Animated children’s outreach a growing trend

Child Evangelism Fellowship has released a new animated children’s series titled “Esther,” inspired by the biblical book. The five-part series focuses on themes such as faith, courage, prayer, grace and providence.

“More than ever, children are exposed to immoral content on social media, in advertising and on many internet platforms,” said Andrew York, the organization’s director of digital ministries. ‘“Esther’ gives parents the confidence to know that their children are watching wholesome, entertaining programming with a biblical message.”

READ: CEF wants to reach 100 million kids yearly

CEF has a long history of reaching children worldwide with the gospel. In 2022 alone, more than 19.5 million children heard the good news through CEF’s ministries, and more than 439,000 teachers were trained globally.

“The structure is in place, the boots are on the ground to grow this ministry exponentially,” Executive Vice President Moises Esteves says. “And we have strict strategies, like children reaching children, which is teaching older, more mature children to evangelize their peers. It’s a beautiful training that we’re accelerating in the coming years.”

In recent years, faith-based media have seen increasing success in mainstream markets, indicating a growing interest in and availability of such content. Recently, Minno, Slingshot Productions, Sunrise Animation Studios and Angel Studios rolled out the five-part series “Young David.” The series aims to give viewers a glimpse into King David’s early years and explores the many facets that made him a man after God’s own heart.

Last year, The Daily Wire’s new children’s show app Bentkey released “A Wonderful Day with Mabel Maclay,” which follows Mabel, a cheerful redhead, as she helps children create, explore and think critically about the world around them. Creators Katy and Ryan Chase, devout Christians, said they were inspired to develop the show after becoming discouraged by the media options available for young children.

“We felt really inspired to find a solution to this problem,” Katy said. “We’ll turn off a show in the limited amount of time our kids have seen modern kids’ content, and they truly have flushed cheeks, dilated eyes and crazy behavior; they don’t want to turn it off. They’ve obviously been so hyper-stimulated by the content. But when we show them older things, the ways shows used to feel, they don’t have that reaction. We thought, `let’s make a modern take on that stuff; it’s so good.’ That’s what we’ve set out to do.”

–Dwight Widaman | MV