Broken

Good news!  “Broken” won the people’s choice award at the Ignite Short Film Festival 2011!  Thanks for your votes!  Check it out below.  You can download it by going to its vimeo page.

Illustrating: 1 Peter’s treatment of responding to persecution
In 1 Peter, I have been struck by the way Peter describes what it means to be Christian – it’s not a lifestyle, but an identity. You are part of a recreated community of Jesus’ people. Living this identity out in godly lives is then just part of who we are. But Peter never shies back from saying that this will involve persecution from those who don’t follow Jesus, and that our temptation will be to do the same right back at them – they break you, so you break them, and sin starts spreading like fire through gasoline. Peter says no. He calls us to remember Jesus who we follow; how he endured suffering to make us right with God. He calls us to remember who we have then been made to be, freed from sin, and so to keep trusting God and living his way through persecution. ‘Broken’ seeks to capture something of this journey, based mainly on 1 Peter 4.

How to use it: Because it’s a bit cryptic, I’d probably only use it if my talk, or whatever I was using it with, explained the concepts in the video adequately.  It maybe even be something that you could use after explaining the passage – that way people would be prepared for the themes introduced in the film, and it might help ram home your application to hold onto Jesus and be godly even in the face of persecution.

Music: ‘Joy Instrumental’ by Page CXVI. Used under Creative Commons License.

Permission for use: Released under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (so go for it – just attribute it to me, and don’t sell it or change it)

Critique:
• It can be a bit cryptic
• the change between my footage and the ultra-slow-mo stock footage that I used doesn’t quite match up as well as it could