Lately, believers in the Entertainment business have tackled an age-old challenge by flipping the script: If unbelievers wonât go to church, they reasoned, why canât the church can come to unbelievers?
Actor Alan Ritchson, an Entertainment industry veteran currently starring in the Amazon series âReacher,â thinks it can, and said he believes Faith-based films are proving to be a great avenue for sharing the gospel.
âPeople are hearing the name of Christ in movie theaters,â he said in March, âThereâs a movement afoot.
âAnd if thatâs where the pulpit is for people who wouldnât normally set foot in a church, then thatâs still a great way to have that conversation.â
Ritchson made the comments in a recorded call over Zoom during which people involved with the Kingdom Story Company talked about and prayed for the recent Christian movie âJesus Revolution.â
During the conversation, the producers of that successful film discussed their new project, âOrdinary Angels,â which stars Ritchson and Hilary Swank. The film is due out Oct. 13.
âOrdinary Angelsâ tells the true story of a young widowed father with two daughters struggling to deal with the recent death of his wife and his younger girlâs need for a liver transplant.
Ritchson said he enjoyed playing a completely different kind of character in the new film.
âA lot of people know me as Reacher on Amazon, which is a very lethal character,â he said. âAnd to be able to utilize my talents for something that is a lot more wholesome like this is wonderful. Itâs a gift.â
One particularly uplifting aspect of âOrdinary Angelsâ is when hundreds of members of the community come together to help the young family meet a seemingly impossible challenge. Ritchson said that aspect resonated with him.
âWhen we ⌠rally around a united cause, for the benefit of somebody else, how powerful we are,â he said.  âI love that. I mean, we need that, and I want to be a part of stories like that.â
He also said he was drawn to the script because it portrays imperfect people who have doubts and questions about their Faith.
âFor whatever reason, I think we continue to buy into the idea, the notion, that God chooses heroes to do His work,â Ritchson said. âAnd itâs just never been the case. Itâs the broken and the dysfunctional that God proves His power and strength through.
âAnd this a story of that, too. Itâs important that we remember that those who, maybe struggle to follow the rules, who donât look like the perfect Christians, who are the broken, are the people that God has a funny way of expressing Himself through. And that story is very much told in âOrdinary Angels.ââ
âThematically ⌠thereâs something that happens when you watch this movie. Thereâs a groundswell of emotion that â I think itâs divine. It taps into that divine root that resonates with everybody who lays eyes on this, no matter where they are in their journey. Thereâs something transcendent about the way ⌠they rally around a common cause. The power that we have together, to lift somebody up â thereâs just something beautiful about that, and itâs impossible to ignore.â
âIâve seen the film,â he said. âI donât know how you leave the theater and you donât feel inspired to find a way to create that in your own pocket of the world, your universe.â
âAnd I hope that thereâs a butterfly effect, ⌠of communal positivity after this.â
Ritchson said the success of Christian films like âJesus Revolutionâ has not gone unnoticed in Hollywood.
âAfter âJesus Revolutionâ came out, I got a call from one of the biggest studios in town, asking me to help them spearhead, as a performer, a new, Faith-based arm that they want to create, that they want to put a ton of resources in, to find these stories, to develop these things,â he said.
âSo it matters that these films get support. Other people in town watch this, and a groundswell kind of takes place in Hollywood that changes things in a real, meaningful way.â
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
