One surefire way to promote a quality movie for Christians is to make it yourself. This is just what Journey Church, a Southern Baptist congregation in Joplin, is doing.
The church’s Light of Life Films just released its first feature-length film this spring, “Undefiled.” It addresses one of the largest – and often unspoken – issues in the church, pornography. It tells the fictional story of an aging minor league baseball player struggling with an endless cycle of family destroying addiction and shame.
After a successful short film in 2017, Matt McCaulley, part of Light of Life Films and a member of Journey Church began searching for his next project. A conversation with a friend led him to recognize just how pervasive pornography and addiction is in society as a whole, and even within the church. It was a heavy subject but one he believed was necessary to address.
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“I didn’t really want it to be — it’s a hard, difficult topic — but after a lot of prayer, we knew it was going to be our next project,” he told “The Pathway.” “It’s a fictional story, but it’s very real and not at all what you might expect your normal faith-based film to be. It has a very real ending to it.”
For several years, McCaulley prayed, wrote, edited, rewrote, raised money through donations and investments, found cast and crew, rustled up equipment and scouted locations in Georgia, Kansas and Joplin.
“Making a feature-length film is still really, really hard to get from start to completion,” he said. “But at the same time, it is more accessible to more people than it ever has been, and that’s a good thing. Yes, making film is fun, but our main goal is to glorify God and pursue the message he’s given us to put forward. We want it to be the best it can be and be entertaining, but we also wanted there to be a high ministry value.”
Filmmakers partnered with Pure Desire Ministries to create resources and a six-part curriculum to accompany the movie. “It acts as a follow-up and next steps kind of thing,” McCaulley said. “The film is just the top end of the funnel to change lives.”
“Undefiled” is available for rent and purchase on Amazon Prime and will be released May 10 on Apple TV and Tubi. McCaulley said the movie eventually will be released on DVD. More information about the movie and Light of Life Films can be found at www.lightoflifefilms.com.
–Lee Hartman | Metro Voice
