Enhance your Bible reading with this idea
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This is the fifth in a series of articles on Bible reading.
Even when you know the value of regular Bible reading, you may struggle, especially with certain parts of the Bible.
Tim Mackie and Jon Collins understand that struggle. In a 2014 introductory YouTube video, Mackie admits that, while the Bible is a "profound" and "beautiful" book that tells one complete story, the book is long, often confusing, and, for many readers, pretty intimidating.
So Mackie and Collins, who had met at Multnomah College, decided to do something about it.
Mackie, who had earned a master's in theology and a Ph.D. in Bible and Jewish Studies, was a pastor at a church in the Portland, Oregon area and a seminary professor. Collins had co-founded two studios that used animated explainer videos to help people understand what products, including complex products, really did.
Together, they formed The Bible Project (or BibleProject), a non-profit animation studio that produces animated videos – as well as podcasts, study guides, and other resources – that all are designed to "make the biblical story accessible to everyone, everywhere." Today, the studio, which is based in the Portland area, employs nearly 150 people.
Objectives
From the outset, The Bible Project has explored the Bible narrative by breaking it up into short, animated videos that help you understand the structure and themes of the Bible. The studio offers two main types of these videos: theme videos and book-related videos.
Theme videos, which are The Bible Project's most popular content, explore key biblical themes and trace each from beginning to end of the biblical narrative. Over 25 themes are covered, including anointing, the covenants, eternal life, God, Holy Spirit, justice, the Law, sabbath, sacrifice and atonement, and Son of Man.
A book video shows the structure and themes of an individual book of the Bible – or a section of a book – and explains how it fits into the flow of the overarching story of the Bible. There is at least one book video available for every book of the Bible. Book collection videos explore larger sections of the Bible such as the Torah and the wisdom books.
"The most popular video we have is our Job video, in our series on the wisdom books," says Mike McDonald, who handles strategic relationships for the organization. "It gets upwards of 200,000 views every month, and we created it five or six years ago."
Leaders at The Bible Project want their videos and other resources to do more than increase biblically literacy and understanding. They want people to experience the Bible as a unified story that leads to Jesus, who, according to the notes on the 2014 video, "has the power to change individuals and whole communities when we let the biblical story speak for itself."
The creative process
The process of creating a video begins with Mackie studying part of the Bible and taking or refreshing his notes. Then Mackie and Collins spend time discussing the notes and the potential video.
Some of the first conversations between the pair were so engaging that they started recording them. Today, highlights of past and current conversations are available to the public as part of The Bible Project's podcast.
Mackie condenses his personal notes as well as notes from conversations into the first draft of a script for a video with a target length of around five minutes. Mackie and Collins then revise the script and sketch out key visuals that will enhance the viewer's understanding of the spoken word.
A design team then creates storyboards that marry the script and visuals. Those storyboards usually trigger edits and even rewrites of certain sections of the script. Once the storyboards are finalized, Mackie and Collins create final illustrations and give those drawings to animators to make them "come alive" in animated videos.
The final two steps are sound design, or adding sound effects, and making a transcription, which goes into video subtitles, appears on The Bible Project webpage for the video, and is used to translate the script into other languages.
The entire process typically takes three to six months for a single video.
Funding and availability
Mackie and Collins want The Bible Project to "stay free," meaning that all content is and will remain free for all users, always. In the beginning, a few families provided some seed money, but it wasn't enough for the initial videos planned by the founders, each of which cost about $6,000 per minute to produce. To obtain the money needed, Mackie and Collins sought "crowdfunding" via donations.
"We have a goal that we're trying to reach for each video," said Mackie in the 2014 video. "Once we hit that goal – boom! – we're going to get it moving." Collins added that The Bible Project was looking for monthly supporters whose donations would help the organization have a production schedule for other videos. The initial goal was to get 5,000 monthly subscribers.
By the end of 2015, there were 1,500 people who gave every month. Today, The Bible Project has "an army of patrons" who cover all the organization's expenses, says McDonald. There are no plans to change the funding model; crowdfunding is here to stay.
Impact and plans
Today, there are over 3.5 million subscribers to the BibleProject YouTube channel. But that likely is a small fraction of the overall user base.
Because all BibleProject resources are freely available on the Internet, it is difficult to tell how many people – or collections of people, such as churches – are using those resources. "We are in contact with thousands of churches around the world that are using our videos, reading plans, small-group resources, and other resources," says McDonald.
Pandemic-related lockdowns spurred "a huge increase in usage of our content, both in YouTube and in YouVersion," says McDonald.
In April 2020, when churches worldwide were unable to meet in person, The Bible Project began offering what it called "Church at Home." Every Saturday, The Bible Project would send an email with a video, related Scripture passages, some discussion questions, and an audio clip of Mackie reflecting on the material. "We had over 100,000 people doing Church at Home on a weekly basis," says McDonald. Many churches that had their own online services embraced BibleProject's media-rich content for those services.
Even though the pandemic has subsided, the use of BibleProject content continues to increase at an annual rate of about 25 percent, according to McDonald. A lot of that growth is international. "60 percent our views come from outside the U.S.," he says.
To make the content resonate with those who don't speak English, The Bible Project is "localizing" videos into 56 languages. The localization process involves not just translation but also reillustrating, reanimating, and re-recording the audio. With nearly 200 distinct videos in its library, having every video in every language would result in over 10,000 videos. The organization is about halfway to that goal.
And many new videos are on the way, too. The Bible Project has a five-year roadmap for its content, including a new series that should launch on Christmas Day.
Check out previous articles in the series:
· Why we struggle to read the Bible regularly
· Developing a daily Bible reading habit
· What to read during a 3-month Bible challenge
 | Chris Bolinger is the author of three men’s devotionals – 52 Weeks of Strength for Men, Daily Strength for Men, and Fuerzas para Cada Día para el Hombre – and the co-host of the Throwing Mountains podcast. He splits his time between northeast Ohio and southwest Florida. Against the advice of medical professionals, he remains a die-hard fan of Cleveland pro sports teams. Find him at mensdevotionals.com. Learn More » |
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