The Great Controversy Over "The Record Keeper"

This afternoon, I watched "The Record Keeper" again - the SDA funded film based on Ellen White's Great Controversy. I was again impressed by it. It's still my opinion that the suspension of the film was a mistake for the following reasons:

1.  I've seen the Record Keeper several times now. I realize full well I am looking at an allegory. There is a precedent for allegory in the Bible. Technically 7 lean cows could not eat 7 fat cows. They don't have the teeth for it and the thing, where the image Nebuchadnezzar saw is struck by a stone, didn't really happen.
2.  Cancelling the film is a huge waste of resources. The film was vetted at every step and still somehow after spending a million bucks or so, the GC didn't like the results. I don't like my tithes and offerings wasted in that fashion.
3. The failure of the GC to approve a film about The Great Controversy surprises me not a bit. The General Conference would never have allowed Jesus to tell the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus, much less include it in Scripture. Christ's parable, after all, contains "theological inaccuracies".  
4. An allegory or parable is not intended to be accurate in every detail  It's designed to make a discreet and specific point and make a point it did. It's not a documentary. It's not historical fiction. It's a way to introduce the idea of the war in heaven and to draw viewers into a greater understanding of the cosmic impact of the little drama we're having here on planet Earth.
5. The Record Keeper does an excellent job of introducing the story of the war in Heaven, something most Christians know little about. It puts flesh on angels and broadens the perspective of Christ's mission to Earth and what it was about. It's a good starting point for a discussion.  
6. And no, angels aren't ninjas. It's not likely anyone will come away from the film thinking otherwise. We have no idea what a war in heaven would look like, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't a College Bowl debate. The portrayal in this film only makes it clear that the conflict was really war - albeit of a sort we probably can't understand.
7. We really need some new ways to mine souls from the culture as it is. Jesus was accused of being a drunkard and a glutton for spending too much time with sinners and not paying court to the ruling elites of the church. I think the criticism of the film is uncomfortably similar to the accusations of the Scribes and Pharisees.
8. Science Fiction readers and viewers are actually really more open to the story of the Cosmic Conflict as Great Controversy is alternately titled than we give them credit for. A friend of mine became an Adventist because he picked up a copy of The Great Controversy thinking it was science fiction. By the time he finished it, he was looking up the location of the nearest Adventist church. It was seeing the war between good and evil in a cosmic context that did it for him. And this was back in the 60s. It's even more so now. If we can put Christianity into a broader context, i.e. an intergalactic war between beings we would see as aliens should they reveal themselves to us, we might just reach some folk we aren't going to reach with talking heads and sermons in our media.
9. We paid for it.  I think it was  a huge mistake to abandon the Record Keeper. I don't think the controversy over it would have been damaging to the church. It might well have been invigorating. I think every Adventist whose tithes and offerings went to fund this million dollar project should be give a copy of it for free. 
10. We church members should be allowed to decide if what we paid for is worthy. We don't need a GC nanny state. We work for Jesus. HE is our immediate supervisor.

The nice thing about digital media is that it's easy to pass around. You can find the entire 11 episodes of The Record Keeper on Youtube at the link below. If you find it useful, it's not hard to find the study guides that go with it.

Just sayin'

Tom King

An Invitation to Adventist Writers

If you would like to be a guest blogger on The Journal of Hairy Chested Adventism, please contact me through this website's comment section or message me through my Facebook Account. I'd love to get some input from other Adventist men with suggestions.

The point of The Journal is to help Adventist men, particularly those new to the church, discover what it is exactly an Adventist man can do as a fully participating member of his local congregation and his church at large.




Subjects can include things like:

1. Deacon duties
2. Supporting women's activities with practical things like carpentry, plumbing, electrical and technical expertise.
3. Teaching duties
4. Youth Ministries
5. Pathfinders - particularly our "Camping Genius" series on great tips for managing youth campouts.
6. Mentoring
7. Raising sons
8. Raising daughters
9. Lay ministry ideas

I'd really love to put up more stuff and improve the site, but with everything else I'm doing now, I could really use some help. I am the sole editor. I am not associated with the GC or local conference or even a local church in any official capacity. The content of JHCA is my sole responsibility and does not reflect the official position of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. In other words, our opinions here are our own. If you have a good idea or an article I can use and that I think is consistent with Adventist philosophy, I'd love to publish it.  Click on the Facebook link above and message me through my Facebook page. I don't dare put my email on here. The robots would steal it and smack me with spam.

I look forward to hearing from Adventist writers, men and women, who have something to say on the subject of Hairy-Chested Adventism.

Thanks,

Tom King, Texan
Puyallup, WA

Adventist Film-Making - If Not Now, When?

The director managed to produce something good enough to
win an award - even though the film was unreleased. Surely
With the level of involvment by GC, they could have got
the message right.

The Record Keeper's been canceled by the General Conference. The innovative web-series has fallen victim to attempts to make a movie without really understanding how to make a movie. It's a shame they canceled the series , but I understand the reasoning. In a prepared statement, the General Conference cited biblical inaccuracies that would have contradicted the study guides that went with the film. 

If the GC were to encourage our schools to train more screenwriters, film-makers, cinematographers, sound engineers etc., perhaps we'd get some actual believers involved in these kinds of creative projects next time. We need to get more Adventist young people trained up well enough to do "quality" film work. Instead of discouraging them as in this case, we need to be empowering them.  In the name of controlling content, lets not make the mistake of trying to convert ministers into film-makers or, worse yet, producers.  Those are different skills sets.

The GC statement, killing the project, did come with assurances that the General Conference wanted to promote more such creative projects in the future. That will remain to be seen. I have my doubts. To me the GC's statement about believing in creative outreach sounds more like face-saving than a genuine desire to actually be creative in our outreach. I expect heads to roll at GC over blowing a million bucks on a failed film. If the past is any indicator, the failure of the Record Keeper series is likely to put a damper on any future church-sponsored films of this sort.

In order to get these kinds of projects done in the future, they'll likely have to be done by independent Adventist film-makers raising funds on their own. I know of one SDA film-maker doing a retrospect on the life of Sam Campbell. It's a difficult and time consuming process even for a single one hour documentary film. A quality feature film or television series is even more so. 

Perhaps it's time to organize SDA film-makers and would-be film-makers, animators and other creative types into some sort of film studio of our own. Then if the GC wanted to do a film, they could use us if they wished. AND we could do documentaries and independent films all on their own without having to go through committee to get approval.

One of the advantages a studio run and staffed by SDAs would have is a sense of purpose, mission and, hopefully, a profound lack of the kind of greed that drives up the costs of film-making. Set up as a not-for-profit, somewhere near film services, resources and excellent locations, a self-supporting film company could grow into a powerful tool for outreach and witness. I can think of several places that would be good home bases.  The Dallas-Ft. Worth area has quite a lot of film resources with a lot of great locations for filming fairly close by.  The Pacific Northwest is fast becoming a hub for film-makers, especially in television. Check out how many TV series are being filmed in Oregon, Washington State and British Columbia. We have universities in both areas.

The idea of doing outreach through a web-series such as the Record Keeper was really quite a good one. Faith for Today pioneered such an approach through it's Westbrook Hospital series. With today's technology an enthusiastic tech-savvy youth, well-trained in the cinematographic arts, we could literally reach every corner of the Earth. We could sell material to the GC media department, 3ABN and local churches to play on their local cable community access channels. We could put up really good material on places like Youtube where we're being pounded by critics and enemies of the faith who put up almost twice as many videos as we do.

An SDA film studio with an outreach program could also provide technical support for local church outreach programs. We could develop a stable of our own actors and actresses, camera crews and technical people, drawn from churches world-wide.

Okay, now I'm excited. If anyone is interested in being a part of such a project, please contact me directly. The link will take you to my email address. Perhaps the association of Adventist-Laymen's Services and Industries needs a new member organization.  

It is too bad this effort at media outreach misfired. Perhaps from the ashes of this debacle, God will raise up something far more powerful than we ever thought possible. He tends to do that sort of thing if you look at the history. Perhaps it's time we believers went ahead and did what needs to be done and let our leaders run along behind shouting, "Wait for me I'm your leader."

Tom King
© 2014

The Importance of the Passive Voice

Another Lesson from Sam Campbell

Sam with school children after a show.

If you grew up an Adventist kid in the 50s and 60s you probably know about Sam Campbell, the "Philosopher of the Forest".  Sam was a Christian naturalist who, during the 30s to the 50s made his living doing nature presentations and showing slides and films in schools all over North America.

His life was a child's dream. He and wife, Giny Campbell, spent the summers living on an island in the middle of a lake in the North Woods of Wisconsin. You had to paddle out to the island in a canoe named "Buddie".

Sam and one of his wild racoon buddies.

In the winter, Sam earned his living doing his lyceum shows and selling his books about life on the island with a collection of quirky animals with names like Inky, Nuisance, Sweet Sue, Loony Coon, Salt and Pepper. I've been privileged to work on a project that will preserve Sam's book in digital format so that they will always be available for future generations after print publishers have lost interest in Sam's work.

Sam is the guy that inspired me to become a writer. It took almost 40 years for me to do it, but I'm there. There was a call for volunteers to edit the scans of his books and clean them up to make eBooks.  Scanners don't always get it right and neither does Microsoft Word apparently.

Microsoft word subscribes to the fundamental principle of modern creative writing - "Always use active voice".  Avoid the passive voice at all costs say the writing teachers. When I clicked on the grammar checker on my MS Word copy of "A Tippy Canoe and Canada Too", it became instantly apparent that Microsoft word doesn't much like Sam Campbell's style of writing, flagging him repeatedly for using "passive voice".

I took writing courses in college and have kept up with the principles of good writing ever since.  But I knew, that in Sam's case, Microsoft Word's grammar Nazi was wrong. This sentence, for instance:


       Our adventure chest was being filled to the brim with golden nuggets of experience.

Microsoft Word's grammar Nazi complains that the sentence is in passive voice and suggests I change it.  I refuse because I think Sam meant to use the passive voice here.  Passive voice is absolutely what you would want to use if your adventure chest were being filled with golden nuggets of experience. You didn't fill the chest yourself. You allow it to be filled. There's a huge difference. In the passive voice version, you accept what God sends you and you receive it with gratitude.You do not grab salvation through your own efforts. You accept it and receive it as a gift from a Father who wants to give you more good things than you can believe.

One of the "golden nuggets" I received for my "adventure chest."

If you've ever been in the deep woods or paddled softly along a river far from civilization, you will understand. Too many modern paddlers roar up in their 4x4s to the exciting bits of the river, unload their indestructible composite canoes and paddles, strap on their helmets and "grab" whatever excitement they can get. Then they walk back to the truck, load up and run back to town for a brewski and to brag that they have "owned" that river.

And like those who only write in the active voice, they miss what Sam Campbell knew and what I have learned in receiving golden nuggets for my own adventure chest while paddling my own canoe. Sam and I know full well that you never own the river or anything in the wilderness. You receive from it what it offers you. Anything you have to "seize" from the wilderness is tarnished in the process and becomes less than it was had you simply let it alone. The modern active voice woodsmen miss the river otters, the fisher birds, the deer peering solemnly at you from the bank as you drift by. They never see the long and quiet stretches where angels voices seem to murmur in the trees and birds lay down a quiet choral backdrop against the chuckling of the water as it flows among the rocks.

To get from the woods what God intended for us to receive, we must enter the forest prepared to receive the gift. We must approach the forest in the passive voice, whether the grammar Nazis approve or no.