Facing the Giants—A Church Thinks Outside the Sanctuary

On September 29 a feature-length film called Facing the Giants will open in 86 markets and 400 theaters across the United States. And the members of Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia, will still be amazed that they made the movie.

They expected Facing the Giants to go straight to video. When they sought permission from Provident Label Group to use a Third Day song on their sound track, the movie ended up on the desk of Terry Hemming, the President of Provident. After watching the movie, he immediately wanted to book a flight to Albany to meet with Sherwood Baptist and work out a contract. Eventually, the film landed with the president of Sony, a non-Christian, who watched it with his family on vacation. He said Facing the Giants should be released to a wider audience than even Provident had planned.

Did we mention the movie stars an all-volunteer cast of church members? Catering was handled by Sunday school classes, wardrobe by the pastor’s wife. On-locations were shot in community homes. The only paid professionals formed a five-man film crew who took a wild cut in pay, held a week-long boot camp to teach lighting, sound, and production basics, and lent crashing authenticity to the game shots.

Onscreen, Facing the Giants is the story of a high school football coach on a six-year losing streak. Behind the scenes, it’s the story of Michael Catt, Stephen Kendrick, and Alex Kendrick, three ministers who can’t do church-as-usual.

Pastor Catt, how does a church start making movies?

In 2002, two of my staff members, Stephen and Alex Kendrick, read a survey by George Barna. It listed film as this generation’s top influencer. The church didn’t even make the top 10.

Alex has been our media minister since ’99. His brother, Stephen, came on a couple of years later. They have such passion, zeal, energy, enthusiasm . . . and maturity. I’ve been around so many staff people like melted vanilla ice cream. These guys are like a banana split.

Alex said, “I’d like to make Christian movies, but I don’t know how I’d do that on a church staff.”

I said, “Why not?”

He brought a script and a budget, and we started down the road of Sherwood Pictures.

Because of this movie, you’ve been showing up in some high-profile media lately—

CBS, LA Times, ABC, The Washington Times.

How do you keep your head on straight?

We have to remember who we are and where we came from and who got us here. We made a movie to influence the culture, not to make a name for ourselves or get pats on the back.

I heard someone say a long time ago that you have to be dead both to flattery and flattening, because there will be people at both extremes.

Some will think what we’re doing is incredible. Others will say we have no business doing this. The battle is in the mind, and the Bible talks about renewing our mind. If my mind is renewed in Christ, I don’t let the applause or the jeers affect me, because I only have to please one person.

What do you do to keep that mind?

You pray to stay humble before the Lord, and you surround yourself with people that help you keep perspective. You learn that God doesn’t honor people who strut. The mighty men of the Bible were humble but bold. Not a false humility, not poor self-esteem. They just had good perspective.

Our relations with Christians and other believers help us keep perspective. In isolation, if all I do is listen to people who agree with me, I’ll get the big head. I have a group of men I meet with every week. I’m accountable to them—they pray for me, encourage me, tell me when I shouldn’t have said something. They’re not trying to run me down, but they want what’s best for me.

Which brings up another question in the context of what you’re doing—what is a church supposed to be?

A church is supposed to be the body of Christ, the light of the world. When you read about the church in the Scriptures, it’s supposed to be on the offensive, not the defensive. Not recoiling, but moving forward with confidence that God has put us here for a reason.

If you study Church history, there came a time when the Church withdrew from the arts. It said that theater was evil—even the pipe organ was an instrument of the devil. And we gave the arts over by default. Yet when you go to Europe, the great buildings are cathedrals. The great art relates to the Scriptures. Michelangelo’s David. Why we let that go, I don’t know, but it was wrong.

The arts of today—movies, TV, Internet, everything out there—can be used for good or evil. We can complain about how it is corrupting our children and culture. Or we can say, “Let’s get in the middle and make a difference.”

Is the movie making a difference? How do people react when they see it?

In the screenings, people start applauding before it’s over. They laugh and cry. They stand and talk for a long time after the movie. They want Jim’s autograph! [Executive Pastor Jim McBride plays opposing coach Bobby Lee Duke.] Reactions are encouraging:“Thank you for doing this.” “We’re so excited. We’re going to tell our friends.” “You’re going to help us share the gospel with our unchurched friends.”

I think the movie’s been a real encouragement to the Christian community. How do you have a church make a story that Sony picks up and distributes? That’s a God thing. Another thing is our people. They have handled it all graciously. They’ve prayed faithfully.

And the most obvious effects of their prayers?

The unity of the people who worked on the movie. Between Alex and Stephen and Jim and myself, and others in the key positions of all of this, there’s been no “Why did you get to do that and not me?” The enemy could get in and divide us as a team. And we all know we’re better as a team than individually.

You say that for a period, as a pastor, you went through if onlys: If only you led a church in a city like Atlanta. If only your church was bigger . . .

I think everyone plays the if only game. At some point you have to lose your idealism and get to the reality: “This is my role in life. This is what God made me for. He’s given me this personality, these gifts. How am I to use them?”

James says don’t boast about tomorrow (4:13-17), but most Christians and non-Christians live thinking, “Tomorrow I’m going to do better.” There’s one line in the movie where the coach says, “You can’t judge others by their actions and yourself by your intentions.” A lot of people say, “One day I’m going to do something great for God.” And they end up on a deathbed saying, “I don’t know what I did, and I’m not sure why I was here.” I came to a point where I decided not to be one of those people.

In some ways I spent a lot of time trying to prove myself for the wrong reasons. I finally asked myself, “What am I here for?” It doesn’t matter how broad my influence is, but I need to maximize my talents and leave the rest to God.

It’s easy to think the next job, the next promotion, the next car, will make me content. But we won’t find contentment in the things we get. We’ll find it in how we give.

To all the people who think they have a gift they aren’t using, what do you say?

People don’t need to make excuses and compare themselves to other people. They’ve been created in God’s image, and they need to stop making excuses. We can spend our lives saying, "I didn’t get the education” or “I didn’t get this or that.”

Go to someone you trust and ask, “What do you see that I’m good at? What do you see?” You may be good at people skills, organization, planning. A lot of people know their gift but say they don’t. Your gift is what you enjoy doing. You just need to use it—a cup of cold water in the name of Jesus.

Do what you love for the glory of God.

Anything we do for his glory is an act of worship. Washing dishes, picking up after kids, teaching a fifth grade class. Service and worship are interchangeable. Worship is how I live my life. My life is to be an act of worship.

Have you always thought “outside the sanctuary” like this?

Most people know there’s something more to church than just showing up, checking the box, and going home. And that’s why they turn off to the average church—it’s predictable. There’s nothing wrong with tradition. But if we start to worship it and are scared to make changes in the methods, we limit ourselves to one generation of ministry.

I have to do things as a pastor that I’m not always comfortable with. But I want to reach 15-year-olds today. We have a phrase: whoever wants the next generation the most will get them. Flannel graphs and chalk talks won’t reach a student who has an Xbox in his room.

It’s not compromise. It’s finding a way to put the message in the culture where the culture starts to listen. The people heard Jesus gladly. When they listened to the Pharisees, all they heard was rote, tradition, rules, don’ts. When they heard Jesus, he never condemned the lost people. He loved them to himself. Lost people are lost. They don’t know anything else. Jesus was only hard on hypocrites.

What evidence tells you this thinking is on the right track?

One is how our people pulled together, serving and giving of their time, energy, money, making meals—it’s so obvious that they bonded in their hearts with this project. Seeing answered prayers is evidence. The doors God opened through rating controversy and other things. People are getting behind this that normally would not be jumping to back a movie made by a church on a low budget. It’s as if they’re coming out of the woodwork.

What is your counsel to other churches who want to go where you’ve gone?

You’ve got to find out what it is God wants you to do unique to your church. We've got too many cookie-cutter churches. They go to Willow Creek in Chicago and come home and try to put Willow Creek in Albany. But Albany is not Chicago. You can learn from everyone, but you have to adapt ministry to the people you’re dealing with. Churches mistakenly try to be exactly like another church. But God blesses the uniqueness of each church. They’ve got to find out what’s unique to them. If it’s movies, they better have a good scriptwriter, a compelling story, and the right equipment.

And, I would add, a church praying 24/7.

Just because you have a camera doesn’t mean you’re supposed to be on TV. You’ve got to find what God wants you to do. We’ve had churches tell us they want to make movies. And after talking to us and praying about it, they realized they need to stick to small videos in their churches and use it in a more focused way. The worst thing in the world is to do something and God not be in it.

What do you know now that you didn’t know before all this started?

Well, I know a lot of new people. And I know that God is even bigger than we think he is when we think he’s big. In Ephesians, it says he’s able to do exceedingly abundantly beyond what we hope or imagine. Those words roll off our tongue. But when you start seeing what’s possible—opening doors for us to do Fox, CNN, LA Times, Glenn Beck—you have to say God’s really big. He’s doing some incredible things we could never have orchestrated ourselves.

My mentor used to say you don’t have to chase key men if you know the one who holds the keys. I've seen that reaffirmed in that we’ve not gone looking for this, it came to us—because of the prayers of our people, their faithfulness, and our commitment to stay true to the gospel in doing this film.

What have the past four months been like for you?

[Laughs] Tiring! A great ride! Exciting to meet people who are believers that I could never have met in a normal day at work—people across the country that love the Lord. People are doing great things for God in Hollywood, in New York City; in Lincoln, Nebraska; in Washington, D.C; in Dallas . . . everywhere we’ve been, people from all walks of life. The church is bigger than where I am and what I do. God is bigger than your denomination, your town . . . and no matter your circumstances, no matter where you live or who you are, God can do great things through your life.

But it’s like Alex says, “We determine to glorify God no matter the outcome. He may choose to fulfill our hopes or to take us down a different path. Remember, life is not about us and what we want. It’s about him and what he wants. Having desires that line up with God’s is the best place to be.”

We don’t measure greatness by what the world says but by that sense that “I’m in the will of God doing what he wants me to do.”