Collide Magazine

Vintage21 Goes Viral

Scott McClellan - Originally posted Saturday, September 1, 2007 -

Viral video is everywhere these days. Friends and family have probably sent you links to clips from Saturday Night Live, video of a martial arts enthusiast coming up short on an attempted backflip, David Hasselhoff singing “Hooked On A Feeling,” or a million more just like them. But what happens when a church, knowingly or otherwise, taps into the power of viral video? Vintage21, an emerging community in Raleigh, NC found out in 2005.

Vintage21, whose name expresses the church’s desire to live authentic lives of faith in the 21st century, was about to embark on a four-part sermon series studying the words and actions of Jesus in the Spring of 2003. In an attempt to use media to catalyze the conversation, Communications Pastor Matt Stevens took footage from an old Jesus flick and added riotously satirical dialogue on top of the video. But what started as a funny way to illustrate a month’s worth of sermons by showing who Jesus was not soon exploded into an Internet phenomenon. Here’s what Stevens had to say about the experience:

COLLIDE: First off, who provided the script and voiceovers for the videos?

MATT STEVENS: I did. We are in the South, the Bible Belt, which means that almost everyone has a working knowledge of the Bible—at least well enough to answer a few questions on Jeopardy.

So many people at Vintage21, whether they follow Christ or not, think they have this whole “Christianity thing” figured out. This is a dangerous place to be, because someone thinks they know Jesus Christ, but their lives are empty because they just know a few things about Him. They don’t turn to Christ because they believe they’ve been down that road, when they’ve really learned a few facts and stories. Their faith is based on misconceptions.

In the Spring of 2003, I sat down and thought about the misconceptions I had of Jesus that were not from scripture. I also thought about others; what do people in society say about Jesus? How do they view Him or His church? After coming up with a list of common misconceptions people apply to Jesus and the Church, I wrote the script, making Jesus out to be the way we often believe He is.

COLLIDE: What was the live reaction to the Jesus videos when you first showed them at Vintage21 in 2003?

STEVENS: The first week, no one laughed. Well, that’s not entirely true—two good friends of mine turned around and laughed at me for trying to pull this off. The second week, a few people laughed, but they were pretty nervous about it. I grew discouraged and almost stopped after the first two. However, we realized who our audience was. At that time, Vintage21 consisted of 75 people, many of whom either had been damaged by a church in the past or who had never been to church. So when they saw Jesus on the screen and heard what he was saying, they weren’t sure if they should laugh, or if someone would reprimand them for laughing at Jesus! Upon realizing this, Tyler Jones, the lead pastor, stood up the third week prior to the videos and introduced them as sarcastic pictures of who Christ was not, and shared a bit of the intent. We prefer to let things speak for themselves, but in this case, it required an introduction so people knew it was safe to laugh.

COLLIDE: Did you post the videos to your website immediately, or after people started asking for them?

STEVENS: A few months later we did a major overhaul on vintage21.com. We had filmed other videos and wanted them to be a part of our site. All the videos we’d created were then available for download.

COLLIDE: Obviously you knew the videos were funny, did you ever think they would spread beyond the Vintage21 community?

STEVENS: Honestly, no. I thought they were funny, but after no one in church laughed the first few weeks, I believed maybe it was too specific or weird for most people. Which was fine—my wife says I laugh harder at myself than anyone else does, so this just seemed to be the case with the Jesus videos.

COLLIDE: Can you share any stats with us on the number of downloads or bandwidth that had been used when Vintage21 finally made the decision to stop providing the videos for download?

STEVENS: We had no idea the videos were causing us to exceed the amount of bandwidth allowed. Our hosting provider shut us down out of the blue, and when we asked the reason, they responded that we’d had 1.17 terabytes (or 1,170 gigabytes) of downloads in October 2005 alone. This translates to about 50,000 unique downloads of the Jesus videos in just one month! Needless to say, we were unable to offer them as downloads anymore!

COLLIDE: What, if any, positive attention did the videos bring to Vintage21?

STEVENS: We’ve had people attend our church after friends in other states or countries saw the Jesus videos. For a small church plant, this is huge, because advertising is expensive.

COLLIDE: What, if any, negative attention did they bring?

STEVENS: Let’s just say not everyone understands sarcasm. These videos have been shown at literally thousands of events all over the world. For years I’ve received emails almost daily from people asking permission to show the Jesus videos at churches, camps, universities, and youth groups. I’ve also received numerous emails asking me to repent, or telling me I’m headed for hell. These folks are completely missing the point.

COLLIDE: What is Vintage21’s approach to using media and technology in its services?

STEVENS: We are a church in downtown Raleigh, NC, that seeks to welcome everyone, no matter if they are a seeker, follower, or doubter of God. We also hope to make the word of God accessible to everyone, regardless of church background. Therefore, media and technology exist to serve those purposes. They are not meant to entertain or attract. We strongly believe that Christ is the attraction, so we seek to lift Him up in a way people will understand.

This hasn’t always been the case—in the past we used video clips and felt we always needed them to illustrate and attract. Over time what proved to be attractive was the Scripture we preached.

COLLIDE: What did you as a Creative Arts pastor take away from this experience?

STEVENS: Never, ever start with creativity. Never begin with a method, illustration, or form. The Jesus videos were effective, and when they gained popularity I decided to make more. As I sat down to begin working on a script, watching clips, I realized that the first time around God had guided me. I prayed and sought His guidance, and from His message came the method. The second time around I was making videos just to gain popularity.

Sadly, this is too often the case in local churches. Pastors hear about a neat example or illustration, and base their sermons around it! Or someone watches the Jesus videos and believes that voiceovers are the way people will finally hear the true message of Christ. The result is often poor and not funny, because there was no foundation, only an illustration. I truly believe God is specific enough to guide each local church in how He desires to make Himself known. Ask God what He wants. I seriously doubt He’ll say, “Copy those folks over there.”

These days you can still find the Jesus videos on Google Video (here, here, here, and here), with each of the four installments boasting between 280,000 and 424,000 views as of the writing of this article. Hosting the videos on Google Video allows the Internet giant Google to absorb the bandwidth demands that the small community in Raleigh could not afford to facilitate. The Jesus videos also have their own MySpace page and more than 4,300 MySpace friends.

Will Matt Stevens and the Vintage21 staff ever duplicate the success of the Jesus videos? Probably not. That seems to be OK with them, though, seeing as how that was never the goal in the first place. Vintage21 appears committed to determining their success not in video views, but in the degree to which they authentically follow and share the message of Christ with their community.

What about your church? What does viral video hold for you? While viewership numbers in the hundreds of thousands are likely out of reach, sharing your work with a few hundred or a few thousand is a very real possibility. If your church is producing creative, humorous, or insightful media, why not put it online and see what happens? If you were to make a short video that communicates the essence of your church community or an important spiritual truth, putting that video on the web (YouTube, your site, wherever) makes it possible for your members to share it within their circles of influence. If the video has legs, the virus will spread. In the end it is possible that someone who didn’t know about your church comes to visit one Sunday, or that someone who hasn’t heard the Gospel watches your two-minute video. Maybe your church will never see the fruit of the videos you share with the world, but it seems like it is worth a shot. You may, however, want to keep any clips of the pastor falling off the stage to yourself.