End of the Spear

I’m hoping this will become a household phrase in a couple of months. Yesterday I got to attend a sneak preview of a movie by this name. It's a feature film treatment of the Auca/Waodani story involving the martyrdom of five missionaries in Ecuador in 1956. It is arguably the most well known missionary story of the twentieth century, perhaps ever. In ’56 when the missionaries went missing, it hit the mainstream press in the USA big time. The aftermath of the slayings was presented in Life Magazine in many pages of images by the famous photographer Cornell Capa. The story struck deep into the hearts of many Christians and fomented a swell in recruits for missionary service. Countless people stepped up to take the places of the slain men. Nate Saint and his legendary inventiveness and skill in bush flying has been an inspiration to every missionary pilot since. But it has been so long since the widespread telling of the tale that there are several generations of people alive now who have heard little or nothing of it. The film will be released in theatres January 20 and will mark 50 years since the five were killed.

Steve Saint, son of the slain pilot who transported the group to the remote jungle location, has basically been the keeper of the story all these years. He told me that he has constantly had folks come to him wanting to make a video or movie about the story. He said he always had reservations about these opportunities until this group came along. Something just seemed very right to him this time and he got the families of the other four men to give their blessing. I think his intuition and sensitivity to God’s timing was spot on. The results are very special. The film is really magnificent, as are the promotional materials. I think it sets a whole new standard for a Christian film. It's a new genre, really - a film that doesn't pull any punches spiritually but at the same time isn't preachy. It really does respect the viewer's intelligence by using cinematic literacy and not hammering on the obvious. It also doesn't try to be everything in one package - a strategy who's day is past, I think, at least here in the US. There is no invitation at the end.

The same production company also made a documentary called “Beyond the Gates of Splendor” that tells more of the story in interviews with actual people involved and covers much more of what has happened with the Waodani up to the present day. The documentary idea came out of expert recommendations that the story was really too big for a feature and would require two films to tell. The people charged with raising the money for production found this to be just too daunting a task, so the idea to tell the extended story through a documentary was originally meant to save money. But the strategy of the way they are using the two films together is a really innovative and great one. The documentary was intended to be an extra bonus item on the DVD of the feature. When it was finished (they did it before the feature) what they had was really a worthy product on it’s own and a candidate for it’s own theatrical release. It did have a very limited theatrical run and is on DVD now at Best Buy, Borders, Blockbuster, and probably some stores that don’t begin with “B.” The intent now is for Christians to have extra background and insight about the story with which to engage our culture at large when the feature comes out. I am hoping and praying it works splendidly. This whole thing is really a prototype project of this new company. Let’s hope it does well and they are able to go on to make many more such films. It could be a whole new day for Christian influence in our culture.

for info: www.endofthespear.com

for resources: www.daretomakecontact.com