00:00:00 - Johnny Sanders

Do you have a child that is gender confused? Are you the parent of somebody who is either identified as transgender using different pronouns or some other type of gender confusion, just propaganda being shoved down your kids' throats? Well, I created the biblically parenting gender-confused children support group for parents just like you. The support group is completely free. We meet monthly, and you are able to connect with other like-minded Christian parents who are struggling with how to parent children who are gender confused. They're getting all sorts of nonsense brought to them by the world, and I want to help connect parents who are going through similar struggles and be able to tackle this issue through a biblical worldview. If you are interested in joining this group or know somebody who might be interested in joining, head over to faithfullyengaged.com. and there's more information about the support group there. I have a link down in the description below. Well, welcome back, everyone, to another episode of Faithfully Engaged. I'm really excited to have my guest, Craig, here. He is involved in all sorts of video producing and kind of the media side of things, which I think is something that, as Christians, we don't always have a good track record about what we may not always think it's important, but I think that it really is. So, Craig, why don't you tell us just a little bit about yourself and let the audience know a little bit more about you?

00:01:47 - Craig Dehut

Sure. So, my name is Craig D. Hutt. I live in the Midwest and I work as a freelance video producer. And about half of my year is spent producing content for a nonprofit that we founded about eight years ago called Appian Media. And what Appian Media has allowed us to do is travel over to the lands of the Bible and produce biblical documentaries, series and feature-length documentaries, podcasts, and workbooks. And all of the videos and podcasts that we create, we give away for free online. We make those available on our website and on YouTube. It stemmed from a desire to get people excited about the Bible again, to help reengage them with the biblical text by showing them the real places. And we do that through video.

00:02:38 - Johnny Sanders

I think that's really neat that we're seeing the Bible come alive. I mean, as Christians, we know the importance of scripture and that it is a living and breathing document in our lives. But there's something about video, about sight. I. I love getting to. To talk to people, like over. Over the phone or over text or something like that. But there's something about physically seeing that. Seeing that person, seeing that new house being built or whatever it may be, just really brings things to life. And in your experience, what do you kind of see with? I kind of mentioned this in the intro of Christians and maybe their view towards media. Do you see a general pessimistic view? Do you see people being really excited about it?

00:03:33 - Craig Dehut

Sure, that's a great question. So I went to, I went to film school back in 2005, and even back then I remember thinking, where are the rest of the Christians who were doing this too? There just weren't many of us. I don't know that I could claim to know all the reasons for that, but I think one of the reasons was we have seen what Hollywood has done with media and the destructive things that can be accomplished using video, and some of us were just kind of afraid to touch it. We assumed that the tool itself was not something that Christians should be involved in. And I was convinced that the tool itself is actually incredibly powerful and could be used to engage people. And I was proven right at film school. We were. I mean, it was not a Christian school. I wouldn't actually recommend this particular institution. Incredibly professional people and taught me a lot about the actual craft, but they were unapologetically anti-Christian. And so they viewed the skill set and the tools as something to be used to change culture, because it is, and it can be. They referred to us as not merely entertainers, they referred to us as culture changers. You guys get to make movies and hold people's attention for 2 hours at a time, or if you're Peter Jackson, it's like three and a half hours at a time. And, my thought was, why can't we hold their attention for that long and give them something good, give them something that will better the culture and engage them in a way that gets them engaged with God's word specifically? And so I have been thrilled to see it since that time, for a variety of reasons. Equipment is now much more affordable. Training is now much more accessible. You don't have to go to film school now to learn this kind of stuff. But Christians are rising up and learning the craft, and the quality of production is getting significantly better, I'm glad to say. There have been some incredible movies and shows that have come out in recent years that we're not afraid of the tool anymore. And our hope is that with Appian media we can, and we've seen, inspire people to learn the craft and to use it to positively impact people.

00:06:12 - Johnny Sanders

I really appreciate that answer there, and I love how you're talking about the tool, the tool of media, of film. It, it is that is a tool. Tools are not good things. They're not bad things. They're things. They're things that can be used for. For great greatness. They're things I can use for terrible things. And like I said, Hollywood has used it for a lot of bad things, no doubt. But we can use tools for all sorts of wonderful things as well. And I know you went to film school and. Yeah, very kind of godless type of culture and everything there. Tell. Tell us a little bit more about specifically app and media and what led to maybe the formation of that and kind of the steps it took to get there.

00:07:03 - Craig Dehut

Yeah, great question. So it stemmed from because there are so few of us, I feel like working in this industry. When I do find a Christian who is, I want to meet with them. And that's really what happened. My family and I had moved to Indiana and had discovered that there was another Christian who had recently moved to the area as well, working in the industry. And so we sat and we had coffee, and it wasn't very long at all that he and I both were kind of recognizing a similar problem specifically within the Bible classes that he and I were teaching. Different congregations, and different classes, but seeing the same thing. And that was specifically in young people, like high schoolers. They were coming into class and the tools that they were using throughout the day to learn at school. They're using iPads and computers and visuals. Most of that was getting put away in Bible class. And they were introduced to books. And the book is powerful. We're not trying to replace the Bible at all, but books and maps and drawings. And we thought, well, why can't we engage them on the level that they're used to learning, not to replace the book, but to get them re-excited about the book? And so it was, Stuart Peck is his name, he lives and works in this area. And he said, how hard could it possibly be for us to take a group over to Israel and create that content for ourselves because we couldn't find what we were looking for freely available, biblically accurate, and professionally produced content that we could use in these classes? And so that was back in 2015, were those original conversations. And we launched a Kickstarter campaign in early 2016 and raised enough funds to take a small team to Israel and produce what we call Following the Messiah, which became a ten-episode series about the life of Jesus. And we take you into Israel and we show you the sites, and we take a boat out on the Sea of Galilee, and we walk from Jerusalem to Jericho, and we see the places that he lived and taught and died. And since that time, our content has been viewed by God's goodness, I think, millions of times around the world in 160 different countries. And we've been blessed to go back to Israel and numerous other lands of the Bible. We've been to Turkey and Egypt and Jordan, and we've produced other content and we're seeing people use that in their classes, in their homeschool groups, in their family Bible studies, and get excited about the word. We had a young person come up to us after. I think it was just the first few videos that we released. And he was like, you guys made the Bible cool? And we chuckle at that a little bit. It's like, well, no, I mean, the Bible is already cool. It's very cool. But he was able to see it for what it is, potentially even for the first time, simply because we were able to show him what these lands look like, what the culture was like, and get them excited about the history again.

00:10:19 - Johnny Sanders

You know, as you're laying that out, my mind goes to with my kids. So my kids are all young. They have three that are four and under. And for them right now, like, yeah, they watch shows and things like that, but books are just huge. And with my daughter right now, we have some different, uh. I think it's God's biggest story book Bible or something. I can't remember it offhand, but, um, it's like biblical truth, but it's not word-for-word scripture. And it gets. It gets her interested. She loves hearing the story. She loves the story of the golden calf because there's a golden cow up there and she thinks that's so cool. She doesn't fully grasp it all, but she's interested, and now she wants to listen. My wife and I read the Bible together at night, and now she's doing that before bed. So she's actually hearing scripture. And I like to think that she would be interested in that at some point, regardless. But the media, which that book is, helped bring that to her. And I can see where you're coming from here of the visual side, especially for those that or a little bit older and a very technological generation. How I love how you mentioned this. It's not a replacement of scripture, it's taking you back to it. That's my goal for my daughter, that this storybook Bible brings her to scripture. Your documentaries can bring people to scripture, and that's just such a powerful way to use media in that way.

00:11:59 - Craig Dehut

Yeah. One of the things we frequently say is we are trying to give modern-day audiences at least as much historical, geographical, and cultural understanding as the original recipients of the word had. So when Paul wrote his letters, what did the Christians know about that land and about that culture that we probably don't know? Myself, am a 21st-century American Christian, because once we have that knowledge, we understand where Jerusalem was, we understand how far Paul trekked when he spread the gospel on those multiple journeys and we understand the religious paganism that the people were involved in. When Johnny wrote the seven letters to the seven churches at the beginning of revelation, what it meant for them to hear some of those things that Jesus said to them, we're trying to catch ourselves back up, and once we do that, the Bible suddenly becomes far more interesting, and that's what we're hoping to accomplish with the things that we've produced.

00:13:12 - Johnny Sanders

Absolutely. And I love that, providing that context there, some of the historical things going on. Geographical. I love what you mentioned about Paul traveling, especially in today's age. You hop in a car, in a plane, or whatever. It's not that big of a deal, but no, that's a huge deal, especially during that timeframe. Yeah.

00:13:36 - Craig Dehut

Our most recent project was the story of the Exodus, which was a project that we've talked about for many years, but have been hesitant to produce just because of the difficulty of it even now, the difficulty of coming out of Egypt and going into Israel, going into Canaanite. And so we kind of embraced that with, with our most recent project is showing people, you got to understand what God did for these people was supernatural and incredible on a degree that we. We have a hard time fathoming getting them out of such a difficult place and leading them through what is still a very desolate wilderness. And we're trying to get people to understand. No, they didn't. They didn't just hop on a flight and go from Cairo to Jerusalem in, you know, in a few hours. No, it was. It was a significant trek, which helped us, we hope, better appreciate the love and the power of God.

00:14:32 - Johnny Sanders

Absolutely. I'm curious here, with your training and just different media styles, and you mentioned this earlier of high-quality filming and documentaries and things like that, which unfortunately, I knew when I grew up, Christian media, high quality is not necessarily what came to mind. Seem to kind of be cheap and cheesy and all that stuff. So on, on this, and you mentioned technology and everything is much more available. I've been incredibly blown back by this, of just starting this podcast and everything that I, my editor have helped me set up with lighting and things. Like that. But if any of you saw, like, the filming of me filming, you'd be sitting there like, oh, that's it. It's really not super impressive, but because of technology, because my phone can work as a nice camera and lighting and stuff like that is available, some, somebody that doesn't have the technical training can maybe not put the super high quality together but can manage where 1520 years ago, that was nothing. That was not available.

00:15:47 - Craig Dehut

Right?

00:15:47 - Johnny Sanders

So me posing all this, where do you see kind of the. The future of media going in, especially Christian-based media in this new age?

00:16:01 - Craig Dehut

I am so encouraged by the trajectory, because 20 years ago, if someone wanted a feature-length film to be made with a Christian message, they had to go to Hollywood and beg them for permission because they couldn't afford the gear. And no one, very few people were properly trained, so they would have to ask Hollywood. And most of the time, Hollywood is not interested in that kind of content, and so the dedicated ones would scrap it together and try to do it themselves, which is why, and we still do see projects that were made and they did the best they could with what they had, which are typically lower budgets, which means lesser known actors, inferior equipment, and people who just aren't properly trained nowadays, we don't have to ask Hollywood for permission because the gear is now significantly more affordable. You're right. Some people are producing things using mirrorless cameras or even cell phones. That was unthinkable when I was in school, and that was, I graduated in 2007. We were thrilled that our phones were taking photos back then. We were certainly not considering the fact that one day they might be shooting 4k prores raw footage, and yet they are now. And so what I'm excited about seeing, because I've already seen Christians rise up and do it, is they're not beholden to Hollywood anymore. And they've been scrapping enough, long enough that they have become trained. And there are more film festivals and workshops and training programs around the country now, a lot of which we can consume online to teach us the skillset that I've been so excited to see productions come out, series and movies that are on, on par or greater than some of the Hollywood stuff that I've seen come out recently. And that's my motivation. That's what we do with Appian media, is not only are we trying to impact people with the content itself, but we're also hoping to motivate other creatives or people who are considering becoming creatives and saying, hey, look, if these guys can do it, and we are not spending millions of dollars on the kind of stuff that we're creating. Then what can I create with what I have? A common question is, what camera do I need to start my podcast or my film series? And my answer is, what camera do you have? Because almost every person, at least in this country and many other countries, you have a camera in your pocket, and it takes exceptional, exceptional footage. Now start with that, learn with that. Learn the basics of storytelling and. And then go from there. And it's exciting to see. I have high hopes for what we can put out in the future.

00:19:05 - Johnny Sanders

I really like that answer. It reminds me of some of just more media in general, where you get your news from Orlando, reading articles, and things like that. Things just in general, not just film, were always centralized. If you want to get your news, it's got to be ABC or CNN or whatever it may be, because that's who has the ability to get it out. They have the communication ability and said cell phone. That's something that I speak with a conservative Christian audience, and I get it. Are there a lot of bad things going back to the tools that you get from cell phones? You bet. Porn has been a massive issue in the culture. It's there at your fingertips all the time. Social media has had a lot of bad things. I get it. Like, there's a lot of bad stuff, but it is a wonderful tool. And just like you're saying, that can help build Christian audiences that aren't beholden to Hollywood or to morals that just go against them. And what you mentioned, too, is so many people limit themselves because I don't have that camera. I don't know what I'm doing. And I talk about this often. I've had several guests on the show that have an artistic bent to them. Recently I had Morgan McCarver on that does works, with clay, pottery, and things like that. And I love these stories because creativity is something that I firmly believe is something we're all called to do. God is the creator. We're called to live like him. So we need to be creating. And that's been a struggle for me because my natural bent is not an artistic one. I didn't really go, towards legos when I was a kid or drawing pictures and things of that nature. That side didn't come supernatural, but that's not an excuse for me. And that's something where I view this, this podcast as a piece of that creative bent. And talking to people like you, getting this out to other people's ears, like you don't have to be this master artist or something to be creative. And that phone in your pocket, you may not make a podcast, that may not be what you do, but you have abilities that you can't limit yourself. We don't really have that built-in excuse anymore, that I can't go to film school or whatever like, you have the ability to do it. You just can't limit yourself.

00:21:50 - Craig Dehut

Yes, I wholeheartedly agree. And when I consider the opportunity that's been given to us now with the world in our pocket, you can create content and post it now on YouTube, and it has the potential of reaching someone on the other side of the planet instantly. Never before in human history have we had that kind of capacity. And so it's actually baked into the name of Appian media is the Appian way was a roadway that Rome created. As they started conquering nations, they constructed what was at the time the most impressive roadway between these countries. It's one of the reasons why history tells us that the gospel was able to spread as quickly as it did, because for the first time in human history, these countries were now connected, and commerce and communication were able to very quickly go out to these other nations. And Rome created it, obviously for their own purposes. It was not for the benefit of the gospel, but the Christians used it. They had a nearly unified language of Greek, and they had this roadway. And so what we're trying to do is we are using roadways that have already been constructed, the Internet and media, and we are simply taking the gospel onto those roadways and reaching, I mean, we're reaching countries that I don't know that I will ever be able to visit personally in my lifetime. And yet the gospel is getting there. Some of these are countries that you couldn't safely send evangelists over to right now, but they have YouTube. And so when we think about as Christians, what can I do to influence the culture for good? You have it in your pocket right now. And maybe it's a blog, maybe it's a podcast or a video, maybe it's a text. I know some evangelists who are having Bible studies with people either over text or over Zoom. Covid happened. The whole world knows how to use Zoom now, and why not? Why not use that? And so I think we have a great responsibility now with this opportunity. There are so many ways that we can advance the gospel, and so the excuses that used to be legitimate, even 20 or 30 years ago, no longer are. And so what can we do as Christians too? To take advantage of these, these great opportunities.

00:24:25 - Johnny Sanders

Yeah, absolutely. I'm big on action. And that, in fact, that's the whole reason for this podcast so much of the Christian conservative Christian population, which I consider myself a part of, can be in that, like, things are bad. We're good at pointing out the bad stuff, that porn on the phone and all that stuff is bad. Social media has bad things. All right, great. But what are we going to do about it? Are we just going to be mad about it? Are we going to go into a bunker and just not wait everything out? Like, are we going to engage the culture? And these are some practical ways that, like I said, the sky's the limit of what you could be doing. And I love that you mentioned text as well because that can even just be the person in church that, yeah, you're checking in on that. We use text and Facebook with our church just to kind of check in with each other. And that could actually be a really valuable asset. So it doesn't have to be this whole massive film that you're doing. It could be, um, but it could just be checking in on your neighbor. Um, so don't, again, just don't limit yourself. Don't sit and do nothing. That's really what it comes down to.

00:25:46 - Craig Dehut

Right. And, you know, full disclosure, we fell into that trap. Those initial coffee meetings started and continued for a little while of us just kind of complaining about what wasn't available. And it's super easy to do. It's really easy to point at a feature film and say that that was low quality and low budget and the acting wasn't great. But the fact is they made it good on them for trying. Hopefully, they learn from their mistakes and they're going to do something better. But it's a lot harder to do. It's very easy to sit and just point at someone's efforts and say, I could have done it better. Well, then get up and do it better. People have asked us because this is a question you ask in business as Appian media, who are our competitors? And it's a term I don't love because we don't necessarily view others who are using media, even traveling and making biblical documentaries, as competition to us. By all means, go out and do it. There are companies, there are organizations that are doing things very similar, but we don't view it as a competition. They got up and instead of cursing the culture, they countered the culture. And that's what we encourage others to do. So eventually we did. We stopped complaining and started asking the tough questions. Like, is this possible? Who can we get? We knew that the two of us couldn't do it on our own, even though that was the original idea. And I'm glad we jettisoned that one pretty early on. We needed to assemble at least a small team. How much is it going to cost? Is it practical? Is it safe? Most importantly, we did a lot of praying and we do with every project. Is this something that God would want us to do? It's a big investment of time and other people's money as a non-profit. And is this something that God would want us to do? And we've been blessed as each new opportunity comes and support continues to be able to answer in the affirmative with those things and trying each time to do it better than we did it before. And that's really the goal.

00:28:04 - Johnny Sanders

Yeah. And it absolutely is true that we can have a complaint. Look, we're human. We can point out things that are wrong, but we just don't want to be, we don't want to be stuck there. And I think that's, I appreciate your honesty there, that you were there. I know I've been there. And in my counseling programs and different co-workers and stuff, like, man, what are they doing? Why are they doing all these crazy things? But this it, Beck. But what am I doing? And that kind of led me to making my own practice and making the podcast and everything that it can start with a complaint, but it just can't stay there. We gotta, yeah, we gotta move into something. And I love that emphasis on action there. The other thing that I was gonna mention, too, is talking about seeing them as competitors.

00:28:54 - Craig Dehut

Again.

00:28:55 - Johnny Sanders

Another thing I see personally is if I see another counselor, like out in the wild and social media or whatever, that says something that I'm not even gonna say that's conservative or that's Christianity, something that's just not like way out there. I see them like, oh, I want, I want to be friends with you. Like, I want to reach out to you. I want to be on your side. Those connections like that, even if they live in my same town and may take client's quote away from me, I want to be, I want to be with you. I want to be on the same team. It's not just about pushing competition away. Like we want other people to do good work no matter what field they're in.

00:29:39 - Craig Dehut

Yeah. And I think this is true. I can say it's true for the creative industries, but I think it's true for most people who are starving for it. There's more than enough to go around. So some people watch our content because they love documentaries. And some people, that's not, that's not their cup of tea and that's fine. But they're starving for quality, God-focused, moral, Christian content. And I think even Hollywood is becoming wise to that. They're seeing that, hey, when it's done well and it's marketed well and it's actually a solid story, people flock to it. There's more than enough to go around. And so let's all jump in. Let's all jump in and see what we can accomplish in the kingdom.

00:30:28 - Johnny Sanders

Absolutely. Yeah, that's, that's absolutely the right mindset to have now for people that are, that are listening to this and they might be really interested in knowing more about your, your documentaries, about your podcast. Just all things app and media. How can people take this content, be able to view this, and also be in contact with you after the show?

00:30:52 - Craig Dehut

Sure. So, like I mentioned, everything that we create, and all the videos that we create are free to watch online. And you can find that at Appian, appian media.org. or you can hop on YouTube and just search for Appian Media and you'll find our content there and you'll have it on the website and on the YouTube channel, all of our podcasts and our feature link documentaries and docuseries. If I were to guess, you're talking somewhere between 40 and 50 hours worth of content. And we've been blessed to continue to create that. So, appianmedia.org, when you send a message from that website, there's a Contact Us form that's actually going to go directly to me and to Stuart and so you can reach out to me in that way. And we're excited to hear what you all think of the content and we're excited to hear how people are using it most of all. And that's always really our goal is for people to use it. What started for high school students, we have realized people, young and old, are visual learners. Everyone wants to see the Bible stories and so it's really something that we encourage all ages to consume.

00:32:07 - Johnny Sanders

Fantastic. And now I'll have the website linked down in the description below so you'll be able to go there real quick and see that. Yeah, I really, really hope that you guys all go and view some of that. Reach out to Craig on the website there. And thanks again so much for Craig, for speaking about this awesome topic.

00:32:27 - Craig Dehut

Oh, I'm thrilled to do it. Thanks for having me.

00:32:29 - Johnny Sanders

All right. Thank you again to everybody who is tuning in today and we'll catch you on the next episode.