Since returning from a week-long trip to Houston, I've been catching up on the The God Journey podcasts that had been populating my iTunes. All of them are great but the last one really excited me. Its titled Lights! Camera! Action! and is an interview with a couple of guys from northern California named Bobby Downes of ChristianCinema.com and Loren Rosser of Family Room Media. ChristianCinema.com is a distributor of movies and media directed at a Christian audience. Family Room Media describes their mission as "Using multimedia to touch multicultures with the message of freedom ... ". This website was officially launched 3/5/06 so it is still a work in progress.

The podcast includes much discussion about the movies that have recently been released that seem to have an underlying Christian theme. During the discussion, Loren talked about his partner, David Fredrickson who has written a book titled "When the Church Leaves the Building" that will be published shortly. David was the pastor of a church in Sacramento that shut down all programs, dropped all the ministry positions, cancelled all salaries, and then sold their building. This group of believers turned away from religion and turned to the simplicity of Christ.

From this background, David is producing a documentary, "Church Outside the Walls." This four part video series will focus on Christians who have left Sunday morning "church" and the whole system of doing "church" in order to return to the simplicity of Christ. The first video will be titled "The Drop-Outs" where they interview some of those people who have dropped out of "church". This first video will likely be completed in the spring of 2006. There is a preview video you can view from their website. The website will be posted with the progress.

The last few months have really shined a light on the millions of us who have left the organized church for a closer relationship with Jesus and His people. Barna's "Revolution", Time's article this month, and now a series of documentary videos on the subject are being made.

Does it look like God is at work here? We don't know where the videos will be distributed or what impact they will make. But I'm sure that He has a plan. Stay tuned for more ....

Larry @ The Joshua Tree Blog