunities have come our way. Both in the sense of what can I do for the Kingdom, but also just how can I have the most fun? I can do this, or I can go play in a celebrity golf tournament in Florida. You face those kind of decisions every week and every day. To sort that out, whenever you’re trying to be a godly person and make a big impact versus just cool stuff I’d like to do, that’s hard. There’s obviously some positive things we’ve been able to use for good, too.
In the beginning, did you ever expect the show to take off as much as it has?
Alan: I never imagined it. We feel like, though, that people connected because, first of all, it was funny, and it was a family show. I think they saw us poking fun of ourselves, and people liked that.
It wasn’t set out to be a spiritual show; it was supposed to be a funny show, but spiritual people were doing it. I try to encourage people trying to get into the media world — don’t make it dirty or anything, but make it entertaining, and then you can tell your story. Everyone wants to get the Gospel preached and the story told in the 30 minute time they have the audience.
Entertain, or do whatever it is you’re trying to accomplish in your film or television show. Do it where you’re building an audience, and then you can tell your story. The greatest ministry that I feel like we’ve done is not on air with Duck Dynasty, but Duck Dynasty provided a platform for us to now do ministry [outside of the show].
We got on a cruise ship two years ago, and the boat was full of 3,000 Duck Dynasty fans. We had Dad doing a devotional at 7:30 in the morning on a cruise ship. Lisa and I were doing a marriage class. This wasn’t a Christian cruise. Half of them [the fans] the night before were up in the casino, but because Dad was there, they show up for the devotional, and he preaches them the Gospel, and they’re blown away because they’ve never heard anything like that before. Later that afternoon, unplanned, we’re up there in the pool baptizing people . . . on a carnival cruise!
Now, we didn’t say it was going to be an evangelistic campaign and plan all this stuff. We just used our platform. We put the Gospel out there, and people responded to it. By the end of the four days, we’d baptized over 200 people on this cruise ship. That’s when it hit us. Just because people like the show doesn’t mean they know Christ.
Lumination: Since you didn’t intend for the show to be a religious show, what gave you the idea to do the show in the first place?
Alan: We first had a show on the outdoor channel that was a hunting show, but it had reality elements to it. A production company later contacts Willie and says, “I think you guys can be on national television — cable,” so we thought, okay, I guess this is the next step. We filmed two pilot episodes, and that’s kind of how it came to be. I think the first night we had 1.1 million viewers, and so we thought, oh man, that’s a failure, because we were comparing ourselves to Swamp People and all those other shows. We didn’t realize that you have to build an audience.
The network was ecstatic to come right out of the shoot like that, and they were right. By the end of Season 1, we passed Swamp People. By the time we got to the premiere of Season 4, we had the biggest night ever with the episode when Mom and Dad renewed their vows.
Lisa: And that also happened to be your debut.
Alan: Oh, yeah, and that also happened to be my debut — thank you America! It was 11.8 million that night.
Lumination: Is there a particular Bible verse that you feel echoes the message you’re seeking to share?
Alan: My favorite passage, especially as it relates to marriage, is Phillipians 2:3-5. It basically says — and I’m paraphrasing — wouldn’t it be great if we lived our lives as if we were totally looking out for the interest of another person rather than our own. He closes it in verse five by saying, “You should have the same attitude in Christ Jesus,” because that’s what He does. He looks to the interest of us totally above Himself. Every marriage problem can be solved if you can live by that principle.
Lisa: Mine is Philippians 4:13. I love it because none of us would have the strength to do anything without Christ. In a marriage without Christ, I don’t know how anybody would make a marriage work because He’s the one who comes in and gives you that little boost to help you think you can do it by giving you His strength and power. “I can do all things through Christ Who gives me strength.”
You can catch Alan and Lisa Robertson and the rest of the Robertson family on Season 10 of Duck Dynasty, which premieres July 6.