In June of 2007, I felt a strong calling inside my heart. I wanted to work in video ministry, but not just any video ministry.
After watching several video sites one night, I noticed a major void in professional video sites… The void was God.
That night I had a dream… In the dream I came across a website. On this website there was tons of great short form video shows.
Here are the shows I saw…
1. 5-Minute Dev – This was a bible devotional show featuring one young male host and one female host. They would go over a bible scriptures/subject
and talk about how the theme related to their life, or life in general. New show airs every weekday. Here is a photo this demonstrating this idea in the secular realm, courtesy of G4's "Attack of the Show."
2. Missionary Adventures - A show that films remote places to uncover the conditions missionaries face.
3. Sunday school shorts – A show that teaches varies bible stories. In such a way that children could understand but still enjoyable by adult. Felt board character usage necessary!
4. A show that featured testimonies with some realistic footage.
5. A show on dating/marriage advice.
6. Along with things such as small plays, skits and theology show.
YouTube had been around for two years, and now other sites were building up robust professional video content. After a while of searching for Christian videos I came up with almost nothing. The only content I found was either preaching sites, or sites with user submitted content. I feel that there could be more types of sites with ministry videos.
Professional video sites are key because they are not only professional shot in a studio, but there is a motive behind them. Think of a television show versus a kid shooting a YouTube video. People would never buy a DVD season of the kid’s videos at Best Buy. That’s because they are standing in line to by 24, Dora the Explorer, Seinfeld or Dallas.
Talent, well written scripts, good editing and content worth watching is essential for making a good show. I figured since there are good secular sites out there such as tech site cnettv.com. There would be a good site for Christian videos as well – I was wrong!
Some Professional Christian video sites do exist but have minimal original web content or lack of any type of continual series. Here are the sites I found
CBN.com – Which shows Christian videos clips that are cut from the “The 700 Club show.”
Googling “televangelist, pastor or church” – These sites show recent sermon videos.
XXXChurch – A site that contains some videos to aid pornography addictions.
GodTube or GospelTube– A site featuring mostly unprofessional videos with the exception music videos.
ReelGood.tv – This site has a few films but mostly videos related to
Regent University.
Jesusculture – A site that also contains a lot of sermons videos as well as testimonies.
I originally started searching in 2007 and bookmarked these sites. I did another search in August 2011 that’s when I added the final two sites you see here. These sites have great content but I still feel that a lot more can be done.
Keep in mind that these videos can be seen around the world. Anyone with Internet access can video these view these. The mission field is now online, and a participant doesn’t even have to leave the studio.
Which begs to question, why hasn't this been done already? and if it has been done please let me submit my resume. I wouldn't mind doing something like this for free. I'd live in a trash can for this kind of opportunity.
2. The Goal
So, how does a college student who paying for classes out of pocket, and living off basic essentials create something like this?
The answer is he can’t, at least not by himself.
That’s where the blog chimes in. It’s my way of communicating to the world my ideas. Someone else must have an idea like this or at least would want to be involved.
I want this cause to be heard. Communication is a powerful tool, I’ve talked to local celebrates just by using Twitter. This blog is a written documentation of my adventure. Here I will interview people, write articles to Christian magazines, and make new goals as I journey on this endeavour.
