Bringing The Bible Alive: Using the Arts as Ministry

Host: Dr. Jamie Mitchell

Guest: Noah Stratton

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 6/9/26. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.

Jamie Mitchell:

Welcome friends to another edition of Stand in the Gap Today. I’m your host, Jamie Mitchell. It’s my privilege to share another hour of your day with you. As I was preparing for ministry in the 1980s, one of my favorite writers and the great influencer in my life in ministry was Francis Schaefer. One of the unique aspects of Schaefer’s thinking was looking at the arts from a biblical worldview. Shaeffer viewed the arts as an essential expression of human creativity and a significant window into the soul of any culture. He rejected the idea that the arts were merely decorative or worldly. Instead, he believed the arts mattered deeply because humans are made in the image of God and therefore possess God given capacity to create and be creative. Shaeffer believed that the arts deeply mattered to God. Creativity was a reflection of God’s image. Christians should pursue with excellence the arts and that the arts communicate a world view, beauty, truth.

It all belonged together and the church should engage in culture thoroughly rather than retreat from it and therefore get involved with the arts. His perspective helped many evangelicals begin to talk about literature, film, music, architecture, visual arts, and more seriously in the area of Christian thought and cultural engagement. This was a departure from where many in the evangelical community were on regarding this subject. Many thought that the arts were lost to the world, but not Shaeffer. He inspired an entire generation of Christians to reclaim and rediscover the arts. Now, about the same time in the 1970s, there was a young couple like Shaeffer who believed that the arts and particularly drama should be reclaimed for the glory of God using it to bring the Bible to life. They sought to engage people’s eyes, ears, minds, emotions, creativity, thus inspiring them with the message of God’s word.

That couple was Nicki and Sherry Chavers and they began what was then called and still is the Academy of Arts. They combined education with hands-on approach to using the arts, drama, music, set design, production to encourage and train young people. This God-inspired troop ministered in churches and schools encouraged Christians to embrace the arts for God’s purposes. This grew and today the Academy of Arts and Lagos Theater is featured on major stages around the nation like the Museum of the Bible, Branson and the ArK Encounter. Literally they reclaim the arts and they’re using it to bring the Bible alive and that’s the focus of our program today. How do we apply a biblical worldview within the world of drama and the arts? And today my guest is the president of the Academy Arts and Lagos Theater, Noah Stratton. He’s the son-in-law of its founders, the Chavers.

And we want to discuss the state of arts and how God is using it again to bring the Bible alive, especially these past 50 years. Noah, welcome back to Stand in the Gap.

Noah Stratton:

Thank you so much, Jamie. Appreciate you having me on again. It was a pleasure to be on a couple months ago and just excited again to keep this discussion going and look at it in some new ways and just so very grateful for this opportunity. Thank you for the time.

Jamie Mitchell:

Well, Noah, you know this. Full disclosure, Sherry Chavers grew up at the first church that I served as a pastor. So in those early years of ministry, I heard all about the Academy of Arts. We had traveling teams come to our church. I’ve known the ministry for 40 years. And although you weren’t around at its inception, you fully understand how radical and visionary the ministry that you now lead was back then. From what you know, explain what the early years and the early days it was like trying to engage the arts with the Christian community and what were maybe some of the roadblocks that your in- laws faced trying to get the church to accept the arts as legitimate ministry?

Noah Stratton:

Yeah, that’s a great question and it was a challenge and there were a number of reasons for that. We’ve often kind of joked that Christians don’t understand why we’re in the arts and our people don’t understand why we’re Christian. And so that was a challenge. And then especially back in the 1970s, I think when the ministry began in 1971, the challenge I think really was, and a number of people told Dr. Chavers this when he was starting, Nicki Chavers, my father-in-law, they said they literally some of his closest advisors said, “Nicki, I don’t know if the church is ready for this. ” It’s why I have a small church and this is why I’m speaking all the time and when I’m speaking with our young people involved in our program, when I’m out on the road speaking to people, this is why I’m constantly saying we cannot be pendulum swingers.

We have to know the truth and live according to it because that’s what you see a lot throughout history is people just swinging. They’ll get burnt by one extreme maybe or someone going a bit too far and then they’ll swing way to the other side. And I think that’s what happened with the arts. People saw that in some cases it was definitely being used in wrong ways. A lot of it was going in a wrong direction. It was being used to propagate wrong worldviews, show acceptance of sin, make even a mockery of righteousness, make fun of authority figures. And I think that a lot of the church saw that and so they thought, “Okay, well then movies, stage productions, a lot of the arts, it’s all just about your feelings and we got to be careful about that as Christians. We’ll watch out. ” And so I think most people just retreated from it.

Yeah, the Chavers really had a hard field to plow of ministry as they began because they had to not only try to start something that was very hard to get funding for, people understand if you’re starting a church. They understand if you’re going to go be a missionary in Africa and a lot of times they’ll give money to that. They understand if you’re going to start a Christian school or maybe even try as a Christian to go into politics, but what? You’re trying to do a drama ministry like what in the world? So yeah, there was a lot of challenges at the beginning and it was, I think, a lot of the mindset that from kind of the pendulum swings that had happened through the years of looking at drama. And so yeah, some very challenging things as they began, but then it was exciting to see though Dr. Chavers and Mrs. Chavers, as they started, they soon found out that there was a thirst for it because people experienced the power of it.

And that’s where our motto came from was the first summer traveling this small group, traveling around to churches, doing biblical performances and people were saying, “Wow, this just made the Bible come alive to me. ” And that’s part of our mission statement now, making the Bible come alive in minds and hearts through the power of storytelling because people need to see that and when they see it, and get to this a little later, more in detail, but when people would see it and experience it and not just hear it taught or preached, it took on a whole new deeper level. And so yeah, many challenges to begin, but also there was thankfully a good acceptance of it even from the start as well.

Jamie Mitchell:

Noah, someone once told me that when you take a step of faith, the early days there is a blindness. You don’t see what God is doing, but you know that he’s there, you know he’s involved and certainly that is the testimony of the Academy of Arts. Hey, listen, when we come back, I want Noah to start to uncover, pull the curtain back in the dramatic sense and tell more about the Academy of Arts, the fruit that that early faith has come and also the beneficial aspects of being involved in the arts. Don’t go anywhere. Well, welcome back. Today we’re talking with Noah Stratton from the Academy of Arts located in Taylor, South Carolina. Ministry focused on training young people in drama and the arts and bringing God’s word alive on the stage. Noah, a lot of what you do impacts young people. And in recent years, I’ve done a lot of reading that many public schools especially have removed much of their arts curriculum.

And so this generation is not engaging in the arts. Can you give some insights on why engagement in the arts is so beneficial academically, socially, developmentally, and even spiritually in the lives of young people?

Noah Stratton:

Yes, great question. And I think it is sad, like you’re saying, a lot of schools, the arts program is the first thing to go. It’s the last thing to be included and then it’s the first thing to go based on that almighty budget. And of course we have to run things through a budget, understandably so. But what you value is what … I mean, you will make time for anything that you truly value. I know this is a personal thing, this is a corporate thing. If you really, really believe in something, you will make it happen by the power of God. That’s anything in our lives. Whenever we say something like we don’t have time for something, young people will say that a lot or older people, “I just don’t have time to read my Bible. I don’t have time to pray.” But then if you actually break apart your day and look at it, you have a whole bunch of time that you may just not be using wisely.

And this is what people will do all the time. They’ll look at things and they’ll say, “Well, we don’t have time for that. We don’t have the money for it. ” And so schools, Christian schools have done this as well. We’ve experienced this a lot. That’s why we have one of our main arms of our ministry where we send teams around to schools and homeschool groups and do week long events with them where we will bring in a team and teach them how to do a full scale production in one week. And so this is an amazing opportunity because this is engaging the young people with the arts so that they are engaged so academically. Well, this isn’t academic. This is the arts. They’re doing a play. They’re working on a film project. They’re working on a painting something or drawing. This is an academic.

It’s actually, there’s huge benefits academically to this. I went through college for academics for teaching. I thought I was going to be a teacher and in many ways I still am doing that. But one of the things they were … All four years of college, almost every day it felt like I was being told multisensory learning, multisensory learning. That’s the way to get people to really grasp a subject. Whatever academic topic it is, multisensory learning, that’s the arts. The arts doesn’t say, sit there in your chair and I’m going to talk to you for 45 minutes and you take some notes. It doesn’t say, sit there and I’m going to preach or teach at you. You have to get up and you have to do it. You have to take the thoughts and you have to take what you’ve been told and then actually get up and live it out, act it out.

So it helps immensely in the academic realm for topics to stick in people’s minds. It helps them socially, obviously. One study I read about was that the number one thing employers are looking for an employee is not their skillset. It is their ability to look them in the eye, shake their hand, speak to them in a confident put together aspect. That’s the number one thing they’re looking for in that. And that’s of course what you’re learning socially when you have to engage in the arts like this. And there’s so much spiritually. This is what we’re supposed to do in our spiritual life, isn’t it? We’re supposed to take what we know and actually apply it. Wisdom. This is the word Ganosco in the Bible. It is that not a simple, flat academic understanding. It is a relational, emotional engagement and that’s what we’re supposed to be doing with the Lord. That’s the no, as you well know, Jamie, that this is the no in the Bible.

It actually uses that term for a man and a woman coming together in marriage, that they know each other a deep emotional, physical connection far beyond a simple academic understanding. That’s what the arts gives and that’s why we love being able to invest that into young people all around the country.

Jamie Mitchell:

Well, Noah, again, one of the reasons I wanted to have you on today and talk about this is because I think that the removal of the arts or maybe even guarding the arts from our young people, especially within the evangelical community, there’s a detriment to that. There’s a long-term effect that I think we’re going to see in the church that I don’t think is a good byproduct. Things like their ability to make presentations to people. I mean, I’m interim pastor right now. I can hardly find somebody who can play the piano and it used to be that our young people were the ones that we were moving up the ranks musically within the church and I think we cannot in any way, shape or form deemphasize the arts because it’s going to have a long-term effect on the church and then equally so is this whole idea that we want to help young people form and establish a biblical worldview in their mind.

I got to tell you, I don’t know any better way than to have a young person involved in a dramatic presentation, let’s say like one of your programs like Joseph or maybe one of the Narnia Tales and all of a sudden they have to live out and dramatically live out that biblical worldview. There’s a power in the long-term effects on young people as they get involved in drama. And you certainly have seen that at the Academy of Arts. What do you do with your students at the Academy of Arts and what kind of fruit have you seen occur in their lives?

Noah Stratton:

Yeah. We’ve been able, most of the years to work with thousands of young people and what we’ve seen consistently seen is that they are more prepared for life. Working in the arts prepares you for life. You have to learn, you have to, or you will not succeed. You must learn to work as a team. You must learn hard work. You must be able to communicate and talk to one another. Even in your team as you’re getting ready to do a production or something on the film set or something musically, you must communicate or it will not work. You’re learning so many life skills that are prepping you for anything that the Lord has you for. There was a parent who came up to us after they saw their young person perform in one of our week long dramas and he came up to one of our staff and said, “I’m not worried about my son anymore.” And we weren’t quite sure what to say about that.

And he said, “From seeing him deal with pressure, speak out boldly, have to memorize and then make all those little decisions I saw him making on stage something went wrong on stage. He had to change a little bit that I knew wasn’t supposed to happen. He had to change. He had to think on the fly. He had to overcome. He had to be bold. He had to be courageous. He had to communicate. All these things he said, my son could go into anything in life by the grace of God and he would figure it out. And this is what we’ve seen. That’s one testimony. And I could give you testimonies here for the rest of our time today of just parent after parent, person after person. We have people that are now in politics and doing well. We have people that are working in missions.

We have people that are pastors. We have people that have gone on from us and to be all sorts of areas of life and ministry because the arts was not training them just to go get a position on a stage or on a film set. It was training them for life. And you’re right, that’s the devastating effect. When churches and schools say, “Oh, the arts aren’t that important.” You’re literally not training your young person for life, giving them hands-on immersive experiences that are training them on the job, on the day, on the week of they’re preparing them for life. When in actuality, a lot of the other things that they’re doing may be giving them some knowledge but may not be giving them that hands-on immersive experience to go live that out. And so you’re right, it’s incredibly important. Our young people are getting all this training.

They’re getting training in graphics, in costume design, in makeup application, in acting. We spend most of our time actually in biblical philosophy because it’s so important. We’re depicting, we’re doing something that God invested in us that’s his nature. He is a creator from the very beginning. Genesis one, he is creating. We are now made in his image, Genesis tells us as well, therefore we have the ability to create. So how are we training that capability, that God-given capability? How are we training that in our young people? How are we raising that up? How are we cultivating that? If we’re saying the arts aren’t important, we’re literally taking out a huge aspect of the nature of God and taking that out of our young person and not giving them the ability and to cultivate that. And one more thing real briefly on that is that you said when we’re not training our young people, we’re missing out, they will get trained with the arts nowadays, with social media, with the news, with movies, with the music industry, young people are taking in an average of eight hours a day of social media, music industry and movies, eight hours a day.

They’re getting pumped into their minds and hearts the worldview of the world. So they are getting training. They’re getting told all sorts of things. And if we as Christians aren’t speaking into that, the world is. So we can either be quiet on it and the world will have 100% of that speaking into our young people, or we can step in and engage in that to make sure our young person is developed as older people as well are developed in the ways of the Lord.

Jamie Mitchell:

No, a number of years ago I heard a statistic on significant increase of test scores of young people who took piano or they were involved in painting and drawing. And the conclusion was there was a uniting of the creative side of the brain. It was a force multiplier in the lives of those students. And so parents, pastors, anyone listening today encourage your young people, matter of fact, encourage all of us to be involved in the arts. Now, when we return, I want Noah to discuss the special connection that his ministry, the Academy of Arts, has with C.S. Lewis, another person who loved the arts and taught about biblical worldview. Don’t go anywhere. Stay with us. I’m so glad that you’re with us today, but if you’re just joining us, we’re discussing the importance of the arts and how to use it for ministry and for the glory of God.

Noah Stratton is the president, director of the Academy of Arts and Lagos Theater. He’s with us. Noah, Dr. Chavers, your founder, wrote much of the original plays and musicals and your ministry has a massive catalog of his work. Yet in recent years, you have been bringing to the stage some of the works of C.S. Lewis, especially the beloved tales of Narnia. How did that happen and explain your unique connection with Lewis’s legacy?

Noah Stratton:

Yes. The Lord definitely has a sense of humor. It was a little over 10 years ago. My wife, who is our artistic director, does most of the directing for the productions. She actually said she would never want to touch the Narnia plays with a 10 foot pole. They’re so well beloved. People have grown up on the books. And as you’re reading a book, your imagination can go anywhere at once. On the films, they’ve done, I think, three films, three major films on them. And you can do green screen, you can do all these effects with a camera where you can make things disappear and all those. But when you’re doing it on the stage, everybody’s looking at you the entire time. You don’t get to tell everybody, “Please close your eyes right now. We need to do a magic trick.” And so many things have to happen in the stories and they’re so well beloved.

She thought, “Well, we’re never going to touch those.” Lord, of course, said, “Never say never.” And we got to a point where we were trying to figure out what was another play we could do that had good name. We didn’t have a lot of money. Imagine that, Christians in the arts, not having much money. Didn’t have much money for marketing. And so we were figuring out what’s a play we could do that has good name recognition that could kind of market itself a little bit. And the Chronicles of Narnia came back up and we with some fear and trepidation stepped into that. Our biggest thing immediately was Aslan. We wanted to depict, of course, in the stories. He’s a great lion and there’s a lot of connections with him and picked some allegory aspects. It’s not a full allegory. Narnia is definitely not a full allegory, but there are some allegory parts to Aslan being the great lion, the lion of the tribe of Judah, Jesus Christ.

And so we didn’t want a guy walking around in a fur coat. We wanted something like the book describes it big, powerful, majestic lion. And so our team started figuring out, can we build something like that? And our technical director, Ken Hines at the time said, “I think we can. ” Started that process. And once we had an Aslan made, and so we’ve started this large scale puppetry now where we’re building Aslan is 10 feet long, six feet tall. He’s run by three people. So puppetry, most people think the little sock puppets when you hear puppetry, this is nothing like that. This is large scale stage theatrical puppetry. So that’s kind of what got us started. Now we had an Aslan and we could start putting the other pieces together. And that was great because that enabled us to kind of then launch into all other areas.

And I think that’s the spiritual analogy there is powerful. When you start with Christ and anything in your life and you want him to be first and you want to give him the preeminence, he can do all these things can be added unto you when we acknowledge him in all of our ways. And so the Lord was gracious in that and that kind of started it. And we were able to do a production. We did Prince Caspian, which had never been done on the stage in a full scale, more professional way. And we quickly found out why. We were able to make a connection there with the C.S. Lewis company to get the rights and permission. And then we got to work directly with Douglas Gresham, the stepson of C.S. Lewis. And that was a great blessing, very unusual to be able to work directly with him.

He actually flew over. He lives over on the island of Malta and he flew over to us in Little Taylor, South Carolina and was there for about a week helping us premiere our opening performance of Prince Caspian. He came back about two years later when we premiered The Horse and His Boy from the Chronicles of Narnia and he was able to be there as well. Very, very special time. And from that it’s grown. So now we’ve done The Lion to Witch in the Wardrobe from there’s seven books in The Chronicles of Narnia. We’ve done three of them, Lion Witch in the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian and The Horse and His Boy. And they have been just received with great, great applause literally and figuratively. And we love that. We love Lewis’s works because we still do the biblical productions. Like you said, Dr. Chavers wrote over 26 plays and musicals.

We have plays on the life of David and Paul and Ruth and Esther and we love doing those. And we just did one of those recently, the story of Joseph at Museum of the Bible and that was very well received and we praise God for that. And so we’re continuing to do those biblical productions, missionary theme stories as well as these Lewis works. And what we love about Lewis is that he is a master storyteller and we can learn so much for how he tells stories. Jesus did this constantly with his parables. He would purposefully tell a story to try to depict a deeper truth. And this is what Lewis does phenomenally. And again, the works that he wrote for the Chronicles of Narnia are not direct allegories, but there’s so many beautiful truths in them that we can learn from and we can grow from doing them.

It’s been a beautiful, beautiful journey. It’s been hard. It’s been difficult.

Like you said, we’ve been able to perform now in Museum of the Bible in Washington DC and Branson, Missouri. We’re actually here right now. That’s where I’m calling from today, Branson, Missouri, where we’re about to put on Prince Caspian here in Branson, Missouri. And then also the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe is performing back at our home base in Taylor, South Carolina. So it’s been beautiful to see how this has grown through the years and been able to still fit that mission of the Bible coming alive in people’s minds and hearts. People can go to the academyofarts.org or the logostheater.com, theacademyofarts.org or the logostheater.com. And you’ll see all the places where these different productions are performing and how we’d love to see you at one of those performances.

Jamie Mitchell:

Noah, I mentioned in my opening about Francis Schaefer and the influence that he had. If you put Francis Shaffer and C.S. Lewis together, you probably have the two giant figures that have influenced more in regards to a biblical worldview and people grappling with the truths of Christ and the apologetic that the Bible is true, Christ is true. And what’s interesting is both of these giants of our faith had a great affection towards the arts. That’s not an accident, is it? I mean, these guys really loved the arts, leveraged the arts, encouraged the arts. I think they knew something about learning and about how the mind grasped on to theological truths through the engagement of the arts. Would you concur with that?

Noah Stratton:

Immensely, 100%. And I think this is where I’m constantly talking about this with our people is to not think in boxes. And I love this about Schaefer and about Lewis. They didn’t think in boxes. They didn’t think, “Oh, I’m going to go put on my theology hat and now I will sit here and only talk about theology.” No, theology, the study of God should be in everything. So in the arts, I should be thinking about God and how do I get to know him more in sports? How can I think about God and know him more? Music. How can I think about God and know him more? That’s our whole life is everything we’re doing, God is supposed to be involved. And yet I think the tragedy in many Christian circles even is that we think in such boxes, oh, I put my Sunday clothes on and I go to Sunday school now, then church, and then I go back and then I put on my work clothes and I’m going to work Monday through Saturday.

And then I come home and I have my quote unquote family time and we get such in boxes that we aren’t thinking about how God impacts every part of our lives. The arts are literally a part of God. You’re studying him. You’re not studying this random. People say, “Oh, this artistic kid, what do I do with them?” Praise God that’s a part of his nature coming out more specifically in that one area to get to know God. Wonderful. And so I think what they were so good at, Schaefer and Lewis were saying, “Oh, I’m not just going to go study theology over here at church. I’m not going to go to school and study academics. I’m going to put God in every aspect of it. ” And I would just say to any pastors or teachers listening right now, please study the arts. Please, you will become a much better preacher, a much better teacher if you know the arts because you’re You’re getting to know the Lord through them and hopefully you’re seeing where in the arts people will go wrong.

Yes, of course they will. In sports, people will go wrong. In politics, people will go wrong. In theology, Paul spends a lot of time talking about this in the Bible about pastors that are going wrong, that are teaching in wrong ways. You can go wrong in any sphere of life. So of course, people have taken the arts and gone to wrong areas with it and used it for a wrong worldview. Of course, people have used a pulpit and used the Bible to go and teach a wrong worldview and teach bad things. I think you’re exactly right. Shaffer and Lewis were not restricted in saying, “I’m just a preacher. I’m just a teacher. I’m just a stay at home mom or dad. I’m just a blue collar worker. I’m just a politician.” No, they said, “We’re going to take storytelling the creative aspect of God. That’s the arts.

And we’re going to take that and infuse that into every part of our teaching, our training, our storytelling, our investing into other people. And it made them immensely more impactful. And so please, for the pastors, teachers, parents listening, please, please, please do not ignore the arts. You’re literally ignoring a part of the nature of God.

Jamie Mitchell:

Well, Lewis understood a biblical worldview wrapped in a story can put redemption and forgiveness on display. When we come back, Noah and his company bring to life the Bible again. We’re going to talk about one of the most emotional stories in the Bible, but also now hitting the big screen and how to use film and movies. Well, it’s been a joy to have Noah Stratton, the president of the Academy of Arts and Logos Theater with us. We’ve been discussing the importance of the arts both academically and spiritually, socially on all of our lives, especially young people’s lives and then how to use it for ministry. Noah, my wife, Chris, and I, we were at the arc encounter last Christmas. We got to see the Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. We saw the effect that it had on the crowd and on us. It was just a spectacular event.

And I know that you’re going back there this year. Where else are you going with these productions? And again, just remind our people how they can find out about your ministry, but more importantly, how could they and their church have the Academy of Arts to them?

Noah Stratton:

Yes. Yeah. We’re privileged now to be going to Branson, Missouri, to Museum of the Bible in Washington DC, to the Ark Encounter, like you just mentioned. And then we’re at our home base in Taylor, South Carolina. There’s been some other places where we’ve been able to go as well for shorter trips. So they can go to theacademyofarts.org, theacademyofarts.org, or they can go to the logostheater.com, the logostheater.com. They can go to either of those and get information about where we’ll be, when we’re performing, and get specifics on performances there. Right now, we’re here in Branson, Missouri, getting ready to perform Prince Caspian. And then we have another team back in our home base at Taylor, South Carolina, about to do the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe throughout the summer. We also have our two teams, our summer ministry teams that are out traveling right now to churches.

They had their first meetings yesterday and they will be out through this summer for seven weeks of traveling. They’ll be going to about … There’s two teams. They’ll be going to about 90 churches all across the Midwest and Northeast and Southeast. And so that’s a wonderful ministry that’s going on this summer as well. So they can, again, go to the Academy of Arts.org or at the logostheater.com and you can get information about that as well. Reach out to us, contact us. If you’re a church, if you’re a school or homeschool group, that you would love to have one of our groups come to you. We come to schools and homeschool groups during the school year and give that one week training where your young people get to do a full scale production while we’re teaching and preaching in chapel and using the play itself to teach and train.

They’re learning all sorts of hands-on skills as well as getting incredible spiritual instruction and then churches. Yes, you can go as well about how to get one of our teams to come to you. You can go to theacademyofarts.org or the logostheater.com to get more information about that.

Jamie Mitchell:

Noah, just so again, people will know how to utilize this. Let’s say you’re a small church, you don’t have a lot of young people. You say to yourself, the Academy of Arts would never come to my church. But if you could gather up maybe three or four other small churches, a homeschooling group, your team will come in for a period of time like a week, maybe like a vacation Bible school in some respects in the summertime and actually train the students and they then will perform the program. And it would be just a great thing for their community, for churches to gather together, for homeschooling groups, maybe even some Christian school students to do something like this. And so if your church is small, there may be ways for you to leverage the Academy of Arts. And you’ve done that now for decades, haven’t you?

Noah Stratton:

Yes. That was how the ministry began back in 1971, so 55 years. We’ve been going to churches and a lot of the churches we go to are small. So please don’t, if anybody’s listening, don’t worry about the size of the church or the ministry. We go to all sorts of sizes of schools and groups and we also have materials we can send to you, training materials where if you’re not able to have a team come, we could just send training materials to you that gives you scripts. It gives you information about how to do your own production. It gives study guides. It gives devotional guides about what to speak on as you’re going through the production. So many resources that we have like that, that we want to be putting in people’s hands so that they, if they are doing something on their own, we see churches and Christian homeschool groups and schools all the time doing Disney Junior and doing all these things like that just because they don’t know what else to do.

There’s great resources available that you can use. Just go to the Academyofarts.org and there’s so many things there for you. So yes, please, whatever size we have all sorts of different ways to be able to assist and help out different churches, schools, or homeschool groups.

Jamie Mitchell:

Noah, we got a few minutes left. I want you to transition a little bit and just talk about your film making. You’re in the filmmaking role as well. How did that come about and tell our people about the movie Brothers Twice. How did this come about? Give us a quick insight on filmmaking as well.

Noah Stratton:

Yes. It’s something that’s been near and dear to our hearts for many years. My wife really felt that the Lord wanted us to be in this many years ago. She felt a direct calling over 20 some years ago. She really felt strongly the Lord was leading to move more into the filmmaking side of things because we had done so much on the stage and she directs very cinematically. If you see any of our stage plays, they’re not quite like the normal stage plays that you’ll see. She’s very, very creative in that. And so we’ve done short films through the years. We did one feature film a number of years ago that was just kind of getting our feet wet and learning a lot. But we’ve been able now, just recently we just finished filming Brothers Twice. Yeah, the true story, Sammy and Bruce Fry from the Aberdeen Carthage, North Carolina area and how the Lord worked in their hearts.

It’s an unbelievable story of salvation. We love telling true stories and this is a true story that we did with this film of their lives because we don’t have to make up the drama. You don’t have to make up a little turn or a little twist or if people are always looking for that at the end of a movie or a play, a gotcha moment where you weren’t seeing something coming. And the Lord has these unbelievable stories, of course, that he’s constantly writing history, his story. He’s writing this story. It is incredible. And we can choose to be a part of that story or we can choose to take ourselves out of that story if we want. And so the power of this story is the true realness of it. And people can go to brotherstwicemovi.com, brotherstwicemovie.com. You’ll see more information there. We just finished filming that and we’re hoping that’s going to be coming out on several streaming sites.

Some theaters, we’re trying to get that out as much as possible probably in about nine months to a year. So we’ll have more information coming on that as we progress. But a film can literally go around the world. Once you have it made and put together, the practical aspect of this is that it can go anywhere then. It’s not where we have to take a group of people and they have to go on the stage and bring sets and props and costumes and do it again. Once a film is shot, it’s shot. And so you can just send it out. So we want to be using all these mediums to get out messaging. The world gets this. They’re using the film world to propagate their wrong ideas all over the world and people are going to watch because they love storytelling. We all have that storytelling aspect in us no matter what our background is.

And so we want to be stepping into that sphere. So please go to brotherstwicemovie.com. You can read more about the story. You can see those two brothers and hear their testimony and then the film will hopefully be coming out in about nine months to a year. We want to be engaging the culture and impacting the world through this medium as well.

Jamie Mitchell:

Noah, I’m preaching right now through the life of Joseph, one of the most emotional stories of the Bible. You guys have done a play on that. God meant it for good. I wish we had more time to talk about that, but brother, you’re doing a great work. Pastors, believers across the nation love the arts, use it for ministry, take advantage, learn about Lagos Theater and the Academy of Arts. Look, it takes courage to live a life of a biblical worldview and this is a way to capture that. Until tomorrow, live and lead with courage. God bless you. Have a great rest of your day.