Latest News #276 – Australia
April 1, 2004

‘Extraordinary’ effort by the Bible Society energises the Church in Australia for Mel Gibson’s mission opportunity

By Dr Bronwyn Hughes, Director of Research & Development, Bible Society in Australia (BSIA) with additional information from the Rev Kevin Bird, Director of the Bible Society in Australia (Queensland).

For Bible Society staff in every state the three months from December to February were an extraordinary time of intense teamwork, impossible deadlines, copyright catastrophes and effervescent creativity as we have done our best to ‘energise’ the Church prior to the release of The Passion of the Christ on February 25, 2004.

Mel Gibson’s company Icon Distribution contacted the Bible Society in mid-November 2003 to ask if we would work with them to prepare the Church for the film’s release. It seemed like a good idea to us.

After arranging film previews and gaining endorsements for the film from senior church leaders representing the breadth of theological traditions across the country, just a week before Christmas 2003 the Bible Society signed an agreement to work with Icon.

One of our objectives was to give local church leaders enough time, before the official release at the end of February, to decide for themselves if they wanted to involve their churches in this opportunity for evangelism. This gave us just four weeks to launch a national communications campaign inviting church leaders to preview the film in early February.

A total of 2,400 leaders of all denominations responded, requesting an e-mail invitation to the preview and on February 12, 2004, the first of a series of nationwide film previews began at Fox Studios in Sydney.

Every leader invited to these previews was given a free Resource Kit created by the Bible Society project team in collaboration with Icon largely during the hiatus between Christmas and New Year. As well as promotional ideas, each kit contained ideas about how to use the movie in evangelism, images from the film to help leaders talk to their churches about it and a small group discussion guide. We sent a further 9,000 kits to church leaders in every state.

The Bible Society also wanted to make it possible for non-Christians who had seen the film to have a chance to ‘read the book’. This gave us just eight weeks before the film’s release to create a pocket-size, Movie Review Edition of Mark’s Gospel. We wanted this to be available for churches to give away free to their theatre party guests.

Nothing, however, prepared us for the legal complexities surrounding the copyright of film images needed for our ‘Passion Gospel’. As a result it wasn’t quite ready in time for the film’s launch on February 25, but nevertheless a week later the first copies of the Movie Review Edition of Mark’s Gospel were coming off the press in Adelaide.

Meanwhile the project had grown. The Bible Society in Queensland negotiated an exclusive arrangement with the film’s distributors, Hoyts, to distribute an eight-page Souvenir Programme. This used images from the film to highlight simple statements drawn from the Gospels. The Programme was given away free to each person buying a ticket at a Hoyts box office and we made extra copies available for parties attending the film at the invitation of local churches.

The Queensland Bible Society has also negotiated for a 30-second promotional film to be screened prior to The Passion itself in all the cinemas whose pre-film advertising is screened by arrangement with Val Morgan Advertising. The promotion features footballers and the runner-up in the recent television series Australian Idol talking about the impact of the film and suggesting people read the Bible to discover the story behind it. The celebrities also point people to the website www.thepassion.org.au. Developed by the BSIA in partnership with some other agencies, this has attracted millions of hits from people wanting to know more about the film and its message.  

With the three months of intense and exhausting activity behind us, we are now beginning to reflect on the role we played in energising the Australian Church for this mission opportunity. For many of us the obvious warmth and sense of camaraderie with church leaders has been a welcome delight. And we are now beginning to hear the moving reports of people’s personal reactions to the film.

It’s still far too early for a more sober reflection about its impact, but we shall be working with a research agency in the months to come to do some follow-up evaluation.