The video “Our Mission Field,” has an extremely important reminder. There is just as much of a need to reach our own culture with the gospel as there is in reaching other countries. I talked with Shane Sooter, Artistic Director/President of City on a Hill Productions, the company that created the video, about the gaining momentum of using visual media to reach the unchurched.
City On a Hill is a high-quality, non-profit production company that uses the language of film to tell contemporary stories of faith that speak to the heart. Located in Louisville, KY the seven year-old ministry has produced a variety of short dramatic films and multi-episode DVD based small group studies including H2O: A Journey of Faith, The Easter Experience, and not a fan.
Shane was Co-Director for: The Perfect Stranger, Another Perfect Stranger and The Stranger TV Series (3 episodes). He received his BFA in Acting from Southern Methodist University.
Shane, where do you see media today?
Two things have changed our world as a media ministry. The first is technology. We couldn’t have existed ten years ago. The tools are just so much cheaper. The second is the adoption of story-driven media on a large scale. We’ve never seen this before. More important than the content being created, is the mindset that’s being represented. It’s a foundational shift in the way the church looks at media as a tool.
It’s an exciting time with unprecedented and limitless possibilities. So many things are coming together to accelerate our work. It makes me excited to see what Christ is going to do with media to further His kingdom.
So the church is ready for using visual media?
The front runner churches have really grasped media as a tool within their worship experience and as a resource for small groups. However, whether it’s by God’s design, or it’s just people’s unwillingness to change, it always seems the church-at-large lags a decade behind the rest of the world.
To do story-driven media with actors and drama is much harder to pull off than cool backgrounds for a worship chorus or a sixty-second countdown at the beginning of a service. It’s a lot riskier, but more churches are going for it and I think the majority will follow.
How good a job is the church doing in using media for outreach?
I think they haven’t come close to maximizing its potential for reaching those who aren’t already sitting in the pews. It’s such a new tool that I don’t think they know how to use it yet. Quite frankly, that may be a good thing. I’m excited that churches are embracing media, but the media at many churches is not yet ready for public consumption. It’s media that is blessing the church, and edifying people in the services, but the people who don’t go to church don’t measure media by what the church has done before. They measure by the TV show they watched last night or the movie they went to see.
We always say at City on a Hill that the theology of what we do is critical, but if the quality’s not there, people outside the church won’t listen.
Practically speaking, how would you coach an organization into getting started?
If you’re just beginning, I would take the resourcing route. Go out and identify the tools that have been the most effective, produced by people that know what they’re doing. Tools that have been test driven in churches. Then, embrace some of those tools and learn how to integrate them into the life of your church and into your outreach strategy.
Creating your own tools is ultimately the future of media in the church, but in my opinion, you need to start with people not technology. If you needed a senior pastor, you would go on a fairly exhaustive search to find the right person, the person who has the right skills, the right knowledge. Most churches don’t take that approach when it comes to media.
I think you will achieve more, more quickly, by finding a skilled media professional, even if it’s somebody right out of college. Churches hire pastors right out of college all the time. They’ve got a lot to learn, but they’re equipped. I think if you take that approach, and get skilled people into the churches, then you’re set up for success.
You can also find an individual, a freelancer, who does media. Put them on retainer. The technology is there for the taking, if you’ve got somebody that knows how to use it.
Can only large churches aspire to using visual media?
No, not at all. I would argue that a small church can use media just as effectively as a big church. While Director of Drama at Southeast Christian, a church of 20,000, I recognized that the tools we were creating with media would be just as powerful in a church of 50 or in somebody’s home. They transfer fully. I thought, there’s a huge opportunity for resourcing the kingdom at large and that’s part of the mindset that led to the formation of our ministry.
Could a group of churches or organizations get together and share the cost of producing resources that would target the needs of their community?
A project we’re working on now is called “The Life Project.” We’re working with a number of Crisis Pregnancy Centers to develop a full library of resources that would meet all their media needs no matter what size they are or where they are. So that may be a precursor of what you’re talking about.
What does the future of media look like?
The future of media is I want it, when I want it, where I want it on the device of my choosing. We’re trying to get on the leading edge of how we can deliver our resources in the widest number of ways. Future technologies will rival television and eventually the big screen. People will walk around with the screen all day long and they will want their media with them.
If you could address an auditorium full of Christian communicators, what advice would you give to help them see the power of media?
Story is the language of our hearts. Media is the language of our times. We use both to share Jesus with the world. City on a Hill
Christian communicators can best understand the power of media by recognizing that they’re already to some degree acquainted with the power of story. Good communicators are often good storytellers. If they think of the way that the culture around them consumes story, the vast majority of it is in the form of media. It’s not about entertaining people in the pews, it’s about entertaining people into the church.
That would be my challenge to Christian communicators. You understand the power of story. Embrace the power of media. And use both to share Jesus with the world.