When we first joined the JESUS film, I (Shawn) spent a great deal of time editing and mixing new translations of the JESUS film that came in from the field. My job was to match the audio to the mouth movements of the film so it didn’t look like a bad bruce lee movie. Cindy worked as a graphic designer with JESUS film as well as assisting with the Story of JESUS for Children script. She is now ministering to young mothers helping them to learn this new stage of life and grow close to God.
Currently, I, Shawn, am a special projects coordinator and project manager with our New Media department, another ministry of the JESUS Film Project. New Media is home to Broken Phonebooth Productions, our anime division, Research & Development and other media producing ministries.
Remember the end of the film Titanic? Well, imagine this: The two main characters, floating out in the middle of the sea, declare their undying love. Then, suddenly, they decide to pray the sinner’s prayer, right before turning to the screen and saying (in unison), “You can pray to receive Jesus too, RIGHT NOW!”
The film would have flopped. No matter how truthful the message was, or how much people needed to hear it, audiences would have rejected it. The truth is, today’s media-savvy culture is turning away from traditional methods of communicating the Christian message of God’s love and forgiveness. They often don’t want to attend Christian seminars, or read a Christian book (let alone the Bible) and they aren’t interested in hearing a sermon in church. It seems like these lines of communication are… broken.
So what can we do? The not-so-simple answer is…we need to communicate truth to them in a way they will accept–their “heart-language.” Okay, so…how do we do this?
One thing that people everywhere are drawn to is stories, and visual stories in particular. They love them, they dissect them, they talk about them endlessly…they can’t get enough of them. But that’s not all—now, more than ever, stories have the power to help them form their values and beliefs about what’s important and what they really care about.
The JESUS Film Project, realizing both the power of story to communicate and the increasing sophistication of the global audience, decided to create the New Media Strategies group.
Our mission is twofold:
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•We want to create media tools that generate thought and discussion, helping to move an unbelieving audience closer to accepting the truth of the Gospel.
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•We desire to make discipleship-based tools that help Christians learn how to walk more closely with God. To date, we have created several of these story-based tools all over the world.
Our goal is simple: we want people to hear, consider, and eventually accept the truth of the Bible. We make tools that do just that.
