Georgia Baptist minister, church ready for big screen premiere

When Alex Kendrick thinks about sharing his faith, he thinks about movie screens, not evangelistic tracts.
   
Kendrick, the associate pastor of media ministries at Sherwood Baptist Church, Albany, Ga., has co-produced “Facing the Giants” with the help of hundreds of volunteers — on screen and behind the scenes — from his Southern Baptist congregation and local community. On Sept. 29, the movie about a Christian high school football team will premiere on 400 movie screens in 86 markets. In addition to co-writing the script with his brother Stephen, Kendrick plays the lead character of the movie, Coach Grant Taylor.
   
“This is a ministry tool,” said Kendrick, who handles the television and video productions at the 3,000-member church. “I think churches are waking up to the fact that this is a valid avenue of ministry. … People still love a good story.”
   
Movies and ministry have been combined for decades, with organizations like the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association producing films and pastors sprinkling their sermons with movie clips. Evangelical churches played a big role in getting audiences to “The Passion of the Christ” and Christian bookstores offer family-friendly film fare. Now this congregation has decided to become involved in moviemaking itself with its own company, Sherwood Pictures. “Facing the Giants” is the company’s second feature film.
   
Research by the California-based Barna Group shows that 66 percent of adults say they talk with friends and associates about movies and TV shows they’ve seen recently. But founder George Barna said, “The majority of people who have attended a church service cannot even remember the theme of the sermon within two hours of leaving the building.”
   
Those types of figures fueled the church’s interest in making movies as an expression of faith, said Michael Catt, senior pastor of the church in southwestern Georgia. “Rather than waiting for people to come to us, let’s go to them.”
   
“Facing the Giants” is built around the struggling Eagles football team at the fictional Shiloh Christian Academy. Unlike a typical Hollywood production, it was made with hardly any paid professionals. More than 500 people helped in a variety of ways, from baby-sitting to donating meals and serving as extras. The credits give the sense of the grassroots effort — listing everyone from the “prayer coordinator” to the local restaurants and supermarkets that provided food.
   
“They taught home-schoolers how to hold a microphone,” said Jim McBride, the church’s executive pastor, who plays the coach of the opposing Giants team.
   
Church members donated $100,000 for the film, and Provident Films and Sherwood Pictures worked together on enhancing the color of the low budget movie. A soundtrack includes Provident Music Group artists such as Third Day and Casting Crowns. Sony Pictures is distributing it through Samuel Goldwyn Films.
   
On screen and off, Kendrick opts for a direct message about his beliefs. The coach sparks a turnaround on his team — which eventually faces the formidable Giants — when he urges players to not think of their own glory but glorifying God instead. “I believe as long as we honor God, nothing is impossible,” he told the team.
   
In real life, he hopes the movie will draw people closer to God, whether they’re already believers or not. “Everybody faces giants,” Kendrick said. “It may be fear. It may be failure. It may be inferiority or something else. And one of the messages in this movie … is that you can’t always face your giants on your own. … And that’s where you have to rely on the Lord.”
   
Barna’s company has hosted screenings of “Facing the Giants” for secular and religious groups, and Barna himself has launched a new Christian entertainment company, Good News Holdings, to produce its own version of faith-related movies. Barna’s first project is an adaptation of author Anne Rice’s “Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt.”
   
“We realize there are some people who are open to and even appreciative of a very direct faith-oriented message,” Barna said. “Some people who, because they’re coming to be entertained, aren’t looking for something that always leads back to faith. From my perspective, you’ve got to have different approaches, where sometimes it’s direct, sometimes it’s indirect but it’s theologically correct.”
   
Stewart M. Hoover, professor of media at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said groups — from the Spiritual Cinema Circle to the Christian Film and Television Commission — have had a focus on inspirational movies. But it’s rare for an individual church to strike out on its own movie project.
   
“To have an individual congregation doing it is kind of unique,” he said.
   
But any movie that has a blatant message about needing Jesus in your life — as “Facing the Giants” does — could end up with a narrower audience than its producers hope. 
   
“There’s a time and a market for kind of a strong Christian message and they may have seen that in the ‘Passion,’” Hoover said. “But my feeling on it is that it’s exceedingly difficult to cross over. … It’s going to tend to be attractive to people that are evangelical.”
   
Catt and others involved in the movie’s production hope it will present a picture of everyday lives of Christians and encourage others to start or renew a Christian commitment.
   
“We’d like to see people’s lives changed,” he said. (RNS)