Mars Hill Church in Seattle is pulling out all the stops this spring, but it’s not for Easter. It’s for Good Friday.
Their creative team is putting together a 30-minute film about Good Friday. The church’s creative director, Jesse Bryan, and pastor, Mark Driscoll, collaborated on the script. It was shot on the set of Spartacus at Universal Studios in Hollywood and features the talents of a production designer from the TV show 24 and a make-up artist who worked on such films as The Passion of the Christ, No Country for Old Men and Flags of Our Fathers.
“The purpose of the film is to make the horror and eternal weight of Good Friday more vivid,” says Nick Bogardus, who handles PR and media relations for Mars Hill. “Whereas The Passion may have tried to tell the story with chronological and historical accuracy, we’re trying to make the theological weight of the event–the substitutionary death of the Son of God in our place for our sins–as vivid as possible.”
They’ll be showing the film at two services on Good Friday and streaming it online for free. They hope to make it available to other churches next year.
“We hope people see it and really feel that the cross was something done by us and for us,” says Bogardus.
What Easter (or Good Friday) plans does your church have this year?
Kevin
March 16, 2010
“What Good Friday plans does your church have this year?”
Oh, nothing much, just a introspective Holy Eucharist at noon and five thirty, where we will ingest a small wafer and sip red wine in rememberence of the Passion of the Christ…Jesus, I mean, not the movie.
More power to Mars Hill for having a vision and producing it with excellence, the church needs more of that attitude, but after a while, when we try to one up each other with who can reeeally depict the crucifixion with more realism, it gets to be more caricature than character.
Give me a quiet sanctuary with a black cloth draped over the cross, people coming and going with their heads bowed because they realize how much they suck and how magnificant this Jesus is. I get that, and I then, and only then, begin to anticipate the glory that will fill that sacntuary in another forty eight hours. Never during the church year does the phrase, “It’s friday, but Sunday’s coming” mean more.
jk
March 18, 2010
Mars Hill never ceases to amaze me with their frontier in multimedia
Noreen
April 9, 2010
Amen, Kevin.
I admire the Mars Hill spirit, but sometimes it’s nice to just let the Holy Spirit play a movie in people’s hearts. He’s way better at it than we could ever be.