There are many movies I'm looking forward to seeing this summer. "Evan Almighty" is not one of them. My reasons for avoiding this film include:
1. I hate movies with animals. (Well, all right. I love two animal movies: "Best in Show" and "Old Yeller," who truly was the best doggone dog in the west.)
2. I hate movies that are rated PG. (Although there are some glowing exceptions, the PG rating seems to be a haven for slapped together plots, booger jokes, poorly executed slapstick and A-list actors slumming it. But that's just my opinion.)
3. I hate movies that remake God in our image and then pass it off as family fare. (To be fair, I haven't seen this film and maybe it presents a perfectly biblical picture of God. But I'm not holding my breath.)
All this to say, I hadn't really given "Evan Almighty" much thought until yesterday evening when I picked up my mail and found a flier from Youth Specialties. It featured a picture of a scene from the aforementioned film and the caption: "All God asked Evan to do was build an ark. He's asking you to change to world." This was followed by a quick blurb about something called Ark Almighty.
Intrigued, I did a little research and discovered that Ark Almighty is an "Evan Almighty" inspired program for churches. Ark stands for "Acts of Random Kindness" and the program takes many of its cues from Steve Sjogren's book, "Conspiracy of Kindness." Ark Almighty functions sort of like Craigslist and matches up needs in your congregation and community to the talents and skills of members of your church. Partners for this program include the Willow Creek Association, Youth Specialties, Outreach Inc., and the International Bible Society. To learn more about it, click here.
When your church signs up, you receive a four week curriculum designed by Youth Specialties, an instructional DVD starring "Evan Almighty" star John Goodman, t-shirts, hats, a banner and more. And you can disperse promotional materials throughout your neighborhood that tie in with the film.
So I'm in a bit of a quandry. I don't have a staunch conviction about whether or not I agree with this program. And I have staunch convictions about EVERYTHING including ice cream (Coldstone over Baskin Robbins), clothing (natural over synthetic fibers), 19th century American writers (Melville over Emerson) and so on.
On the one hand, there are some things I really like about the Ark Almighty concept:
1. I like the idea of churches being outward focused and caring for the people in their communities.
2. I like the idea of a system for uncovering the needs in your community.
3. I like that people could see the church's good works and glorify God.
On the other hand, there are some things that really bother me about the concept:
1. I'm all about partnering with secular organizations, but I'm uneasy about partnering with a movie distribution company that is primarily interested in making money.
2. I don't like giving the Christian stamp of approval (which Ark Almighty absolutely does - you can even watch an "Evan Almighty" preview on the website) to a movie that could be disrespectful to God. Or just be lousy.
3. I don't like the church functioning as a free marketing tool for Universal Pictures.
What do you all think? Is Ark Almighty an example of becoming all things to all men? Is it an unholy union between the church and Hollywood? Does the good outweigh the bad? Am I being difficult just because I hate animal movies? I'd love to hear your staunch convictions on the subject, although developing opinions are welcome as well.
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3 comments:
I've been a bit intrigued by this movie, but only because Steve Carrell is in it. The first one was somewhat entertaining, but contained very few useful ideas, other than, "This is how Hollywood views God."
As someone without a staunch conviction, I think it's not good to base a program in something as flimsy as a movie. When people forget about this film (and I doubt it will have the lasting impact of The Godfather, Butch Cassidy, or Goodburger), will the ministry keep going? In five years, will having a sequel to a lame movie be as part of the promotion help or hurt? If the goal is to help the community, why don't we use that as the promotion?
I looked a little bit on the website, and I found this bit interesting. They say it will, "revolutionize the words of Jesus," on the commandment to love each other. But are we somehow unable to do this because we don't have a program? I think the intent is fine, but I doubt using Evan Almighty is necessary, and I wonder if it will do good.
Ends and means. That's the issue for me. Would these people be doing all this if they weren't looking to make a grip of money? Maybe this could be a great opportunity for the church to say, "thanks Evan Almighty, you're right, we need to help our communities. However, we're going to give our time and money to organizations that have historically been effective at helping ostracized and needy people, and not to an advertising campaign." I could be wrong about all this.
After stumbling upon this ArkAlmighty idea on a local Christian radio station, I found it jived almost identically with the ministry idea I had come up with a couple years ago, but had'nt quite found a way to implement it in our church. It appears that they have figured out alot of what I was wondering about as far as using the internet as a means of communicating the needs within our church family. It also appears that besides the cost of buying their promotional stuff, which it also appears you don't HAVE to do, there is no cost to using their pre-made webite which caters to your own church. So, in my opinion, I don't see it as 'them' using 'us' but rather, I will use their premade web design tools to begin a mimistry that was on hold due to lack of being web design saavy. All in all, I think it's a good thing.
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