I was made for this...

"The power and use of short films in the ministry of Campus Crusade in Eastern Europe and Russia…even the whole World."

There is an initiative I’ve been involved in with my team for a few months now. The reason I have not yet mentioned this to you is simple: It was more an idea than anything. Well, sort of. Let me explain. (Still, I wish I’d told you about this back then…)

About seven or eight months ago, leaders of the Area Campus Ministry approached us with an idea and asked for our help. They have purchased licenses to several short films from private filmmakers. These short films were made for the DAMAH Film Festival – www.damah.com. These films have spiritual messages and they relate to today’s post modern culture. They ask spiritual question, most College student do not even think about.

The campus ministry believed that these films could be used as discussion starters and guiders to the Gospel. So after being tested in few countries like Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, the effect seemed to be huge! Most people love films, especially films that will make them think. It seemed that God uses these short films to get students – who were not thinking on a spiritual level before – to start thinking and talking about spiritual things, ultimately making it fairly easy to lead them to a Gospel presentation.

So the Area Campus Ministry asked us to help them in creating a tool, packaging these films onto a DVD that will not only contain films, but the interactive material that will prompt and guide discussion. We hope to make this to be working in large or small group settings as well as a student watching it one-on-one with another student or staff.

Quoting a colleague, Jim Southard: “The discussion of these films' spiritual content will open new avenues and relationships and will make sharing Christ a greater possibility in this very post modern culture.”

About six months ago we started praying, writing scripts for intros and endings for three short films as well as shooting demo footage based on the first scripts. We all knew they need much refining.

Three weeks ago the project took a turn, resulting in what we called the Pan European Short Film Workshop.

Our team invited about 20 missionaries who have either created short films or have an interest in their use to Budapest. We spent the week together, considering the demo material we made; discussing what changes would be needed.

After the first day of the workshop we divided into three teams. The team I was on was working on writing scripts; another was scouting for locations and shooting and the third was filming and interviewing all of us as we worked for a “making of” material.

A big question was how the discussion material--the questions and the way they are presented--would be received by the average college-aged adult. Since the filmmaker himself represents someone who already has credibility without having to establish it, we decided that the original idea of an “MC” would not be the best way to go. Even if the viewer does not like the filmmaker's work, at least it is his honest and personal expression.

Fortunately, we had the honor of having Daniel Roemer--director of one of the short films planned to be on the DVD called, "The Select Fit"--at our workshop. "The Select Fit" is the story of a drug user who is confronted by two very impatient angels who force him into making a decision about his life's meaning. Dan not only directed the short film--he played the lead role.

The team scheduled for finding locations and filming an interview with Dan about his film, spent the last two days doing that. The filming was exhausting, but went well as I heard. Our team helped them out during their last day of shooting.

My team had a wonderful time brainstorming over many great ideas and discussion prompting questions. Our main task was to come up with an idea for a much more direct evangelistic short film that will create discussion like the others, doesn’t contain the whole of, but unquestionably points to the Gospel message.

The second day, as I was talking to another staff from Slovakia an idea came to my mind that we started chiseling. It seemed like a good idea. I presented the idea to my team that day and everybody seemed to like it and got excited about it. We got to work and continued to hammer out the idea.

It was SO MUCH FUN! I always loved teamwork and thought that I would work most effectively when I constantly get feedback from other creative people. Their ideas bring me more ideas and vice-versa. Still, I could not have imagined how much I would like working with other creative people as we did. Someone asked me during the workshop whether I like it or not. My answer was: “I was made for this!”

We were very productive. Couple of days later I found myself writing the script for a short film on a borrowed laptop – I don’t yet have one of my own. As of now, few of us are working on refining the script more and more via email.

We have a lot of work to do, but seeing this tool evolve is remarkable and is extremely motivating.

Please pray
- that we would see the guiding hand of God as we progress this project
- that we would have suffucient creativity, time and funding
- that we could be done in time
- that it would be even more effective than we could imagine