The screening Sunday night was good. Probably about 80 people in the audience including three area pastors and an elder from another area church that I know were there.
Pastor Hopkins of United Methodist Church started the evening by telling the audience a story that he had told me a week or two earlier... it goes something like this... "I saw six films at the Virginia Film Festival. Five of them I liked. Rebellion of Thought wasn't one of them. But Rebellion of Thought was the one I couldn't get out of my head!"
He went home that Saturday night and tore up the sermon he had written for next morning and started over. He told me later that he didn't sleep a wink that night. That's how much the film impacted him.
Following the screening Sunday night we had much discussion... great, tough questions and I did my best to answer them, admitting that I myself don't have the answers, that I'm just a man on a journey and this is the view I'm granted along the way.
After the show Leslie and Josh did some on-camera interviews with people leaving... An atheist asked, "why do you need God at all if you are going to go outside the church?" I wish I could have been there to respond to her...
First, I would have said that I rely more on God outside the traditional church than I ever did inside. But more importantly, I would have said that we are not trying to go "outside the the church." Part of what we are about is trying to do is get the church to get outside of the church. Meaning to get believers to truly begin living their faith in the streets outside the walls of the church where it can have an impact of a post-modern culture!
I don't know if "fun was had by all" at the screening but I do know that it seems that many people are hungry for the dialogue that this film promotes... now let's see if we can get broader distribution... in the mean time, if you would like to arrange a screening in your area, please contact us.
