Fear God

The first film in our BASIC series with Francis Chan - Fear God - was introduced a little over a year ago now.  It was an exciting time for us at Flannel.  We had set the bar pretty high with our NOOMA series and knew the expectations would be high.  We relish that. We want our films to have an impact and we want them to be beautiful.  We hate to see films that are labeled "Christian" and then poorly done.  We strive to make each of our films better than the one before.  So the launch of Fear God was important to us.

Fear God is the first of seven films about the Church.  Having started a church and watching it grow over the years, Francis found himself asking questions about what he and his church had built.  The Church in Western culture has changed dramatically over the past couple of decades.  In a broad sense, the Church has been shaped by our culture.  Many of us have become reluctant to speak about issues that are uncomfortable when it comes to Church. In many cases, church has become an event or a concert.  It's where we go once a week to recharge the batteries.  It's almost like a concert: highly produced, professional, prompt.

But when we look at the first century Church, we see something much different.  We see a group of people that is like family.  They live their lives together with a common purpose.  It wasn't a once a week event.  In talking through all of this with Francis, we realized we both shared the same observations. We both were noticing a trend were the church in some cases has drifted to the point where many people may be interested in Jesus, but not the Church.  Any yet He set up His church for us! How can we think that we want Jesus but not His church?

The problem is so endemic, that often we are almost embarrassed to talk about how scripture describes God. So for example, Solomon said that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom.  In fact, the fear of the Lord is discussed over and over in scripture.  Today many people feel like that is old school.  We can't say that anymore because it may turn people off.   So if we must talk about it, we water it down and decide it means respect, not fear.

So in making Fear God, we were looking for a metaphor, that would illustrate that fear actually means fear.  There is a beautiful thing that happens though, when one reaches this point of fear.  We gain a perspective of who God is.  We learn that once we fear Him, He then tells us to fear not.  This is why the fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom.  He is God and we are not! This simply realization is transformative.  We are hopeful that the visual metaphor used in Fear God helps to show that the fear of the Lord actually leads to life.