Church leaders decided to call off this year's play and make the Purpose-Driven Life project the primary spring objective.
By JAY CRIDLIN
Published March 26, 2004
BRANDON - Rich Nelson saw Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ last weekend.
"I thought it was incredibly moving," he said. "This happened for real 2,000 years ago, and Jesus was doing that."
It might have been Nelson's only chance to see a passion story this year.
Congregants at his church, Bell Shoals Baptist in Brandon, have opted against staging their annual Easter passion play, which since 2001 has drawn crowds of up to 10,000 to the Florida State Fairgrounds. It's only the second year since 1997 that Bell Shoals has not staged a passion play.
Nelson, the church's associate minister of music, said the decision was unrelated to the release of Gibson's film, which, like all passion plays - including Bell Shoals' - deals with the final hours of Jesus' life and crucifixion.
The church has instead focused efforts on a 40-day, congregation-wide worship program based on Rick Warren's bestselling book The Purpose-Driven Life.
"The passion play is great, and it creates community awareness," said Nelson, who helps organize the play each year. "But we feel like this was a way to help our own people grow deeper and stronger in their walk with the Lord."
The 7,000-member church originally staged its annual passion play in a 1,300-seat worship center, but as the years went by, it became a much larger, and more popular, affair.
Following a year off in 2000 for construction at the church, officials moved the play to the fairgrounds, where last year 10,000 people saw a 180-person choir and a cast of 150 perform Amazing Love - A Journey to Jesus, based on the biblical books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
Despite being staged almost entirely by church volunteers, the play is a technological showcase, with a 136-foot by 64-foot stage. Massive screens show pretaped video segments and multiple camera angles of the live play. The church still sells DVDs of the performance.
Church leaders decided during a December staff meeting to call off this year's play and make the Purpose-Driven Life project, which wrapped up March 14, their church's primary spring objective.
"We decided that if we were to be ... knee-deep in preparations, spiritually and musically, and building sets and doing all that stuff - that it wasn't a wise thing to split our people that way," he said. "We felt like if we really wanted to do this justice, we didn't need to do it halfheartedly."
At the time, Gibson's Passion was hardly a guaranteed success. The film was considered anti-Semitic by some Jews, emotionally exhausting by previewers and a huge gamble by Hollywood pundits.
But Gibson's marketing strategy of holding private screenings for religious leaders created huge buzz in the Christian community. Churches began buying enormous blocks of tickets so parishioners could view the film en masse.
Since its Ash Wednesday release, The Passion has already become one of the highest-grossing films in North American history and is on its way to earning more than $1-billion worldwide.
There was no way to predict that The Passion would be such a phenomenon.
"We feel like by next year, people will want to come and see it that have seen the movie," Nelson said. "Maybe this year if we had done it, they might not want to come, since they just saw the movie."
The Purpose-Driven Life campaign has also been a success. More than 4,100 copies of Warren's book were given to church members 12 or older, and thousands of parishioners participated in nightly devotionals and weekly home worship sessions.
"We've had many, many people turn their lives around," Nelson said. "Marriages have been put back together. Many people have become Christians."
Gary Payne, Bell Shoals' pastor of educational ministry, praised Gibson's film, saying it went "hand-in-hand" with the lessons studied in Purpose-Driven Life.
"We couldn't have done a better job than that, for sure," Payne said.
With annual production costs of $120,000, Bell Shoals' passion play is twice as expensive as the Purpose-Driven Life series. Still, Nelson says the church is looking forward to staging the play in 2005.
"We say every year that it's definitely worth it," he said. "We want it to still be a joy for people."
