Digital Evangelism Issues

It’s out! The incredible Tom Hooper 2012 movie is now released on DVD: USA | UK. This is a renewed opportunity to use this incredibly redemptive story as a discussion starter in many different situations.

Resources to help you:

• Damaris Leader’s Guide, Extra Questions booklet, and video clips all available as free downloads. Incidentally, Damaris have just launched Film Clubs to help community groups, workplaces, neighborhoods, churches or coffee shops run a film discussion groups.
• Free article Mercy Triumphs by Rusty Wright, 640 words, free to reproduce online or in print.
• Discussion of the story’s themes, with links to free study guides, articles, the libretto, book recommendations, and more.
• A just-published article in Christianity magazine by Martin Saunders, A Life Less Misérables, explains how the story can be powerfully harnessed to start conversations about God.
• Adrian Fricker has produced a free two-up printable handout in PDF format. You may also freely reproduce or modify the text for your own needs under a Creative Commons License.

Have you used this story in any way? Please share on our comments section below.

Latest Damaris materials which engage with popular culture include:

• free community resources about Song for Marion
• discussion guide on Beasts of the Southern Wild (which has now gone to DVD release)
• analysis of Shadow Dancer
• New resources on The Guilt Trip.
• list of other recent additions to the Damaris website – including their Les Miserables article

There are job vacancies (about to close) at the Damaris office in Southampton, UK.

Les Mis

Do check our page of Les Mis resources. And Adrian Fricker has just produced a ready-made Les Mis handout as a two-up A4 PDF file. Download it here. You are also completely free to reuse or modify the text for your own purposes, under a Creative Commons license.

“We must go and see this again next week,” my wife and I said to each other after watching Les Miserables. This new film is simply amazing.

I’ve already written about the incredible spiritual parallels in the film, the multiple starting points for conversation (many connected with personal pain and life issues), and the growing number of online resources available, especially the Damaris video shorts and study guide, and Rusty Wright’s free-to-use article. So this post is a few personal and random thoughts about this production:

• There are appreciable changes from the stage version: several new songs, amendments to existing wording, cuts in the libretto, and small pieces of new spoken dialogue (although the movie is still mainly ‘sung through’). All are well chosen and contribute to a clearer understanding of the story. I guess that many of these changes will make it through to future stage productions too.
• The cross is used as a strong motif at several points throughout the film. And watch for the use of a coffin to reflect Fantine’s words ‘…one already dead’.
• The original creative team of Alain Boublil, Claude-Michel Schönberg, Herbert Kretzmer, and Cameron Mackintosh were all available to be involved in the adaptation from stage to screen. So the vision has not only survived the change of medium intact, but been enhanced. It was doubtless a labor of love for each of them, a fulfillment of an almost sacred trust and sense of guardianship. Has this ever happened in the history of musical theater before, especially after 25+ years?
• The songs were recorded live, and not lip-synced afterwards as is normal with film versions of stage musicals. (The orchestra backing was added later.) The reality and emotion that this gives is transformational. Anne Hathaway’s I Dreamed a Dream is sheer raw pain.
• Few of the cast are professional singers, or even necessarily very polished vocally. On stage, this would matter. On the screen, it actually contributes to a sense of reality and honesty.
• So I don’t think, for example, that Russell Crowe was miscast as Javert. His portrayal in the book, and now the film, is of a roughly-hewn 19th-century police inspector (and former prison guard), not an intellectual public prosecutor and legal eagle.
• The film is shot with frequent closeups, and few self-indulgent camera tricks. So it’s going to work well on the small screen when it goes to DVD and network TV in the future. (Whether the audio soundtrack will work so well on its own, I don’t know.
• One thing I’ve often wondered – how did Eponine, daughter of the unspeakable Thenardiers, emerge as a sensitive caring adult prepared to make sacrifices for others! And strangely, in the musical and the film, there is little hint of what is made explicit in the book: that Eponine deliberately takes a bullet to save Marius, whom she secretly loves. Incidentally, in the book, but not mentioned in the stage or film versions, street child Gavroche is actually the abandoned son of the Thenardiers. So both siblings give their lives at the barricades.

  In the book incidentally, M. Thenardier eventually uses his ill-gotten gains to become a slave trader in the West Indies, while Mme Thenardier (for whom book author Victor Hugo could hardly bear to use the honorific Mme, and sometimes called her ‘the Thenardieress’) dies well before the end of the narrative.

• The portrayal of the Thenardiers by Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham-Carter is chillingly good, with less humor than the stage version. As in the musical and book, they are the villains of the piece. Javert is not enemy as much as adversary.

If popular culture is God’s gift to us as a starting point for the good news, Les Mis is our main Christmas/New Year present. Open it and use it.

New initiatives don’t happen if we don’t start them.

There are huge numbers of potential digital evangelism strategies no one is doing. Yet.

Outsider-friendly stuff that is contextualized for demographics and interest groups with zero interest in the good news. Ways to use popular culture as starting points in conversation. Engaging compassionately with felt needs and worries, or with other worldviews and faith communities. Maybe this infographic will encourage you! (And yes, there’s a typo on it!) And watch this excellent video from Paul Clifford (author of the highly-recommended books Tweeting Church, Podcasting Church and The Serving Church. He encourages to remove ‘friction’ (he might have also used ‘hurdles’) – things that inhibit us from achieving new objectives.

What groups would you like to reach? Share your thoughts.

Great articles are appearing about The Hobbit. The film demonstrates spiritual parallels and themes to explore and start conversations, online or offline, in youth groups, meetings, anywhere.

Sadly there is no longer a whole evangelistic website built around Hobbits. There was ten years ago – HobbitLore.com. It was a masterclass in using popular culture to connect with spiritual truths. You see their approach from the pages that have been archived by the web archive Wayback Machine.

Articles

• In Search of Home by Damaris | discussion guide.
• The Hidden Purpose of the Hobbit’s Adventure | The Foolish Wisdom of Bilbo Baggins | The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey all from Christianity Today.
• The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey by Jeffrey Overstreet

Connect with downloads and resources at the official film site.

Lord of the Rings

You may also be interested in the audio dramas produced some years ago by the BBC, of both The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. The latter, a full 13 hours with many top actors, is a sheer masterpiece. They are available separately from UK: The Hobbit | LOTR | combined set, and second-hand in US.

More interesting articles: The Millennial Hobbit: Pippin Took as an Archetype of Emerging Adulthood | Tolkein biography.

One of the key ways to engage with non-seeking outsiders is through a mutual interest or personal need. Hobby websites are therefore a great way of building respectful redemptive relationships. Yet such sites are vanishingly rare.

Daniel Chersunov is a Russian-based web evangelist, and has created a blog about his own hobby, cycling. Although you’ll need to read Russian to understand the site, Daniel has kindly explained in English the purpose and nature of his blog:

I created this blog because I wanted to create something digital which can be attractive for people who don’t have an interest in spiritual things and God. A good way to spread the Gospel is to share with friends or people who like the same movies, sports or hobbies. I started to think about what the topic to put into my blog and after some time of experimentation I found the topic about bicycles – I like to be informed about this, I like to ride on a bike and it’s one of a way to express myself as a person.

After two years of blogging I have made some new friends through this and also have some good connections in a cycling society in Saint Petersburg. They admire me because I have such a good resource about cycling.

We have talked about faith and God with one or two visitors – they are a little surprised that I’m a Christian, and sometimes they start asking me for advice. I have about 50 subscribers and 500 visitors every week.”

Daniel runs a Facebook page for digital ministry in E Europe: VLM Eastern Europe.

It is easy to start a blog using one of the free blog services – eg. Blogger.com or WordPress.com, or install the free WordPress.org software.

Please share any hobby sites you know.

Latest resources from Damaris look at spiritual connections in the Life of Pi film.

Check the free downloads on their Life of Pi page, and watch the trailer:

Movie releases are a major opportunity to start conversations and point to parallels about God, Jesus and His redemptive purposes: reasons. (Find out more about God here.)

If we are planning blog or web articles, or focus spots in meetings, we must prepare ideally before the release date, since few movies remain on general release for more than two or three weeks, though some may run a bit longer if it is highly successful. The window of opportunity is very limited.

To help prepare, you can often read pre-release reviews. Advance showings do happen – often for local newspaper critics. Ask around – perhaps you can get in!

Les Miserables released December

The film version of the musical released on 25 December in N America (mid-January in most of Europe) and the story is so well known that we can plan before seeing the film. Since the musical has been translated into 21 languages, the film (and later the DVD) will be available with multi-language subtitles. Having seen the film, I can commend it highly. It’s the only movie we’ve been to that we agreed afterwards, “We must go and see it again next week.”

So this is a major worldwide opportunity. Les Miserables is not only the most most popular musical ever, but also a serious and deep story, with a hugely redemptive message.

Trevin Wax, pastor, author and blogger with the Gospel Coalition, says:

Les Miserables provides an unforgettable picture of undeserved, unexpected grace and its transformative effect in the heart of a guilty man.”

The first preview screening (in New York) had a rapturous standing ovation.

Plan now!

New resources to help you
Rusty Wright’s new outsider-friendly article Mercy Triumphs is available to republish FREE in print or online.

Adrian Fricker has produced a FREE two-up printable handout in PDF format. You may also freely reproduce or modify the text for your own needs under a Creative Commons License.

FREE downloads from culturewatch ministry Damaris.

Other FREE resources: at end of this page.

Now is the time to be planning how to use the story to illuminate these redemptive truths. There are opportunities for blog posts, website articles (great for your church website, for instance), as well as sermon illustrations, small group talks, Facebook conversations, or specific outreach events. Yet very few people have posted outsider-friendly articles about the book or the musical. Culturewatch ministry Damaris has an article. See info box for vital new resources ▶

Please share any others you know of. The Christian books and articles referenced lower down this page are seem mainly ‘insider’ works for believers.

The book itself is a long but rewarding read. You can get the original English translation (and Victor Hugo’s French text) free on Kindle and in other ebook formats, or read it online. More recent translations are widely available in paperback, including the new oneby Julie Rose.

The film (trailer below) necessarily cuts some of the full book story, but follows the stage version closely, with some new/modified lyrics by the original writers. Universal Films have released additional extracts of the film on their YouTube channel.

(You can watch the stage version on DVD as static performances, both the 10th and 25th anniversary concerts. You can find most of the 10th anniversary performances on YouTube.) The libretto is also online.

Themes in Les Mis

Where do we start? There are so many parallels and key life themes:

• law versus grace
• redemption and forgiveness
• the pain of single motherhood and orphan life
• exploitation of women and the sex trade, and resultant shame
• ransom, adoption and rescue from servitude
• choosing a costly ethical course of action as against an easy alternative
• the anguish of unrequited love
• the grief of losing friends, and false ‘survivor guilt’. (So many accident survivors and ex-military personnel suffer this way.)
• romantic love
• willingness to die for a higher ideal
• risking life to rescue another from death
• living under an oppressive government / fighting for the needs of the under-privileged
• letting go of an adult child
• no revenge taking
• how a single act of random kindness – the extravagant grace and generosity of the bishop – can (unbeknown to the giver) indirectly impact many others down the years
• dreaming and hoping for something intangible, just around the corner – what C S Lewis explains as sehnsucht.

When I first really encountered the musical (in the form of the 10th anniversary concert recording), two of these aspects spoke very strongly to the pain our family was going through at that time.

Please share your own insights about this story, or post good outsider-friendly articles you have found online.

Learning more, including free resources

Cliff’s excellent study notes are now online FREE and also available
in print. They offer a useful overview and analysis of the book.

These titles look at Christian themes in the book and movie:
• The Wisdom Of Les Miserables: Lessons From The Heart Of Jean Valjean (also available on Kindle)
• To Love Another Person: A Spiritual Journey Through Les Miserables
• The Temptation of the Impossible: Victor Hugo and “Les Misérables”
(this is the only book on this page I have not read yet, but it has good reviews)
• Christianity Today study guide (only sold in US)
• ChristianBibleStudies.com Movie Discussion Guide (sold worldwide)

Short FREE articles. Until two months ago, it was hard to find more than a handful of webpages looking at the Christian themes in Les Mis. Now, there are hundreds (as a Google search will show). Here are a selection: Legalism v Grace | 16 Bookrags essays | Helium | C’est la Vie | Finding God and Grace A Pastor’s Take on the New Les Mis | Becoming an Honest Man | A Brief Review of Tom Hooper’s Les Miserables | Why We Really Love Les Mis | Les Miserables – a Christian Reflection | UK Apologetics | Javert v. Valjean | Movie Review and Bible Study.

A good illustrated book about the genesis of the musical, includes a biography of Hugo and the full libretto: Les Miserables: History In the Making.

Movies and dramatization of the book

Les Miserables has been adapted as a non-musical English-language movie several times: with Gerard Depardieu 2000 | Liam Neeson 1998 | Anthony Hopkins 1978 | Charles Laughton 1935/52. In French, there is the 1982 film with Lino Ventura, and a 1995 reworking of the story into the 20th century, with Jean-Paul Belmondo.

Focus on the Family have made a dramatized audio version of the book on CD (also available from Amazon UK, and from ChristianBooks.com as CD or MP4).

Lausanne’s Cape Town Commitment “challenges us to be concerned about media awareness,” writes Lars Dahle. “This includes helping people to ‘develop a more critical awareness of the messages they receive, and of the worldview behind them’. In order to do this appropriately, we all need practical resources.”

Lars goes on to list a very useful range of questions to ask about news, documentaries, TV, movies, music, and much else.

Check his practical sets of questions – things to ask ourselves about different parts of the culture we consume every day. These would also be a valuable basis for group discussion, including youth groups, who especially need a framework to interpret the world around them.

It is a part of the ‘double listening’ that John Stott encouraged us to instinctively do:

I have sometimes called this ‘double listening’. Listening to the voice of God in Scripture, and listening to the voices of the modern world, with all their cries of anger, pain and despair”

Read more.

Popular culture also provides us with an incredible starting point for conversations with outsiders about the good news.

Lausanne also has a longer paper, discussing this issues, and recently hosted a conference in Norway on this topic.

Books on this topic

• Pop Goes the Church: Should the Church Engage Pop Culture? by Tim Stevens
• Focus: The Art and Soul of Cinema by Tony Watkins
• Free ebook: Using Film in Christian Communication by Tony Watkins

Photo: Black Country Museum, UK. Used under Creative Commons from Geograph.co.uk

This is an edited version of a post that was first published on the BigBible blog

Movie releases are a major opportunity to start conversations and point to parallels about God, Jesus and His redemptive purposes: reasons. (Find out more about God here.)

Les Miserables releases December

The film version of the musical will soon be released – and the story is so well known that we can start planning now. (Release date December in N. America, January in Europe.) Since the musical has been translated into many languages, surely the film (and later the DVD) will be available with multi-language subtitles.

For this is a major opportunity. Les Miserables is not only the most most popular musical ever, but also a serious and deep story, with a hugely redemptive message.

Read more