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Movie Messaging | by Manny Edwards
MOVIE UPDATE
Why Christians must master film craft!
By and large, the church has lost its biblical worldview without even knowing it. If
you were the devil and you wanted to create a generation gap in the church, how would
you do it? Almost every institutional church in this country fractures worshipers by
age and demographic just like the secular academic institutions do. You have “college
groups,” “teen groups,” “young married’s class,” “recently divorced groups,” “empty
nesters groups.” We use religious language and call the assembly a congregation, but
we don’t actually carry out a biblical process of congregation; we use a secular process
called segregation. We say one thing, but do the opposite. Is it any wonder there’s a
disconnect between the Christian lifestyle taught in the Bible and the life actually lived
out in the church?
In his letter to Titus, Paul lays out a blueprint for the structure of the church. Among
other things, he tells Titus that the elder should teach the younger, but now they have
no opportunity to do so. The older folks are in their empty nesters class keeping their
wisdom and experience to themselves, the young couples are in their young married
class pooling their ignorance, and the children are in their own classes coloring pictures
of Noah’s ark. Responsibilities that God gives to parents are now sloughed off to
Sunday School teachers. Real social security is a large extended family clan, but now
even Christians look to the state for health care insurance, housing assistance, and food
stamps. They’re used to having institutions care for them, instead of a family.
With the family and church now out of the picture, people learn their lifestyle principles
from media. The 2002 Barna Research Group reported that media are the most
influential forms of communication today. Movies use story craft to advance a message,
and the message Christians are getting in theaters rarely reflects a biblical worldview.
At home, opportunities to spend time together and interact are eaten up by TV shows
and computer games. There goes the chance to teach your children the words of God.
You can’t “talk of them when thou sittest in thine house” unless you’re talking to each
other in the first place.
We must change that. The objective is to turn Christians to the task of living out the
word of God; to restore the words of God in their hearts; to make them effective bearers
of the gospel of salvation. Because they’re watching movies anyway, our strategy is to
master film craft and take a biblical worldview to the audience.
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