Friends: Seeker Christians will love this video series … if they are serious. Mature Christians will appreciate the series … if they want to help seekers. Blessings! Bob

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Spirituality Column #923

July 23, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Starting Well

By Bob Walters

“Now there were many other things that Jesus did …” John 21:25

The Apostle John said it plainly: even the Bible couldn’t contain everything that Jesus did. And learning even the basics of Christianity, Christian life, Christian hope, scripture, history – i.e., developing a competent personal handle on the greatest story ever told – is a daunting task.

So, enter an especially competent story teller and video producer, his friend a pastoral authority (and also a great story teller), and the unexpected appearance of a Bethlehem-native Holy Land expert, and out comes a beautifully shot and wonderfully told eight-part video on Christian basics with Bible precision and vivid, on-location Holy Land cinematography.  What one needs to know about Jesus is available right here, with discussion guides and Bible references included.

Whether the edification is for yourself, your small group, your Sunday school class, or other Bible study gathering, it is at its base a primer not just for the beginning Bible student, but also a “how-to” course for the rest of us on explaining the Bible and the story of Jesus Christ.  

To see it, click this link: Basic Christianity Video Series (or biblestudyvideos.org).  The series is free, online only, and it is a modern day video trip to Jerusalem, the Sea of Galilee, Bethany, Nazareth, Bethlehem and other areas where Jesus was born, lived, talked, taught, performed miracles, died, and rose again nearly 2,000 years ago.

A seasoned Christian will know the stories and have heard of the places. The series focuses on the Bible as it happened around Jerusalem, heavily covering the landmarks of Jesus. The video is straight-ahead, careful, care-taking reporting of the greatest story ever told.

Let me tell you about my friends who produced it.

Storyteller: Ken Nelson, the series’ creator, producer, videographer, and master story teller, traveled to the Holy Land in 2017 with a church group led by our friend and retired minister John Samples and his son, John W. Samples, onetime executive director of the Christian HolyLand Foundation.  “Just a tourist” at that point, Ken shot some video with his phone and, upon adding some production and voiceovers, put together a “rough” Holy Land presentation he showed to various Indianapolis area church groups. 

Ken knew he was on to something.

Pastoral Expert: That nascent, impromptu video played so well that Ken enlisted minister and former Christian college professor and president Dave Faust (the former E91 senior minister who baptized me back in 2001) to answer both basic and difficult Bible questions in the new video series.

Ken was once a TV news field reporter for WRTV in Indianapolis, and then enjoyed success with both his own video production company and a corporate personnel communications consultancy based in Indianapolis.  In late 2017 he focused his considerable talents and life-long faith on his newly-awakened passion for shooting a Bible explanation series in the Holy Land, and began gathering resources for this professional and clearly taught eight part series, approximately 35 minutes per episode.

Bethlehem Native: Any serious video production in the Holy Land requires numerous permits, and Ken’s request to shoot Jesus’s birthplace in Bethlehem was initially met with a bureaucratic “no.” But Dr. Fadi Alzoughbi (ZOG-bee), who worked at the “Garden of Nativity” (birthplace of Jesus) permitting office, saw the request and contacted Ken, saying he would help work things out.  And he did.

Fadi, a Palestinian Christian and pastor at House of Bread Church, www.hobc.info, lives two blocks from the site of the Nativity. He coordinated permits for and tours of the Bible venues Christians know. Nelson made several more trips to Israel, finished the production, and essentially gifted his efforts and this superb Bible Basics Video Series to those seeking Jesus or those leading others to Jesus.

Since Covid, and now the Hamas war since last October, Israel, Palestine, and all these Christian landmarks are not open to visitors.  But this free and extremely well done video series is every Christian’s visa to see these holiest of places where Jesus joined humanity and brought to earth God’s promise of our redemption from sin and mankind’s restoration to divine relationship with the Father. 

It is a video trip to a land currently not taking visitors, but where Jesus once “did many things.”

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) has worked with Nelson on various church communications projects for fund raisers and church celebrations, and admires the clarity of his Christian witness. Dave Faust’s new book, “Not Too Old, Turning Your Later Years into Greater Years,” on graciously aging in a Christian life, is available HERE CollegePress or HERE Amazon, or Sundays 10-Noon at the E91 Resource Room. And, interestingly, Bethlehem is in Palestine, not Israel. I didn’t know that.