Talk to a Movie. Talk to God.

I have five younger siblings. The youngest is twelve years younger than me. When I was a few years into my work with Brehm Film, my youngest brother began college. We'd talk on the phone regularly, and we often talked about movies. We had great conversations, but he hadn't gone to college to study film and theology and communication like I had. After we'd talk, I'd think, "That was great, and if I had two hours to sit down with him and show him how a movie works and how we can respond to it Christianly. Our conversations could be all the richer."

Around that same time, a co-worker at Fuller was planning a series of one-day seminars for churches to train their pastors and lay leaders in things related to worship, theology, and the arts. She asked me to brainstorm a class on movie-watching. I spent a few days outlining a class. The project fell through, and the outline was left just sitting in my files.

My undergraduate training is in education. At Texas A&M, I learned how to translate complicated university research into a form that the average person can understand. There is so much good work being done at places like Fuller Seminary, but you need a theology degree to understand a lot of it. I also do a periodic literature review of the theology and film world, and there aren't many books written for wide audiences from a hospitable posture toward movies. There are more now than there were a decade ago, I'm happy to say.

All of these things eventually coalesced into a writing project. I initially envisioned it as a series of blog posts. It became a book because of interest from a few professors at Christian colleges eager for an accessible, generous intro to theology and film.

How to Talk to a Movie is the two-hour conversation I wanted to have with my brother. It's the workshop for pastors and lay leaders I never got to give. It's a decade of research distilled into an accessible, quick-to-read text. It accomplishes everything I ever hoped it would accomplish. I especially thrilled that it is being used at Christian colleges in intro to film courses. I wish I had this book when I was that age.