Leader's Insight: The Little Movie that Could

When Alex Kendrick said he wanted to make a movie, most people thought he was nuts. Kendrick, pastor of media at Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia, had enjoyed making movies and staging plays ever since he could remember, but churches just weren’t supposed to make movies.

But Kendrick, with the help of the Sherwood congregation, did it anyway, and Flywheel was a hit, first in Albany. Since its debut at the Albany theater three years ago, the film sold 36,000 on DVD, and the church has received more than 2,000 phone calls, e-mails, and letters from people the film had touched.

“It just blew us away, because it didn’t make sense that this little tiny movie starring local actors could do something like that,” says Kendrick.

Recognizing God’s blessing on their efforts from the lives that had been changed through Flywheel, Kendrick began to ask God for a plot for a second movie. With his brother, Stephen, Alex developed a plot about a high school football coach whose team mired in a long losing slump, whose job was on the line, and whose home life only made matters worse. Facing the Giants was born.

This time, the Kendricks prayed for a widespread theatrical release and aimed to shoot the film in high definition. They prayed for $100,000, and support poured in. More than 500 people from the church donated their money, time, and talent to the picture.

The cast was made up entirely of church members and Albany residents, the meals fed to the cast were prepared by Sunday school classes, and the local high school football team volunteered to serve as the football team depicted in the film, taking time after practices to shoot scenes. Church members and community businessmen playing other roles filmed scenes on extended lunch breaks or after work, sometimes not leaving the set until after midnight. No one got paid, except for the travel expenses of five professionals from a film company in Orlando who were brought in to help train all of the volunteers in film and makeup techniques.

“The widespread theatrical release thing was really a ridiculous thing to pray for, because what theater would ever pick up a movie made by a church?” says Kendrick. But it happened. Sony heard about the film, and eventually decided to distribute it in 400 theaters and 80 cities all over the U.S. Debut was set for September 29.

Prayer was key in this production

Tackling such a big, out-of-the-box project as this was more than many churches would have taken on, but Kendrick says his congregation is getting accustomed to challenges. For them it became a cause for prayer, first of all.

Before each shoot, Alex and Stephen led the cast and crew in prayer and devotions. Senior pastor Michael Catt recruited prayer warriors to pray for a different aspect of filmmaking each day. “All the people on the project saw prayer at work and the power of it, and they were able to see God’s hand in this project,” Catt said.

“We told everybody to think of (the project) in terms of going to war,” Kendrick says. “We had the front lines out there in the heat on the field shooting the movie, but we also had to have reserves bringing in the food, clothes, fans, and tents and we had to have a second team to take over when it was time to shoot a night scene, because the first team had just been filming eight to ten hours and had to go home to rest.

“We said that our enemy was going to be fatigue, and the devil was obviously not going to like us making this movie,” Kendrick adds. “They approached it like a war, and the whole process went off very smoothly.”

Still, Kendrick urges caution when attempting such an unusual ministry effort. “There’s a huge difference between a good idea and a God idea,” Kendrick says. “I had a plot for a movie that I originally wanted to do, but God kept shooting it down. I just realized then that the plot that became our first movie (Flywheel) was God’s plot, not mine.”

The success of their movie projects has spurred the people of Sherwood Baptist Church try bigger things. “People’s vision for what God can do has just dramatically expanded” Kendrick says, “Our senior pastor is thinking even bigger. The process of making this movie has fueled the fire of all of that.” With the proceeds from the film, the congregation plans to build a 100-acre sports complex to serve its community and spread the gospel.

“Facing the Giants will make its money back, for sure,” says Mark Moring, online managing editor of music and film at Christianity Today. “The Chronicles of Narnia would have made boatloads of money even without the churches pushing it like they did. This movie is unique in that it is really going to need the church to make money at the theater.”

But Kendrick says that how well the film does at the box office really isn’t the point. He hopes for changed lives. “We’re praying that when this movie comes out in theaters there will be a lot of first time decisions for Christ, and that churches will see this as a tool to minister to their surrounding communities.”

Outreach tools and resources for Facing the Giants, including flyers, bulletin inserts, and a video-based study guide can be found on the film’s web site at www.facingthegiants.com.

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