The Media Mission Field

The problem is, when they see a movie like Mel Gibson’s movie about the crucifixion of Jesus, they get together and think, “gee, what is it that made this successful?” More often than not, they take one element of it...in this case, the religious theme, and try to capitalize on it. “Well, Americans want religion,” they think, “so by golly, we’ll give it to them.”

So what do we get? We get TV programs like Revelations on NBC – from what I’ve heard, a very entertaining, but ultimately quite unbibilical, portrayal of events in the last book of the Bible.

We get another NBC program being developed now called The Book of Daniel - let me read a description of this one:

In "Book of Daniel," actor Aidan Quinn plays a pill-popping Episcopal priest who has the ability to talk about his drug addiction with a hip, modern-day Jesus.

From Fox, we’ll see in the next year or so a program they’re calling Briar and Graves.

It is the story of a hard-drinking, gun-toting excommunicated priest who has sworn to battle evil in the name of God. Along the way, he teams up with a neurologist who is in the process of examining her own beliefs.

The producers of this program have described it as The X Files goes to church.

Obviously, something’s missing, huh? It’s not as if these folks looked at the Passion of the Christ and got saved, and began producing things of redemptive value. That movie has had a real impact on what Hollywood produced, at least for a while, even if for purely monetary motives, but it didn’t change their hearts.

Seen in comparison with our analogy of other mission fields, think of it this way: we don’t just want Muslims to quit flying their planes into our buildings, do we?

Yes, of course, we do want that, but that’s not all we want. We want to see hearts changed, lives redeemed, right? The only real, lasting change is heart change.

Karen Covell is a TV producer and the director of the Hollywood Prayer Network. She writes in an article called “Does Hollywood Have a Prayer?”

"Where would Hollywood be today if American Christians actually started praying for the people creating films, music and TV shows?

Washington, D.C., is the global seat of power. Since the beginning of our nation, Christians have faithfully prayed for our political leaders, and today there are hundreds of prayer movements whose focus is to specifically pray for those leaders. The Presidential Prayer Team alone has an e-mail list of over 2.6 million American prayer warriors.

While Washington is the global seat of power, Hollywood is the global seat of influence. And Americans have long been concerned about Hollywood’s offerings. But instead of rallying to pray, as many have done for Washington, Christians often have rallied to rail -against Hollywood. Instead of encouraging entertainment leaders to produce better fare, Christians have organized angry letter-writing campaigns to express their distaste-and even hatred. But "grousing is not a gift of the Spirit," says Steve Douglass, president of Campus Crusade for Christ International. "We need to stop complaining about Hollywood and start praying for it.""