One of My Disturbing Trends About ‘The Passion’ Has Manifested

One of my disturbing trends about The Passion that I had discussed in my article “A Disturbing Trend I See About The Passion” on February 21, 2004 has manifested.

In this particular post, I mentioned the following observations:

….Even in my bulletin, my church bought two entire showings and have a way to procure a third showing if demand is high enough. If this film is supposed to be the most evangelical film and most truthful film about Jesus and our churches are buying up entire movie showings, then how will the unsaved get to see the film? What if this trend is nationwide? Would a seeker who is interested just get frustrated over time by not being able to see the movie when it is convienent to his or her schedule….

I was reading articles in my local newspaper Thursday morning when people who had just came out of the theater were being interviewed. One particular person was a pastor of a large and prominent Baptist church who bragged to the fact that his church had purchased all the tickets to four seperate showings of the movie. I then remembered how my church stated in the bulletin that it bought two entire showings and have a way to procure a third showing if demand is high enough.

Last night at church, my pastor got up and reminded everone who had purchased advance tickets for the movie from the church to pick up their tickets from the church office. He also announced that the church was only going to only be able to procure the two shows it had earlier procured. The reason why was that when the church called to procure the third showing as promised earlier, the theater politely told my pastor that the church would not be able to procure this third showing.

According to my pastor, the theater management told him that because so many churches had purchased entire showings in advance, there were no tickets available for other people who wanted to see the movie at their convienence. These people who had come back time and time again to view this movie only to discover that churches had procured the entire showing and therefore were not able to see the film started complaining to both the local manager and also to the national headquarters of the theater chain. The theater also told my pastor that this was not just a local or regional problem, but a problem through the majority of theaters nationwide. Because of these complaints, this particular national theater chain headquarters has issued a order to no longer sell out entire showings of the movie to any group but to honor previous commitments already paid in full.

I expected the typical Christian pastor’s reaction of:

Those evil secular humanists that run the theater are prejudiced against the church and hate the church. They allowed the voices of the sinners to dictate their policies blah blah blah blah blah….

However, my pastor was above this and also reacted differently, He came to the realization that this movie is in such a heavy demand and that sinners were going to see this movie that he was estatic that sinners were interested in this movie and that the movie was more in demand than he thought. Before he proceeded with the sermon, the church prayed for everyone who sees this movie to find Christ or strengthen their relationship with Christ.