A Christian Film in a Secular World

Last weekend the Christian film To Save a Life was released in 441 theatres (compare that to Avatar in 3,141 theatres or The Tooth Fairy in 3,344 theatres) and got great responses from audiences. This film is proving to be a great tool for outreach! Over 200,000 people saw the film, bringing in 1.5 million at the box office.

Even though this film is only ranked #14 or #15 for all the movies this past weekend, the film managed to be the top “fan rated” film on Fandango.com and it was the #5 ranked film for per-screen average. Most importantly, students’ lives are being impacted by the film. One student shared on the film’s Facebook page that he unsuccessfully attempted suicide on Friday, went to the film that night, accepted Christ and wants to reach out to others.

If you haven’t seen this film… I really encourage you to see it this week. This is THE perfect film to bring your kids to. One of the best discussion provoking films I’ve seen in a while. We even wrote up a discussion starter on our web page using a clip from the film that you can watch right on our site- click here.

I’ve been hearing some great reactions from youth workers through this blog. Here’s a couple:

Took my students last night, Every single one of them came out and said, THAT MOVIE WAS AWESOME. I look forward to our next time together to take some time and to talk about some key points brought out in the movie. Hope people take this to heart and LOVE people as Christ Loved us. – Glen Johnson

I took my student leadership team to a screening of the movie. They completely loved it. When I asked them to describe it, one of them said: “That’s my life…that’s what it’s like for me at school.” They shared about the film on their campuses, and I have 65 students going tomorrow night… which includes 30 unchurched friends of our students. – Bill Connors

Here’s some other exciting things happening that you can see from the film’s Facebook page:
-Tons of messages about students saying they are going to reach out to people at school starting today.
-Stories of kids walking out of the theatre and turning to their friend to ask how to become a Christian.
-Several students have quoted, “I don’t know about you but I need to check out a church this weekend.”
-Students sharing how they connected with “Danny” the hypocritical pastor’s son and that they are going to make life changes to be a part of the movement of reaching the hurting and lonely.
-Business men seeing the film and then buying hundreds of tickets for teens to go for free.
-Churches giving people opportunities to sponsor students to go see the film.

I asked the writer, Jim Britts, if he had anything he would like to say to you all. He sent me this:

As a fellow youth pastor I really want to plead with you guys to back this film. If this film does not do really well in the next week we will start losing theatres and films like this will be much harder to be produced and taken seriously in the future. I’m not playing the “we’re all Christian’s card” but just see what teens are saying about this film and then act. It’s not a cheesy film and it was made for you to do better ministry. If the movie is already in your area please ask your senior pastor to see it and then endorse it publically for everyone in your church, take your whole youth ministry to see the film (before Friday) and then challenging them to invite their friends. If the film is not in your area then go to tosavealifeleaders.com to learn how you can bring it to your area and link up with other youth ministries to make it happen.

 I encourage you to go see the film this week. You won’t be disappointed.