Lausanne World Pulse – LAUSANNE REPORTS – Strengthening and Uniting the American Church through Media Outreach

By Jim Overholt
February 2006

The Mission America Coalition* (MAC, www.missionamerica.org) was formed with the vision of “the whole Church taking the whole gospel to the whole nation,” and for many years has carried out that charter as the “behind-the-scenes” organizer of a long series of successful national evangelism initiatives. While there have been many opportunities for successful, national campaigns in a variety of different areas, MAC had never been involved in promoting a movie as an evangelism opportunity until 2004 when actor Mel Gibson and Motive Entertainment approached MAC about helping to promote The Passion of the Christ movie to the faith community.

The Passion of the Christ Movie
The traditional Hollywood establishment had turned their backs on Gibson’s effort to accurately and dramatically portray the suffering of Christ in a high-quality cinematic production, so Gibson elected to financially underwrite the production himself, and seek help from non-traditional sources for marketing and distribution. Motive, a faith and family marketing company, was retained to help organize the effort, and MAC was approached to help mobilize the Church as a primary audience in support of the movie.

MAC determined quickly that while it is not in the business of promoting movies, it is in the business of promoting evangelism opportunities, and that the release of this movie had great potential for teaching as well as outreach in local communities. The MAC board saw the film not only as a unique national evangelism opportunity, but also as a potential watershed event in a culture that has become increasingly dominated by a morally bankrupt media establishment. It was time, for “the whole Church” to stand up and be counted.

MAC staff consulted with Motive and with Gibson’s production company about how to approach the Christian community to encourage them to use the movie as a teaching and evangelism opportunity, and how to mobilize them in support of the film itself. MAC helped develop and distribute promotional materials, engaged the support of denominational and national ministry leaders and organized movie screenings and other promotional events in over one hundred key cities throughout the United States. Using the City and Community Ministry network of local church and community leaders, MAC partners sponsored, resourced and helped orchestrate these meetings at churches and other local ministry locations, and then facilitated the purchase of large blocks of theater tickets and even entire theater seatings for local churches to share the movie with friends and neighbors.

Due in large part to these efforts, the movie turned out to be a record-breaking blockbuster, and became the watershed media and cultural event MAC had anticipated. The Church had come together publicly, on a nationwide scale, and with a unity of purpose and consistency of message not seen for a long time. The effort served not only to revive public discussions of such bedrock Christian themes as Christ’s love for us, his sacrifice and resurrection, and what that means to each of us personally; but also served to re-engage the church as an important influence on the entertainment industry and, in turn, on the culture. During the campaign and in the months following, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) received an all-time record number of comments from the public about the profanity and obscenity that has become all-too-common in the public media, and as a result assessed a record number of fines and license suspensions against companies and individuals who had been some of the worst offenders. There emerged a new awareness by the Church of the media’s toxic effect on the culture, and a new willingness to address the issue.

The Chronicles of Narnia Movie
While the Mission America Coalition was pleased with the results of The Passion campaign, it didn’t expect to become involved with the film industry again any time soon. As a result, when The Chronicles of Narnia movie came to MAC’s attention early last year, it was supportive, but not inclined to get directly involved as it had with The Passion. But as MAC began to consider the potential of a blockbuster fantasy and adventure film, which would likely have great popular appeal and reach deep into our culture—far deeper than The Passion did with its “R” rating and overtly Christian theme—it began to watch Narnia’s development very carefully. If Narnia could be made with the highest artistic and production quality of Hollywood, while still retaining the wonderful Christian themes and imagery that C.S. Lewis had woven into his imaginative stories, it could present a truly remarkable opportunity for evangelism. As MAC became convinced that both of these criteria would be met by Walden Media (the producer) with oversight by the C.S. Lewis Estate, MAC became increasingly excited about the opportunity and decided to support the film.

Jim Overholt is executive director of the Mission America Coalition.