ALBANY, Ga. — Praise the Lord and pass the popcorn.
Moviemaking churches are venturing into the cineplex to attract souls who might never set foot in a megachurch.

Like Hollywood films, they take on real-life issues in dramatic packages:

•A resentful white cop and his black partner struggle with race and fatherhood before taking a lesson in reconciliation from Oscar winner Lou Gossett Jr. in a cameo role. That’s The Grace Card, underwritten by an optometrist for his small church in Tennessee.

•An aimless 20-year-old, adventuring with his buddies in India, discovers the global horror of sex slavery and makes it his life-changing cause. That’s Not Today, backed by a California Quaker church.

•Cops facing rough times on the streets realize their real failures are at home — as fathers who don’t know, or don’t care, how to truly love their kids. That’s Courageous, the fourth film from Sherwood Baptist Church, which is so successful in its moviemaking ministry that it now coaches others.

“Movies are the stained-glass windows of the 21st century, the place to tell the Gospel story to people who may not read a Bible,” says Michael Catt, senior pastor of Sherwood in Albany, Ga.

“Cinematography can tell a message that moves people, and brings them into conversation with believers,” says Jeremy Johnston, executive pastor at 5,000-member First Family Church in Overland Park, Kan. His church has brought thousands of people to see Christian-themed films at local theaters and on its own 12-screen campus.

“We have people who are still in our church because they saw a movie through us that hit home.”

This is the intention of Catt and his Sherwood staff of writers, producers and actors, led by two brothers, associate pastors Alex and Stephen Kendrick, and executive pastor Jim McBride.

Sherwood, with just over 2,000 members, has produced three films, including the top-grossing independent film of 2008, Fireproof.

Compared with Hollywood studios, Sherwood’s productions are minuscule.

Fireproof’s $33.5 million at the box office ranked it No. 122 among 2008 films; No. 1 was The Dark Knight, with $1 billion, according to Box Office Mojo.

But in the Christian category, Fireproof was No. 5, after Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, the two films based on the Chronicles of Narnia books by C.S. Lewis, and The Nativity Story.

The Sherwood producers compare their films to The Blind Side, but with a more directly presented version of evangelical faith than The Blind Side’s subtle portrayal of a Christian family that takes in a teen and nurtures his mind and football talents.

All Sherwood films draw on challenges in contemporary life: An unethical used-car salesman faces business reversals in 2003’s Flywheel. A hapless high school coach, whose wife is infertile, fears he’ll be fired in 2005’s Facing the Giants. A firefighter’s marriage is collapsing in Fireproof

Prayers are answered

And every ending is on an up note: Once characters start to peacefully, prayerfully trust God in adversity as well as success, all their prayers are answered. They win the big game, pay off the bank, have the long-wanted baby, reconcile with loved ones.

The films are out on DVD in 75 countries, and Kendrick’s book tied to Fireproof, called The Love Dare, became a best seller.

“People like happy endings,” says Catt, who keeps a photo of Billy Graham standing with Walt Disney in a frame on the bookshelf in his Sherwood office.

“Remember, John Wayne only died in two movies. Movies are an escape. They offer hope. And Sherwood is stepping up to claim that the only hope that matters is Christian,” Catt says. Sherwood’s motto, emblazoned in the entryway of the church, is “Whoever wants the next generation the most will get them.”

To that end, Sherwood plows the profits from its moviemaking into its numerous other ministries: feeding the homeless, running a crisis pregnancy center, operating a family counseling center and establishing an 82-acre sports park with tennis courts, soccer and baseball fields, a running track and more.

But the movie ministry is how they send out their message.

And what started out as low-key prayer in Flywheel has become straight-out evangelism, with characters literally leaning on a cross in Fireproof and testifying in a church in Courageous.

“Every movie has an agenda,” says Catt, citing James Cameron’s Avatar, widely noted for its vague eco-spirituality theme. “Clearly, (he) had a spiritual agenda there, and he’s out to reach his audience. So are we. We have lost this culture, and we have to fight back. Our way is to show the living Gospel in a secular environment. People will see it and see themselves.”

That’s a hard nut to crack, says marketing strategies expert Jack Trout of Trout & Partners in Old Greenwich, Conn. “There are a jillion films competing for people’s attention. Look how many films come out of Hollywood and independent studios and go nowhere. But I can see why they want to do it.

“The question is, how do you make a movie beyond your base if you are producing a big sermon on film? Breaking beyond the people already in the pews is exceptionally difficult,” Trout says. “It requires a good story that’s well done and not too overt, and you have to hustle it like crazy.”

Alex Kendrick wouldn’t disagree. “Are we preaching to the choir? Sure, but the choir needs it if they are not singing on key.

“We also have a second audience of people who need clarity about who Christ is and why they need him. Yes, we know we get mixed response, and some people roll their eyes. But we’re clear: We are here to present the Gospel, but not to ram it down people’s throats.”

A ‘Grace Card’ idea is born

David Evans, a Memphis-area optometrist, was moved to tears at a screening of Fireproof and promptly vowed to step up to a new level with his volunteer work — running lavish Easter productions for 600-member Calvary Church of the Nazarene in Cordova, Tenn., near Memphis.

He consulted Sherwood, which has done filmmaking boot camps and a DVD of tips and techniques for churches, then he brought in a professional writer to polish his script and put up $450,000 of his savings to underwrite The Grace Card.

Evans says: “I wanted a modern script that gives people something to grab hold of when they leave the theater. Hollywood misses out because it is not giving people something deeper to digest.”

In Not Today, “we won’t shrink from using the name of Jesus, but it’s part of the story,” says Chris Bueno, who co-produced the film with his wife, Denise, for Yorba Linda Friends Church, one of the world’s largest Quaker congregations.

“Some Christians want very overtly Christian messages. Others want to see gritty truthful stories of people struggling with faith, who may not lead perfect lives but are genuinely seeking,” Denise Bueno says.

The couple helped introduce Sherwood to Provident Films, the faith film division of Sony Music, which launched Facing the Giants and Fireproof.

All three of Sherwood’s films stress Christ in every step, from the script to set to show time.

The church auditions cast and crew not only for acting talent, but for their Christian commitment and ability to represent the film if called upon. The Buenos say there will be prayer every day on the set in India, and “everyone knows we represent a church.”

And everyone watches their language. Churches are not going to book films with f-bombs dropping in casual conversations, although individual Christians may not flinch at profanity in an otherwise worthy film, such as comedies from actor/director Tyler Perry, whose fierce main character, Madea, has led ensemble casts through several movies packed with ribald humor — and prayer and Gospel.

But Hollywood films with Christian subtexts have different goals from church productions.

“Hollywood sells entertainment to make a profit,” Catt says. “We make entertainment to change lives. Anyone can resonate with the idea ‘I could be a better person.’ People are afraid, discouraged. There can’t be too much encouragement.”

Or too much help in getting the word out about the films. Sony’s Provident spends about a year with each church-made film, getting a script in shape, stepping up production values, and marketing intensely in advance.

By the time Courageous and Not Today hit mainstream theater screens next year, they will have been seen by thousands of evangelical pastors, journalists, social groups and celebrities.

“It’s all about telling stories,” says Kris Fuhr of Provident. “Story is what breaks through the noise in our culture.”

“You don’t have to say, ‘Hey, I have help for your sinking marriage,’ or ‘Here’s what a good dad looks like.’ You can just invite your friend to go to the movies.”

The less you know about Predators going in, the better. That’s assuming interest—and you know who you are. Fans of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 1987 sci-fi/action hit have been hoping for a worthwhile sequel since, well, that disappointing 1990 sequel with Danny Glover. And the two disappointing Alien vs. Predator films don’t really count, failing to do justice to either franchise.

Now, almost 25 years after the original, comes Predators. Surprisingly enough, it’s not terrible; it should generally please fans. That’s not to say it’s perfect, or that it’ll appeal to many outside of that fan base. It is still a sequel, after all.

Predators begins with a mixed group of warriors who are literally dropped from the sky into a jungle. It’s a veritable who’s who of multi-cultural killers: an Israeli sniper, a Mexican drug cartel enforcer, a convicted mass murderer from America, a revolutionary from Africa, a Japanese gangster, a member of the Russian Special Forces, and at the forefront, an icy mercenary named Royce (Adrien Brody) who more or less takes charge for his own survival.

No one knows where they are or remembers how they were brought to this mysterious jungle. And aside from a gawky doctor in their midst (Topher Grace), all are practiced killers. As Royce correctly surmises, they seem to have been chosen based on their “professions.” Their purpose: to serve as big game for the Predators, a powerful alien race that thrives on hunting dangerous prey with their arsenal of technological weapons.

Fans of the original can guess where it goes from there as the unwitting band of combatants is picked off one by one a la Ten Little Indians. However, Predators does offer several surprising revelations. Perhaps too many—one at the end seems almost pointless given the context, yet necessary since it’s a curious loose end. On the other hand, Laurence Fishburne’s character is a welcome addition midway through as another “contestant” who has managed to survive for years, but is never what he seems to be.

One of the film’s best surprises is given away in the trailers and synopsis, yet Predators plays it up as a mystery for the first half hour. The story does well at building intrigue for those who don’t know what’s happening—somewhat reminiscent of television’s Lost in wondering if they’ve been kidnapped or if they’re in hell. But for those who do know what’s going on, the first half hour is somewhat pokey with lots of astonished reaction shots to details that fans already know very well.

Yet this first half is the better part of Predators. Once the action kicks in, there’s nowhere to go that hasn’t been seen before. I remember watching the original as a teen in awe of the alien hunter’s weaponry and tactics (not to mention the special effects). There are indeed some chilling tactics in the first half, but later it’s strictly laser blasts, impalements, and brawling—and another boring creature vs. creature smackdown reminiscent of the AVP films. Predators just doesn’t offer much to wow or dazzle the imagination with these aliens.

Predators also struggles with its protagonists; it’s kind of hard to root for a bunch of psychopaths and assassins who don’t really have any camaraderie. Granted, two in this bunch are soldiers, and Royce’s character is more on the fence, which is partly the point. One of the film’s major themes is distinguishing the fine line between soldier and murderer. Everyone is a “predator” of some sort in this movie, but at what point do we lose sight of our humanity when fighting for survival? An interesting idea that could have been further explored.

Still, the cast performs admirably. Brody is no Schwarzenegger, but do we really want another unstoppable action hero guaranteed to survive? Brody’s portrayal is tough in a way that’s more realistic—almost Clint Eastwood with a gravelly voice and a morally ambiguous character. Alice Braga (I Am Legend) is also good as Isabelle, the tough Israeli sniper who still provides some heart to the storyline. Fishburne has fun with his part, but amounts to little more than a cameo. Grace does his usual nerdy guy schtick and the others, are equally fine but have too little to do.

With ‘Toy Story 3′ now in theaters, it’s a good time to reflect on two of the greatest virtues found in Pixar’s films.

Abridged from The Wisdom of Pixar, new from InterVarsity Press.

Pixar movies and their themes resonate with us not just because of the attention-grabbing animation, but also because of their stories and characters. Whether it’s toys or cars brought to life, or monsters or even rats, these characters contain a quality of reality to which we can relate. Moreover, in our often dark world, Pixar films offer hope, imagination, beauty, and a degree of purity and innocence that is countercultural in our age.

Human nature’s dark side is capably depicted—in much detail—by many gritty, non-Pixar films. But Pixar calls our attention back to the almost forgotten world of virtue. We sympathize and perhaps even empathize with the characters because we relate to their struggles. Pixar’s characters help us understand how to better build our own characters—morally speaking, that is. But Pixar doesn’t preach to us; there is no First Church of Pixar to offer us sermons, pews, committees, incense or flowing choir robes. Instead, we come to better understand virtue through entertaining and engaging stories—the kind of stories that Pixar tells, stories that have the power to wholly engage us, heart, soul and mind.

Characters and plots need not be overtly Christian to instruct us in virtue. Christ engaged his listeners by telling parables, not by preaching or delivering dry lectures. He shared stories that have, at their center, practical moral lessons that stick with us. We remember the tales of the Good Samaritan and the prodigal son not because they sound like they come from a textbook on ethics, but because they are stories that resonate with us as human beings.

In Finding Nemo, after they have escaped from a hungry shark and massive minefield explosions, the fish Marlin and Dory are exhausted. Marlin is anxious to find his missing son, Nemo, but now he has lost his best clue for finding him—a scuba mask inscribed with the address of the diver who captured Nemo.

Discouraged, Marlin says, “That was my only chance at finding my son; now it’s gone!” But Dory is not so easily deterred. “Hey, Mr. Grumpy Gills,” she says. “When life gets you down, you know what you gotta do? Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming. What do we do? We swim, swim.” Dory continues joyfully singing about swimming, while leading Marlin into the dark ocean depths in search of the mask. Dory remains hopeful in the face of adversity. Pixar films do that, moving us to “just keep swimming” no matter what our circumstances.

Pixar films are also full of imagination. In their first, 1995’s Toy Story, toys come alive when humans aren’t around. Woody the cowboy doll climbs onto a bed and sees an imposing action figure—Buzz Lightyear, a Space Ranger. Buzz, who doesn’t know he’s a toy, attempts to contact Star Command and is puzzled by their silence. Distraught over the damage to his “ship”—the cardboard box he came in—Buzz makes a voice recording in his mission log, noting that he has crash landed on a “strange planet.” Woody greets Buzz, as do the other toys in the room. When Woody refers to Buzz as a toy, the Space Ranger is not amused, resulting in some banter as to whether or not Buzz can really fly. Buzz sets out to demonstrate his flying prowess and as he prepares to jump from a bedpost, he utters the now-famous phrase, “To infinity and beyond!” Buzz’s words may well be a call to creativity and imagination too. That’s certainly been the case for Pixar, as the studio continues to dream up fantastic adventures that are also grounded in realities to which many can relate.

Positive counterculturalism

Trends in filmmaking come and go, but there’s always room for hopeful films, such as the classic It’s a Wonderful Life. Some films, however, emphasize the ugly reality of a world ripped apart by sin (The Dark Knight is a good contemporary example). While it’s important to understand depravity in the world, it’s also important to affirm its joys, opportunities, and hopes. Pixar films excel in this—to the point that some might consider them countercultural in their positive affirmations. This does not mean that Pixar avoids challenging topics; rather, the studio handles them in such a way as to leave hope intact.

WALL-E, for instance, is about a polluted earth. Human-produced garbage is everywhere, even in space, where thousands of discarded satellites orbit the planet. After trashing the planet and departing to space, humans leave the messy job of cleaning it up to robots like WALL-E, the main character, a Waste Allocation Load Lifter—Earth Class. Nevertheless, the opening song from Hello, Dolly!—”Put on Your Sunday Clothes”—immediately sets an optimistic, hopeful tone. Despite playing over images of a trashed earth, the hopeful song praises the wonder and joy in the world. Skyscraper-sized piles of garbage are not enough to dampen the spirits of WALL-E, a film that is, in the end, primarily about love.

Up, true to its name, is also uplifting. While including the realities of human suffering, in the end Up is hopeful. Through a fantastic adventure, grumpy old man Carl Fredricksen befriends a boy in need, learns to enjoy life again, and realizes that even though the love of his life, Ellie, is gone, she’d want him to enjoy the adventure that still awaits.

Along with faith and love, hope is one of three important Christian virtues (1 Corinthians 13:13; Colossians 1:5; 1 Thessalonians 1:3; 5:8). The Bible refers to “the God of hope,” linking “joy and peace” to hope that is founded on belief in God (Romans 15:13). Christian hope requires faith in God and his goodness. His love is foundational to hope.

Paul refers to “Christ Jesus our hope” (1 Timothy 1:1 ). The primary example of the hope Christ offers is the reality of his resurrection from the dead. This, in turn, gives us hope in the future healing and restoration of creation that God has promised.

While hope in general is about having a positive attitude about the future, the biblical dimension adds God as the focal point of hope. Consequently, hope is not a technique; it is not to be placed on a particular field of inquiry such as science and technology, or in politics or individuals, no matter how influential they may be. Christian hope, rather, is God-directed. If God exists, there is hope.

And with hope comes an opportunity to leave behind despair in exchange for the meaning found in the Christian worldview. Here, imagination can help us along.

Our creative spark

Imagination is part of human nature; the creative spark is hardwired into us. Imagination drives times of leisure, artistic creativity, and escape into fantastic realms, whether through literature, music, painting, film, or other human expressions. Every Pixar film is creative and imaginative. But where do creativity and imagination come from? What is their role in daily life?

Remy and Gusteau have the creative spirit

Pixar clearly values creativity and imagination. A film about a rat who wants to be a chef, Ratatouille clearly shows its admiration for the imagination. As the main character, Remy, explains it, “I know I’m supposed to hate humans, but there’s something about them. They don’t just survive, they discover, they create!” The human character Chef Gusteau underscores creativity when he compares the making of a gourmet meal to the artistry of music: “Good food is like music you can taste, color you can smell. There is excellence all around you. You need only be aware to stop and savor it.”

Imagination is also valued in Toy Story and Toy Story 2. Both feature Andy imaginatively playing with his toys. Toy Story begins with an old West bank robbery, spearheaded by Mr. Potato Head no less (aka “One-Eyed Bart”). But Woody saves the day (and also his dinosaur, Rex, who happens to eat force-field dogs).

In TS2, Andy is undeterred by the fact that he’s supposed to leave for cowboy camp in just five minutes, turning those minutes turn into an opportunity for imaginative play: Bo Peep is held captive by evil Dr. Pork Chop, complete with black bowler hat and an army of toy soldiers. In order to save Bo from being eaten by a shark or “death by monkeys,” Andy brings in Buzz to join forces with Woody and save the day.

The extent of creativity expressed by people is unique to humans. We tell stories, play with toys, create visual artwork, compose music, and write books; we imagine and bring to life ideas rich in creativity, and we delight in such things.

But where does imagination originate? Biblically speaking, it derives from the fact that human beings alone are made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26-27). The so-called imago Dei drives us creatively, imaginatively, intellectually, morally, spiritually, and more. In her chapter on imagination in The Complete Book of Everyday Christianity, Cheryl Forbes observed, “Imagination is the image of God in us.” Or, as Christian thinker Francis Schaeffer wrote in Art and the Bible, “The Christian is the one whose imagination should fly beyond the stars.” Why? Because the Christian worldview offers us a firm foundation for creativity and imagination. As God is creative, so to a lesser extent are we. The Bible itself is rich in imagery, vivid word pictures and captivating storytelling. The extent of creativity in human beings may even be used as one line of argumentation for the existence of God. In a world that is supposedly the result of blind chance and time, why should we consider anything to be beautiful or creative or imaginative in any sense?

Our hope is placed in God, supported by his love and grasped by our faith. Hope is pointless unless something behind it ensures that our positive outlook is grounded in a reality we can trust. Moreover, imagination is God’s image at work in and through us. He has bestowed us with incredible amounts of creativity. Properly directed, our imagination can contribute positively toward making a difference in the world.

I’m not seeking to turn Pixar films into Christian parables, or even to suggest that Pixar’s films are somehow secretly Christian. But I think we all can find something in their movies as they relate to virtue, and apply those insights practically to the Christian life.

Bruce Marchiano, who played the Son of God in 1993’s Matthew, now wants to make a film based on the Gospel of John. But he needs a few dollars—45 million, in fact.

In 1993, Bruce Marchiano starred as Jesus in The Visual Bible: Matthew, bringing lightness and humor to a role that many viewers embraced, saying they’d never seen the Lord portrayed in so human a manner in film.

Matthew was supposed to be the first of many films covering all 66 books of the Bible, each using dialogue taken verbatim from Scripture. Acts came a year later, also with Marchiano playing Jesus (and James Brolin as Simon Peter).

Then. Things. Stalled.

Marchiano says that one of the original investors—a group of eight South Africans who put up $800,000 to make Matthew—brought the idea for future films to some North American distributors and investors, first in the U.S. and then in Canada, and eventually, “everything broke loose,” he says. “And then [Matthew] got pirated by some Hungarian company, all while I was on the sidelines, hearing about everything second hand. Watching it get kicked around like a can of soup was heartbreaking. It all got very ugly.”

As Jesus in ‘Matthew’

Ownership disputes and lawsuits abounded in a drama far too complex to detail here, and for all intents and purposes, the Visual Bible series idea is dead. But Marchiano never gave up hope of doing another Jesus movie someday, even if he had to do it on his own. And that’s just what he plans to do next, with a word-for-word adaptation of the Gospel of John.

He’s got a title: Jesus: No Greater Love. He’s got a script. He’s ready, even at the age of 54, to play the Son of God again, if needed. He just needs money—$45 million, in fact. Marchiano is appealing to regular folk all over the world to join a global community of “producers.” He’s hoping for 4.5 million people to put up $10 each to fund the film.

So far, he’s only raised about $350,000. But Marchiano—like the Jesus in Matthew—remains optimistic. CT recently sat down with him to discuss his new film … and the old one that started it all in the first place.

What are your fondest memories of making Matthew?

My fondest memories are from the actual shoot. We filmed it in such innocence; we were so aware that we were over our heads spiritually and practically. It sounds so childlike, but we would gather every morning on our knees and pray our brains out, and then get out there. And the fruitfulness of it! To this day I hear, “You really spun around my understanding of who Jesus was. You really got me to seeking harder.” From Christians and non-Christians, everywhere I go. It’s very humbling.

What do you think you brought to the role that people liked so much?

The love, the passion, and the humanness. It was very intimate, blood, sweat and tears. We went out of our way to make Jesus, if I can put it this way, ugly, very little makeup. The guy never came around and combed my hair. In fact, there were times when he messed up my hair, because we wanted people to see the reality of Jesus.

After Matthew, what came next?

I came back home, and my heart was just upended. I had only been a Christian for a couple of years. Prior to that, my whole life was about winning that Academy Award some day. After Matthew, that didn’t mean so much any more. It was a very, very difficult time, a time of soul searching. I tried to get back to work [as an actor], but I started getting these speaking invitations after the movie released. One invitation turned into ten, and that turned into a hundred, and that turned into a year, and then another. Before I knew it, that became a lifestyle and my source of income for a while.

There was an excellent version of The Gospel of John in 2003, starring Henry Ian Cusick (Desmond on Lost) as Jesus. So why do the John movie again?

The answer is simple: That’s how the Lord led me, but I had battles with that in my own thinking. You begin to question yourself. You’re praying, you’re seeking God, and you get a sense of direction. You start to move and something happens that stands in the face of that direction. And you’re like, “Really? Did I miss it?” But over time, I got little confirmations here and there.

When did you feel like you were first being led by God to make the John movie?

1996. I was having lunch by myself, and I just began to muse those opening words and what they would look like in a film: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” I remember scribbling on a napkin, frame for frame of how I would shoot that.

Fourteen years later, I guess there have been discouragements along the way.

A million of them. There have been times when 6.9 days out of seven, I’m like, What am I doing? I don’t want to sound like a hero, but in many ways I passed up a lot of life, made a lot of sacrifices. I’m not drawing a dime of salary; every penny goes into production. And I’m not getting any younger. But the Lord would always pick me up and put me back into the game.

Were you ever on the verge of giving up?

Yes. In 2003, I had made up my mind, I’m out of here. I just was exhausted, depleted. The other John movie was coming out. The Passion was coming out. I was like, What for? What’s the point?

Long story short: I attended a service at Church on the Way [Jack Hayford's church in Van Nuys, Calif]. I had walked in a bit late, and sat in the back. The pastor was wrapping up his message, and he stepped out in front of the podium and said, “There’s a guy in this church that has a vision to put the Gospel of John on film, and I know God’s going to fulfill his vision.” I had to leave the church, I was so shaken up.

Who was preaching?

Jack Hayford’s successor Scott Bauer [who died later that year]. I had been meeting with him on an ongoing basis; he was overseeing me in the script development, and he was a real shepherd. But this came of nowhere. You can’t ignore that timing. I went out of the church and just sat in the car and cried. I was like, Okay, Lord, I get the message.

Do you see this film as primarily for believers or primarily evangelistic?

Primarily evangelistic. One of the challenges was to script it without presumption; so many of our Christian films are made presuming people know the story. Probably the best example of that was The Passion—obviously a wonderful movie, but if you don’t know the story, it’s like, “Who are these guys? Why are they beating up on this man?”

How’s the fundraising going?

Slowly. Every once in a while we get glimmers of hope. We have yet to see millions. We need millions. Forty-five million.

After The Passion of The Christ earned half a billion dollars, why can’t you find the money to do this? Won’t Hollywood bite on something like this?

Hollywood is buying Christian films and distributing them, but they’re not funding them. They have a wonderful deal. They can sit on the sidelines and watch us Christians take all the risk and do all the work, and then they earn the money off the distribution. It would be lovely to be able to write that check myself, or to know people who can write that check, but I don’t.

But is the idea of getting a million “producers” viable?

I hope so. I’m going to find out. It seems that the “little” people really get it quickly.

But that’s a lot of $10 checks.

If just the Christians in one state amassed, we would be pretty close to being there. So it’s actually very do-able. I recently blogged about this, asking people why they’re not giving, and it seemed that people thought, It’s just such a big project. But we saw it with President Obama; he financed his campaign this way. We saw it in Haiti, with tens of millions of dollars [in relief money] in one week, at just ten dollars a pop. So it is very, very do-able. People need to catch a vision for souls and reaching people.

You’ve only got about $350,000. You’ll never get the movie made at this pace.

No. Something has to break. Something big has to happen.

I’m trying not to be a pessimist here …

You can be a pessimist all you want.

… but it seems that this can’t happen without some big investors.

Yeah. If that’s the case, I hope they come along. I’m not aggressively pursuing investors. I’m a little leery because my experience with them is they always want creative control, and I want to be free of that.

When’s your deadline for getting the $45 million?

I’m hoping that we get the funding by year’s end, and we go into production next year and release the film in 2012. That’s my goal.

And if you don’t have the money by year’s end?

Have I set a long-term deadline? No. But I’ve been pedaling this bike a long time. Cried a lot of tears and sweat a lot of bullets. And every time I got to that point, the Lord just yanked me up in one way or another.

How do I say this without sounding like I’m full of myself? It’s right. It’s just right. The world needs Jesus. “Family values” are wonderful, but the world needs Jesus. At the end of the day we need Jesus. And even the concept of the body coming together to make it happen, as impractical and out-of-the-box it is, there’s something kind of right about it.

So for this to happen in 2010, do you have to change your strategy?

I’m ramping it all up. Viral marketing. We’re doing everything free we can, because there’s nothing worse than asking people for money to make a movie, and then you take that money and just plow it back into fundraising and marketing.

But isn’t the old adage true, that you need to spend money to make money?

Last year and the year before we spent a lot of money on publicity, but we didn’t do any better than the years when we didn’t spend on publicity. The payoff wasn’t there. So at the end of 2009 I made a commitment: I’m not going to spend another dollar. I’m going to take every donated dollar and put it in the bucket toward production. Nobody gets paid; if you want to keep working with us, you’re welcome to, but it’s as a volunteer. This money has to go into production. [Note: One publicity firm is working with Marchiano to promote the film pro bono.]

At the end of the day, it’s got to be this grassroots thing from people catching the vision and running with it. If enough people do, we’ll get there. And whoa, what a testimony. Can you imagine?

Documentary explores the question, “What is a megachurch?”

It shouldn’t surprise that the documentary The Alpha and the Mega (Clothespin Films) is more introductory than groundbreaking.

The film, available on DVD, explores the question, “What is a megachurch?” Director Morgan Mead, a small-town Indiana boy, attended his first megachurch a few years ago, and was so intrigued that he went looking for more, camera in tow.

When someone invokes the label megachurch, it’s usually not meant as a compliment. Alpha strikes a balanced tone, though, in part because its lead source—Hartford Institute sociology of religion professor Scott Thumma—is relatively sympathetic. As Mead visits churches both mega and mini, he finds that pastors have a spectrum of opinion on the megachurch, from “different strokes for different folks” to “contrary to Scripture.”

Alpha hits on many of the salient questions: Is the church more for believers or seekers? Can a big church care for everyone? Does breadth preclude depth? Should we entertain attendees? If you have already given this debate some thought, you’ll wish the issues were more finely delineated and more deeply probed. But its irenic spirit and pastoral voices make Alpha a solid primer to the megachurch phenomenon.

Documentary ‘Sold’ shows rescuers from three faiths—Hindu, Muslim, and Christian—fighting slavery and bringing hope to children around the world.

There are no limits to the cruelties that humans inflict on one another, and slavery—particularly the trafficking of children—may be at the apex of depravity. An estimated 27 million are enslaved worldwide. Jody Hassett Sanchez’s documentary Sold (Pointy Shoe Productions) profiles three rescuers—a Hindu, a Christian, and a Muslim—who are trying to make a dent in that number.

“When we do prostitution, we see only hell,” says Manisha, a sex slave rescued by Sunitha Krishnan, a former Hindu nun. Trapped indoors for two years, Manisha is one of many women and girls rescued from brothels in India by Krishnan, who helps the girls find fulfilling work and dignity. Though she’s been beaten for her work, Krishnan stays driven by righteous anger—an anger that’s refueled when she hears stories like that of an 8-year-old girl locked in a room with a snake until submitting to prostitution. Krishnan jokes that she worships Ganesh (a Hindu god known as the “Remover of Obstacles”), because “he’s like me, very temperamental, very dominating and loving, too.”

Mercy and healing drive Symphorienne Kessouagni, a Christian working in Togo, West Africa, where she cares for 17 former child slaves, providing shelter, nutrition, education, and more. Painted near the entrance of her home and school is Psalm 34:9: “Fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him lack nothing.”

Kessouagni rescues mostly domestic slaves, like Moise, whose family sold him into market slavery when he was 4 years old. He spent years hauling heavy loads as if he were a cart horse. Kessouagni reunited the boy with his mother, who can only say, “There was no other way for us to survive.” It’s not surprising, then, that Kessouagni teaches these forsaken bought-and-sold children that they have a Father in heaven who loves them.

It’s unfortunate that Hassett Sanchez doesn’t offer more religious context for the work of Ansar Burney, a Muslim attorney in Karachi, Pakistan, who rescues camel jockeys in the Middle East. Despite bans in some countries, young boys are taken to the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, and Qatar, among other places, and forced to race camels to entertain the wealthy elite. One young boy, taken at age 3, describes how, while crying for his father, he was beaten, starved, and electrically shocked so that he would stay on his camels. Another young boy saw his brother die. When asked what happened to his brother’s body, he simply says, “They bury them under the sand.”

Burney has won financial restitution for many victims. And while he’s driven by a zeal for righteousness, he doesn’t talk about how his faith informs his work—a missed opportunity, since his enemies are other Muslims.

While these accounts are harrowing, Hassett Sanchez eschews images of suffering in favor of those showing hope. Seeing the happy faces of now-rescued slaves makes child slavery that much more horrible. It’s not just the hubris of someone acting like they own another human that galls; it’s also that their actions rob these children of their happiness.

Each of these three lights in the darkness—Krishnan, Kessouagni, and Burney—exemplifies what it means to act with righteous anger, justice, and love on behalf the least of these.

More: SoldtheFilm.com

We’re flocking to movies about the last days, even in the midst of a penny-pinching recession. Why?

There’s a powerful scene near the end of The Road—the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel—where a father and son huddle together under soulless skies on a desolate, nameless beach littered with whale and human skeletons. They have finally reached the coast after traversing by foot a post-apocalyptic landscape fraught with unspeakable dangers, toils, and snares.

The boy, about age 10, has never seen the sea. “What’s on the other side?” he asks. “Nothing,” replies his father, suffering from malnutrition and weakness after fending off all sorts of evils. All along, he has encouraged his son to maintain hope—to “carry the fire”—but has slowly lost his own. The boy, who believes there’s still goodness somewhere in this dark and dying world, looks out to the sea and says, “There must be something.”

Wanting to keep his son’s hope alive, the man relents. “Maybe there’s a father and his son, and they’re sitting on the beach too.”

Like McCarthy’s 2006 book, the film is both depressing and redeeming; it depicts one of the most loving father-son relationships to appear on the big screen. And this particular scene speaks volumes for all of us.

What’s on the other side?

The question is nearly innate to human experience, and Hollywood knows it—as evidenced by the spate of spiritual-themed films to release after the blockbuster success of The Passion of the Christ (2004). As a fear-filled world of war, terrorism, and economic collapse bring the question of death and the afterlife to the forefront, the film industry has delivered more fodder to fuel the question—though not always providing answers.

A scene from ‘Transformers 2′

The result in 2009 was a record $10 billion at the box office in the United States and Canada, where theater attendance was up 4.5 percent over 2008 despite an economic recession that saw cuts in consumer spending in almost every other sector.

Much of that record windfall came from a near epidemic of movies about the end of the world—from the explosion-driven drivel of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (where all life on Earth is in peril) and 2012 (global mayhem as predicted by the Mayan calendar) to the tongue-in-cheek Zombieland to more thoughtful fare such as Terminator Salvation, District 9, and The Road. The trend continued early this year with two end-times thrillers, The Book of Eli and Legion, both of which opened in January, plus two documentaries, Waiting for Armageddon and With God on Our Side, both exploring the State of Israel’s role in ushering in the last days. January also saw the wide release of The Lovely Bones, depicting a teen girl’s view of heaven (and our own longing for it). More such films—pre- and post-apocalyptic—are on the 2010 tap.

Why are so many of us flocking to the theater when we’re pinching pennies more now than in decades? And why are we spending our hard-earned money on movies about the end of existence?

Two things are at work: First, when the economy is down, movie attendance often goes up; it’s happened several times before, especially during the Great Depression. And second, people are asking, perhaps more than ever, what happens after we die—whether by natural causes or some cataclysmic event. War. Terrorism. Armageddon. Teen-idol vampires, hell-bent robots, wandering zombies. Whatever.

Record box office

During the Great Depression, unemployment in the U.S. ran as high as 25 percent, and many wondered how they would afford their next meal. But even during the hardest times, 60 million to 80 million Americans—as much as two-thirds of the population—went to the movies every week.

A scene from ‘The Book of Eli’

President Franklin Roosevelt said, “When the spirit of the people is lower than at any other time, it is a splendid thing that for just 15 cents an American can go to a movie and look at the smiling face of a baby and forget his troubles.”

While many Depression-era films were escapist fare, Hollywood didn’t completely deny the realities of the day; the films of Frank Capra and the Marx Brothers were social commentaries in the guise of the screwball comedy, while some were more overt in their social message (Gone with the Wind, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington). Even popular horror films such as King Kong and Frankenstein had underlying messages about societal ills.

It wouldn’t be the last time Americans would head for the movies in hard times. During five of the past seven economic downturns in the U.S.—including the 1970s oil crises and the dot-com bust of the early 2000s—box office earnings went up. And now we have the record-setting year of 2009.

“When times are bad, our business seems to buck the trend,” Dan Glickman, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, told Time magazine. “The movies are great therapy. It’s a lot cheaper than a psychiatrist.”

But a psychiatrist likely wouldn’t have figured that such bleak fare—about bad things happening at a time when, in the real world, so many bad things are happening—would play such a major role in a record-breaking year.

Meaning and escape

When 2012 released in November 2009, The Fresno Bee newspaper asked scholars and religious leaders what to make of moviegoers’ fascination with the end times.

Margaret Gonsoulin, a sociology professor at Cal State, speculated that it reflected hunger for meaning in anxiety-ridden times: “They want to know about the future,” she told the Bee.

True enough, but there’s far more at work here. Brett McCracken, a critic for CT Movies, wrote for Relevant that we are “compelled” to watch these films because “[t]here is in each of us an innate sense of justice—a sense that all of us probably deserve calamity or worse. When an act of God is on display, we marvel at what we suspect (perhaps hope) is his sovereignty at work, wrathful and terrible though it may be.”

While Depression-era moviegoers sought escape, recent recession-era moviegoers are going both to escape and to see films about escape—even bleak, scary ones—into another world, the afterlife, or the “other side.”

The writer of Ecclesiastes says that God has placed eternity in our hearts (3:11). We are divinely wired to wonder what comes next, and in that wondering, we are acutely aware of our own mortality—whether our death comes by natural causes or the end of the world. The films discussed here feed that fascination—one that runs as high in Christians as in anyone else. (Look no further than the Left Behind series, which has sold more than 65 million copies.)

“In difficult times, [our] restlessness for more comes to the surface,” Richard J. Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary, told Christianity Today. “These are difficult days, and it should not surprise us that yearnings for eternity—for a final resolution of all the struggle with good and evil—will come to pass.”

What’s on the other side?

Hollywood may not know that the answer has in fact been revealed, that there is a Father and his Son on the other shore.