This week the Deidox team is attending the Verge 2010 conference in a rainy Austin, TX. We’re sponsoring the Coffee Lounge, so if you’re at the conference we’d love to meet you in the cafe!
The Verge conference is real cool. Its focus is on the missional church, and this place is packed full of people who are desiring to be on mission for God. Seems like each one of them would make a great Deidox story.
Yesterday, nominations for the 2010 Academy Awards were announced, and we were thrilled to find out the film Kavi was nominated for an Oscar in the short live action film category. Our friend John Harrison was the Cinematographer on the film. John is the guy who has shot all of our Deidox films. Also, the writer and director of Kavi, Gregg Helvey, is a friend of Deidox too. A few years ago Gregg even directed a behind-the-scenes film for us on a trip we took to Rwanda. We’re so excited for both John and Gregg!
Here’s the trailer for the fantastic short film Kavi. We hope you’ll be seeing a lot more of it and Gregg Helvey in the near future.
This week’s story is an old favorite that the Chronicle Project team worked on before they were doing the Deidox films. The above video about a man named Dave was produced for Saddleback Church and their HIV/AIDS ministry. Enjoy!
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What is True Story Tuesday? Since the goal of Deidox is to tell true stories of how God is at work, very often we hear of amazing stories that for one reason or another haven’t been made into a Deidox film. (Or, perhaps we should say they haven’t been made into films “yet.” You never know what the future might bring.) So every tuesday is True Story Tuesday where we post a new story about how God is at work.
Bonus for pastors: We hope some of these true story tuesday blog posts can help provide illustrations for your sermons. Both Dave and Brent are PK’s, so they hope is that at least one of these stories replaces an embarrassing story about your child that you were going to tell.
This week we received a really cool e-mail from a Pastor about how he used Deidox in the weekend services.
We’re humbled by the ways Deidox films are being used. It’s our prayer that the Lord moves through the films to challenge and inspire His people, so when we get an email like this it’s pretty exciting.
Dear Deidox,
I purchased your video bundle a month or two ago and used them this past Sunday for the first time. I saved them for an 8-week series I’m preaching called “On a Mission” taken entirely from Luke 10:1-12. My goal is to help our members understand that they are all on a mission and have already been appointed and sent to the place where God wants them to shine for him and spread his gospel.
I had initally planned to use one of your videos each week as a tangible picture of someone who recognized that they had been appointed and sent. But, when I sat down and watched all five again to figure out which week they would best fit I was overwhelmed with the collective impact of watching them together.
So… I did something that Presbyterian pastors are never supposed to do … I trashed the traditional sermon and began by reading the passage, but then showed all five videos this past Sunday making only brief comments inbetween (e.g. “Robert is on a mission… appointed and sent by God to serve in a clinic for the uninsured.” etc.) and then a couple minutes to wrap it all up at the end. The response from my congregation was absolutely overwhelming!!!
So, first of all, thanks for making such excellent videos. I usually pass these kinds of resources by because they’re just not made well enough. Yours are. Please keep making these kinds of videos… God will use them so powerfully. A request: I wished this past Sunday that I had one profiling a high school or college student and one that profiled a retired person. The addition of those two would have made the collection complete!
Thanks for your ministry. It’s been a great help to us here at Fletcher Hills Presbyterian Church!
In Christ,
Kevin Womack
Fletcher Hills Presbyterian Church
So cool! We love to hear how the Deidox films are making a difference.
If you are a pastor or church leader, please let us know how you have used the films within your ministry context! If you are not a pastor or church leader, we’d love it if you made your church leaders aware of Deidox and encouraged them to use the films.
Greetings friends. Welcome to the first blog post from the new Deidox True Story Tuesdays, where every tuesday we’ll share a story of how God is at work in the world today.
This week’s story comes from an email from a filmmaker that has lived in Haiti for quite some time as a missionary…
“I’ve been meaning to write each of you. Some of you I have, some I haven’t yet. It’s been the most bizarre and awful 10 days of my life. The earthquake has hit me and my friends and family really hard. Our house may no longer be livable. It has a few cracks here and there, but the strong aftershocks keep happening and I’m sure they weaken the house in some degree every time. Some of my friends have died. One student of mine died. Her house collapsed on her and her mother. Dead bodies lined the streets, so many people had broken bones and smashed skulls. But the worst thing might have been the smell. You can literally smell the death in the streets and among the hurting. There seems to be little hope in the eyes of the Haitians.
But God is providing, protecting, and helping though. He has performed so many miracles. Well, miracles to us, but miracles are very natural for Him. I’ll tell you one quickly. A friend’s mission was giving out water from their cistern to whomever needed it. They gave all they could and in a few days it was gone. We all have cisterns to hold our only water in Haiti, it’s not like the US. So they went to sleep that night with an empty cistern. The next morning they woke up and checked their cistern and it was full to the brim! Awesome =) Check out Isaiah 33:15-16 to see God’s promise on that.”
True Story Tuesday is something new from the Deidox team. The goal of Deidox is to tell true stories of how God is at work, and very often we hear of amazing stories that for one reason or another haven’t been made into a Deidox film. (Or, perhaps we should say they haven’t been made into films “yet.” You never know what the future might bring.) So starting this week we’ll be posting True Story Tuesday updates every tuesday morning.
We’ve got some fun ideas cooking for True Story Tuesdays, so stay tuned. We hope you find them both challenging and inspiring.
Bonus for pastors: We hope some of these true story tuesday blog posts can help provide illustrations for your sermons. Both Dave and Brent are PK’s, so they hope is that at least one of these stories replaces an embarrassing story about your child that you were going to tell.
The Deidox team will be in Austin, TX on Feb. 4-6th for the VERGE 2010 Conference. The VERGE conference is hosted by The Austin Stone church and focuses on the missional community movement. Some of the speakers include Francis Chan, Alan Hirsch, Dave Ferguson, Hugh Halter, and Ed Stetzer. We’re pretty excited to be attending.
Deidox is the official sponsor of the Cafe/Coffee Shop. There we’ll have a booth and will be previewing several Deidox films. We are also giving away free Deidox DVD’s. If you are attending the VERGE Conference, please stop by the Cafe and say “hello Deidox”. Would love to meet you.
We have a video to share with you today, and we think you’ll find it quite inspiring.
For those who haven’t been following our tweets (Deidox), a former boss of Brent’s was in Haiti filming for Compassion International when the earthquake hit. For 65 hours after the earthquake hit nobody heard anything from Dan Woolley. His last known whereabouts was the Hotel Montana, which if you look at the picture below was completely wiped out during the quake. Yet miraculously Dan survived, pulled out of the rubble after 65 hours. In the above video you will hear of the ordeal firsthand, with Dan boldly proclaiming how God brought him through.
The Deidox team will be at Saddleback Church in Orange County, CA Feb. 9-12th for the Radicalis Convention. Radicalis is really twelve conferences in one that makes it possible for churches to bring their entire ministry staff for individual learning experiences. Several of the speakers include, Rick Warren, Mark Driscoll, Perry Noble, Andy Stanley & others.
We will be previewing several Deidox films and will also be giving away free Deidox DVD’s. If you are attending Radicalis, please stop by our booth and say “Hi”. We would love to meet you.
Early this week the largest church in China was raided and shut down by Chinese authorities. The news a sobering reminder of the persecution in China. (We’re posting about this news story because our most recent Deidox film, Li Yang, takes place within the Church in China.)
Here’s an excerpt from the article:
The Golden Lamp Church was built to serve nearly 50,000 worshippers in the gritty heart of China’s coal country. But that was before hundreds of police and hired thugs descended on the mega-church, smashing doors and windows, seizing Bibles and sending dozens of worshippers to hospitals with serious injuries, members and activists say. Today, the church’s co-pastors are in jail. The gates to the church complex in the northern province of Shanxiare locked and a police armored personnel vehicle sits outside. The closure of what may be China’s first mega-church is the most visible sign that the communist government is determined to rein in the rapid spread of Christianity, with a crackdown in recent months that church leaders call the harshest in years.
Sobering news about the reality of the Church in China, and a good reminder that we need to be continually praying for the persecuted church. There was another big new item from China that slipped under the radar this week. A pastor in China was sentenced to 15 years in prison for telling his story publicly. You can read that article here.
Whenever we hear this type of news it greatly humbles us because of Li Yang’s courage to have his story told in a Deidox film. Greatly humbles us.
Fantastic news! Deidox has been nominated for two awards in Collide Magazine’s 2009 “best of” Awards! Winners are based on online voting, so if you’re a fan of Deidox we need you to vote away on the website to help us win:
2)VOTE for Deidox under“favorite church media producer” and Li Yang (Deidox) under “favorite church media short film.”
Thanks so much! Deidox is definitely a newcomer and underdog in these awards, but we figure it’s worth a shot. It would be pretty cool to win as it would definitely help more churches find out about Deidox. So, if you’ve got 5 minutes help us out and vote away.
Also, there’s actually one other thing on the list from the team behind Deidox… “Stories for Skid Row” under the “favorite non-sermon podcast.” This is a series the guys do for Union Rescue Mission on skid row in Los Angeles. If you’re bored at work you might enjoy checking the series out.
