I am so excited today to tell you about an extraordinary project. I remember I was sitting in the theater a while back when the trailer played for the film, and I had never quite seen anything like this. It is a faith filled movie, but it was really funny, had a lot of heart, and I was really excited to see it. We recently had the opportunity to premiere the movie to our church–and everyone just loved it. The movie is “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” and releases in theaters today.
Our church really is a ragtag army. We’ve got people who drive in who have families. Then we have guys that were living on Skid Row, and they’re now in our rehab program. Some are former gangsters–and they all were laughing! Everyone seemed to be impacted by it. To screen the movie to a crowd as diverse as ours–and to get the response the movie received–really speaks volumes to the potential the movie has to cross barriers rarely crossed in Hollywood.
I had the opportunity to sit down with one of the producers from the movie, Andy Erwin, to talk about the project and what inspired it. The movie is based on a book Dallas Jenkins (creator of “The Chosen”) came across years ago that has since become a staple read for his family every Christmas. The story is about a fictional town that has this Christmas pageant they put on every year. It hasn’t changed for 75 years and tradition has, as Andy put it, “overtaken the meaning of the story. For them, it’s all about getting the pageant perfect. The pageant is sacred, and they forgot about the people.” But, when a family of outcasts are cast in the pageant, the entire town goes into chaos.
This film in so many ways resonates with the story of the Dream Center.
I think one of the cool things about it is it really challenges a lot of the perspectives of the church. The church is often known as a safe place from the world. It is often as if we say “let’s protect ourselves from the outside elements, because the world is such a dark place. Let’s just kind of hide in our little circle here.” But, the cool thing about the film is it really challenges a lot of those belief systems. It begs the question: who did Jesus come to reach?
I was at a church years ago. It was in a small town and a young lady walked in. She was pregnant, and she told the pastor she wasn’t married. The pastor asked her not to come back. And the reason he gave was: “I don’t want other people in my church to get ideas that this is okay.”
And I thought, if anything, it should be the opposite. We should be running to people that are in need. I think one of the greatest things about this film is not only does it have so much humor, but it has the dramatic element as well. The film really challenges the notion of “is the church supposed to be a safe place, or are we really called to be dangerous?”
Check out the whole interview on the “We Get To” podcast with Matthew Barnett, and make sure to check out “The Greatest Christmas Pageant Ever” in theaters everywhere November 8th!