Hayley Catt
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Fireproof, Sherwood Baptist Church’s Next Film
[ Editor's note: A podcast of the interview with Stephen Kendrick is available at http://www.churchproduction.com/files/audio/kendrick.mp3 ]
Many of you would likely recognize the names of Stephen and Alex Kendrick. These two brothers are the heart, with Jesus being the soul, of Sherwood Productions, the film ministry of Sherwood Baptist Church of Albany, Georgia. Sherwood Productions’ prior releases include Flywheel (2003), and Facing the Giants, released nationally in 2006.
September 26th witnesses a new achievement by Sherwood Pictures—the release of Fireproof, opening nationally in over 800 theaters. With a $1,000,000 budget and the star power of Kirk Cameron, the Kendrick brothers, through God’s grace and blessings, have topped themselves again.
It’s fascinating to see the progression of events that took a church whose mission statement has been to reach the world from Albany, Georgia; to locally releasing their first film (Flywheel) that was picked up by Netflix and Blockbuster and distributed nationally on DVD; releasing their second film (Facing the Giants) that was intended to be another local film, but was picked up by Sony Pictures and distributed nationally; to now extending their partnership with Sony to release Fireproof, the story of a young couple facing marital difficulties and persevering through them to find genuine love for each other in a Christ-focused marriage.
Stephen Kendrick graciously spent some time with Church Production Magazine to discuss their new film.
CPM: With Fireproof poised to release next week on September 26th, the church must be pretty excited. What’s it like at Sherwood Baptist this week?
Kendrick: We’re doing good! We’re excited about the movie coming out, and just praying and trying to get our hearts right. Sherwood, right now, is spending this week in prayer, preparing for personal revival next week. We’re spending Sunday through Wednesday seeking the Lord for personal revival to make sure our hearts are right, and that will be good preparation too for the movie release, so that we’re living what we’re trying to preach.
CPM: What’s different in your approach with this film, vs. how you did Facing the Giants?
Kendrick: From Facing the Giants, taking the production budget up enabled us to hire ten film professionals instead of five, to help us operate the equipment. It’s still us writing, directing and producing; instead of 500 volunteers from our community, we had 1,200. And so, our volunteers have gone up; our professionals have gone up.
The budget money helped us to hire the Nashville String Machine to do the live orchestra score. We brought in some acting coaches to help our volunteer actors, and even Kirk Cameron had an acting coach on set with him. So, that took the acting up a little bit—we still have a long way to go, but we’ve come a long way.
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Jim Kumorek is the owner of Spreading Flames Media, providing video/media production and writing services to the A/V/L, technology, architectural and hospitality industries. He has led audio, video and lighting teams in churches as both staff and a volunteer for over 10 years. He can be contacted at james@spreadingflamesmedia.com.
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