We Need to Talk about “The Jesus Film”

Since its theatrical release in 1979 the JESUS film has been viewed more than five billion times and been translated into more than 2,160 languages. Based on the Gospel of Luke, the movie follows the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. It has been heralded as the most widely used and effective evangelistic tool in the world.¹ On the Jesus Film Project website, it is stated that “Since 1979, billions of people have heard Jesus’ story worldwide and more than 665 million have made decisions for Christ. In fact, every 60 seconds, 60 people somewhere in the world are deciding to come out of spiritual darkness and to begin a new life with Christ after watching the film."² Fundraising campaigns for the film have made the weighty claim that “research has confirmed that for every dollar you send, on average, one person can come to Christ.”³

Maybe you’re like me, and you believe that the church is called to go beyond merely making converts, to plant churches that will baptize, build up believers, and teach them to “observe all that God has commanded” (Matthew 28:19, Ephesians 4:11–16). Right on cue, it is also claimed that the JESUS film leads to “400 new churches being planted every day.”⁴ In fact, for about the cost of some new Apple AirPods, “You can reach an entire village or neighborhood with Jesus and help plant a thriving church with a gift of $165.”⁵

Currently, an animated version of the JESUS film is in the works, with a project budget of $150 million. It is set to be released in 2026 and promises to “bring the Gospel to our 21st century world” and to have the capability of being “viewed across various platforms, including virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and the Metaverse.”⁶

Unfortunately, the website raises more questions for me than it gives answers. What should we make of these statistics? What definition of church is being used? How many of these “thriving churches” are still meeting, let alone thriving five years, one year, or even one month later? Were they ever characterized by faithful preaching of the gospel, administration of baptism and the Lord’s supper, and qualified elders? What percentage of these new believers are still professing Christians? What faith do they profess?⁷ How well do they understand the gospel message before they are given a chance to “indicate a decision"?

The desire to make the gospel of Christ accessible and available to all peoples is noble and biblical. I believe that the people who work with the Jesus Film Project are sincere brothers and sisters in Christ.⁸ Yet good intentions are not enough when it comes to fulfilling the Great Commission. It is quite possible to participate in or propagate ministry, evangelism, and church planting efforts that, despite good motives, have unintended ill effects, or at the very least mixed results. Believe me when I say that if I were convinced that any of the statistics listed above were even remotely close to accurate, I would cancel my family's plans to move to a difficult part of the world to church plant and I would encourage all of our generous partners to redirect their giving immediately to the JESUS film. Why suffer through the grind of years and years of language learning, living in a foreign culture, and laboring to see a mature indigenous church established that will long outlast us if I could accomplish the same thing by showing the JESUS movie, and staying for a few days of follow up?

Much more could be picked apart in the statements, assumptions, and methodologies that surround the JESUS film. In what follows, I hope to highlight a few concerns I have with the theological view of effective evangelism and church planting that undergirds the Jesus Film Project.

The Methods Behind the Numbers

I do not think that proponents of the JESUS film are trying to be dishonest. They sincerely believe that in light of the massive numbers of indicated conversions, a dollar on average does result in another person saved. A large part of the problem is with the methods and assumptions that these statistics are built upon.

The last five minutes of the film present a short gospel presentation styled after Cru’s Four Spiritual Laws and “an invitation to know Jesus personally.”⁹ The viewer is then given a chance to repeat a prayer with the narrator.¹⁰ Following the screening, there is typically a short appeal made and then an opportunity for people to raise their hands, come forward, and repeat a sinner’s prayer.¹¹ The people who do this are then presumed to be converted and are counted among the millions that the Lord has brought into the kingdom through the film. Central to this “invitation system,”¹² is a call to a visible public decision. As the historian Iain Murray writes, “Behind [this] practice lay the fallacy that saving faith is of the same nature as a physical decision, and that if only sinners will answer the evangelist’s invitation then grace will secure their rebirth."¹³ Because of this fallacy, there is almost no recognition that people may accept the invitation for reasons other than genuine conversion that comes from the new birth. The problem is not calling people to faith in Christ, the problem is assuming that anyone who responds to these kinds of invitations is automatically in Christ.

It’s also crucial to recognize that the sinner’s prayer and altar calls are not biblical practices.¹⁴ Christians must call people to faith and repentance in Christ. But it is errant to equate the inward act of saving faith with the outward act of repeating a prayer or coming forward.¹⁵ It is misleading, confusing, and unbiblical to tell someone that if they pray with you and they really mean it that they are now saved and that to question this is to question God’s word.¹⁶

Here are just a few things that I am worried could be occurring when these numbers of new believers and churches are counted:

Concern #1: Peer Pressure and Emotional Responses

Viewers, especially young ones, may respond because it is what others around them are doing and they don’t want to be left out. Other times there may be an emotional response that lacks real faith and understanding of the gospel message. One promotional video on the Jesus Film Project website seems to imply that the sobbing of young kids in response to the crucifixion scene was evidence of gospel comprehension.¹⁷ Confusing an emotional response with genuine repentance has been a perennial issue for the church, from the church in Corinth (2 Corinthians 7:8–13) to the First and Second Great Awakenings,¹⁸ and it remains so here. I am especially wary of reading too much into these kinds of responses after my three, five, and six year olds watched part of the movie Chicken Run recently. We only made it a few minutes into the film before they began to sob uncontrollably at the offscreen murder of a stop-motion animated chicken and begged me to turn off the movie.

We cannot measure gospel fruit in such a short amount of time or based on someone’s perceived sincerity. The parable of the sower in Matthew 13 even gives us categories for those who receive the word initially but then fall away or prove unfruitful. It’s not that they lost their salvation, it’s that they never possessed it because it was a superficial response. And this happens even when people understand intellectually the gospel message that is being communicated, something that I am not sure is usually the case when the film is shown in many parts of the world (more on that below).

Concern #2: The “Rice Christian” Effect

Other times, people coming forward may be incentivized to do so by the hope that they will get something in the here and now for professing faith. This phenomenon is so common that it has created the term “Rice Christian” among the missionary community.¹⁹ “Rice Christian” is a way to describe someone who either inauthentically or ignorantly professes faith to get something from the evangelist, whether it’s clothing, food, attention, or something else. The likelihood of this happening increases exponentially when the national is impoverished or uneducated and the evangelist is a wealthy westerner. Furthermore, in many cultures it would be exceedingly rude not to accept what the foreigner is offering. If someone can possibly help provide for their family and show respect to a visitor, they’re probably going to do it.

Concern #3: Surface Level Understanding and Syncretism

If you are a Christian, think about how many times you heard the gospel or snippets of gospel truth before you believed. Whether you grew up in a Christian home or not, you likely had a lot of exposure to biblical truth in various ways before you understood at some level who God is, your need for a Savior, and the redemption offered in the person and work of Christ. There’s a reason that parents who seek to bring their children up “in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4) do more than show them a movie about Jesus.

God can do anything He pleases and is able to work beyond ordinary means and save sinners who understand very little. However, I fear that more often than not the results of this kind of rapid-fire evangelistic efforts that call for a decision right away provide or introduce false assurance, significant misunderstanding, premature dismissal, and/or syncretism where some truth about Jesus is mixed in with the hearer’s current worldview. Countless anecdotes and numerous data points support my fears as valid.²⁰ And if that’s true of the reported believers, how much more so is it true of the reported churches that arise from these methods. Furthermore, unless the film is in the hands of a well-trained indigenous pastor or evangelist, the sharer will likely lack an intimate knowledge of the language and culture where the film is being shown. Therefore, they will be incapable of answering even simple follow-up questions, let alone making a reliable assessment of how well the message is understood.

Concern #4: False Assurance

It is dangerous to “accept” Jesus and be affirmed as a Christian without true understanding of who He is or how God’s word challenges our understanding of reality. But in many evangelistic methodologies, particularly that of the JESUS film, we almost ensure that this will take place frequently. It is important for God’s word to be shared as thoroughly and biblically as possible. There is so much that we can do to minimize the chance of someone professing faith without possessing it. Merely showing the JESUS film and following that up with an invitation to pray and raise a hand is a breeding ground for false assurance.

Furthermore, what are those who have not experienced true spiritual change to think of Christianity? They have been told that they are believers and so are left to conclude that there must not be anything more to Christianity than a compelling story. Or they may continue to believe themselves to be Christians without any fruit or biblical identity and be that much less likely to seek out or listen carefully to a clearer gospel message in the future because they believe they already get it. Like a vaccine, this kind of ministry can function as an inoculation against a more faithful gospel ministry or call to repentance in the future.

Case Study: The Ethiopian Eunuch

It’s possible one may push back on my criticisms by citing the story of the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8. Was not the eunuch instantly converted after a short encounter with the evangelist Philip? Could this be similar to what is going on when people who have never been exposed to any of the Christian message are supposedly converted after watching a two-hour movie?

I believe the answer is “No.” First, the eunuch was apparently a Jewish convert, as evidenced by the fact that he was returning from worshiping the Lord in the temple at Jerusalem (8:27). Additionally, the Ethiopian was reading from what appears to be a personal copy of the scroll of Isaiah in a time when this would have been incredibly rare. He was steeped in special revelation through his worship at the temple and reading of Isaiah. Second, although their conversation is not recorded in detail for us in scripture we know that Philip answered the eunuch’s specific question, built on his wrestling with the text, and explained the good news about Jesus to him, starting with the scripture that he was already studying (Acts 8:35).

In both ways, this scenario is nothing like showing the JESUS film to an atheist, Muslim, or member of an unreached language group today. This was a unique time in redemptive history, right after the resurrection of Christ and outpouring of His Spirit at Pentecost. The Ethiopian had already been steeped in special revelation through his worship at the temple and his reading of Isaiah. We cannot draw a completely straight line from the eunuch’s story to our evangelistic encounters today.

Finally, rather than encouraging the eunuch to pray and ask Jesus into his heart, Philip baptized him. This is important to note because it is baptism, not a sinner’s prayer, that is the outward sign of one’s entrance into the body of Christ according to the Bible.²¹ Counting baptisms would not result in the kind of exaggerated numbers we see in connection with the JESUS film because, even in many non-Christian cultures, baptism, unlike raising a hand or asking Jesus to help you, is rightly seen as a monumental action in which a person leaves an old religion behind and comes to identify with and be identified by Christ as His own. It is precisely because baptism is a much more accurate and biblical indicator of genuine conversion that it wouldn’t produce the same shockingly large numbers that are appealing to potential donors.²²

A Better Way Forward

Although I do not believe that the JESUS film’s statistics reflect reality, I am not trying to argue that it is impossible for God to use the film or that He never has. God is in the business of drawing straight lines with crooked sticks. If He wasn’t this would be yet another reason for me to leave the ministry. He uses imperfect tools and people to accomplish His good purposes. But we also know that just because this is true, it doesn’t mean that anything goes. There are still qualifications for elders in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, for example. Similarly, God has given us enough in His word for us to be able to determine that some tools and methods align more with apostolic practice and the clear commands that God has given to His church than others.

As a tool, the JESUS film is only as good as the person who wields it in evangelism. Tools don’t build houses. People do. Therefore, any evangelist worth his salt will not need the film to preach Christ. If he does believe he needs it, then he is either placing trust in the tool, the technology, or the power of the visual to generate results, or he is unable to rightly handle the word and needs more discipleship before he is ready to share the gospel in the first place. After all, I'm not in the habit of entrusting power tools to my three-year-old son. If I was, he would surely hurt himself and others, the very thing that I fear happens through the JESUS film.

So, in the hands of a competent Christian, the film is unnecessary. In the hands of someone who feels that they need it, it is possibly dangerous. It is a misplacement of faith in the tool rather than in the power of God to save through his appointed and ordinary means.

I remember one of my teachers at Radius making a few offhand remarks about the JESUS film in class. This brother had successfully planted a church among an unreached language group in Papua New Guinea (PNG) and left around 20 years ago. The church is still faithfully administering word and sacrament to this day. Although he likely doesn't have concerns with the film to the extent that I do, I remember him shrugging and remarking that the JESUS film may have been a cool thing to show the PNG church early on in her life, but that he saw it as unnecessary for the process of evangelism. This is because the brother had been able to, over the course of a few months, preach and teach thoroughly through the story of redemptive history, from creation to fall to Christ and to the new creation. After he taught that, he went back and did it again, highlighting different aspects of the biblical story as was most helpful to his audience in light of the culture and worldview they were coming out of. He followed this up with leading the small group of new believers through the Book of Acts twice. With the ability to teach the word and apply it specifically to the presuppositions and beliefs of his hearers, the JESUS film was simply unnecessary. At best, it would have been a tiny drop in the bucket of all that God used to raise up and sustain this young church.

It is impossible to quantify on this side of heaven what the proportion of genuine fruit to harm and confusion is. Yet even if it could be proven that the JESUS film sometimes or often works, this would not in and of itself justify any particular method. It would still be wiser to stick to patient, persistent, and thorough gospel proclamation.²³

Finally, these concerns can be greatly mitigated by the commitment of evangelists and ministers, whether they be indigenous to their context or cross-cultural workers, to understand the culture, language, and worldview of their hearers and to persevere in long-term preaching of the whole counsel of God and laboring for the building up of the church through the consistent use of ordinary means of grace.²⁴

God is pleased to use weak things to display his power (1 Corinthians 1:18–31). The gospel, both its content and the form by which it is delivered (preaching), is folly to those who are worldly-wise (1 Corinthians 1:21). But we are not wiser than God. In God's economy, hearing is believing, not seeing. Although the visual appeal of a movie may appear to draw more people in, God confounds our wisdom so that He may receive all the more glory, so that we may learn to trust in Him rather than in what “works.”