Is "Faith Based" a Scam? with Jason Farley from Loor.TV

question. I think that the tag faith -based is a secular way of marketing to Christians.

Secular companies put in money to faith -based, quote -unquote faith -based shows and movies in order to be able to market to Christians and Mormons now.

So it's really not, I don't think it's a proper designation. Striving for superior theology and denominational unity, one joke at a time.

Your Calvinist podcast begins now. Welcome back to Your Calvinist podcast.

My name is Keith Foskey, and as always, I am your Calvinist. I'm glad to have you with me today, and I'm excited to talk about the subject of Christian entertainment.

Now, many of you know that I enjoy entertaining folks. I put out a lot of videos, and in fact, last night was the

Super Bowl, and I had a few people make some notes and said that they were actually watching my videos as their

Super Bowl halftime entertainment. So for those of you who sent me those notes, thank you so much. I'm glad to be part of the entertainment, the

Christian entertainment community, and providing people with something fun and enjoyable to watch. So for those of you who sent me those notes,

I want to say again, thank you so much. It was very encouraging. But today we're going to be asking the question, is

Christian entertainment lacking? Do we need a better outlet?

Do we need a better way of getting entertainment as Christians? And so I have two guests that I'm going to be bringing on the show.

I have with me today Jason Farley from Lore TV, and I have

Tim Frazier from Page 50 Marketing and Media Production. Tim and I became friends at the

Fight, Laugh, Feast conference last year. We bonded over our love of Jesus and comedy.

He does stand -up comedy, and we had a great fun time talking about that. And he's going to be acting today as my co -host.

He's going to be helping me interview Jason as we talk to Jason about Lore TV.

Now, Lore is a Christian entertainment business. I'm going to let him explain what it is here in a moment.

I don't want to get it wrong, so I want to make sure I let him explain it. But Jason, you have a background in comedy as well, right?

Your wife is a stand -up comedian, and you've done comedy as well, correct?

Yeah. When I met my wife, that was what she was trying to make of her life is stand -up comedy to end up on Saturday Night Live.

And that was the life goal. I interrupted her life, got her pregnant four times. But I work as a comedy writer, a script writer.

I went to seminary first and spent some time as a church planter. And then

God threw a left turn in my life, and I ended up a comedy writer by means of spinal meningitis, actually.

So very funny story, obviously. Yeah, it sounds like a hoot.

So I've worked and studied comedy, worked as a comedy writer, written comedy and non -comedy scripts, both for hire and just had things optioned and sold.

But I was working outside of the strictly

Christian media until COVID, and the ability for Christians to work as public

Christians in the secular space has gotten squeezy since COVID.

And so I now am working in Christian entertainment.

Awesome. Awesome. Tim, if you would, for my audience, tell me a little bit about Page 50 and what you do over there.

Yeah, definitely. So Page 50, we're based in South Louisiana, and we are a marketing and media company.

We strive to help businesses and anyone who needs marketing or anything of that nature to present the best that they can, whether that be social media presence, advertising, video production, podcasts.

We do all sorts of stuff. And we work with a lot of businesses, a lot of like -minded Christian businesses who want to honor

God in everything that they do. So that's what we strive for. But yeah, I've been with them for three years now,

I think. And I do sales and some account management stuff.

But our fearless leader is Stuart Amidon. I don't know if you guys saw anything about the Tactics Conference recently, but he is the one who kind of headed that whole thing up.

Page 50 got that whole conference together, and we had a really good time down here with a bunch of other rowdy

Christians on the Gulf Coast. So yeah, so that's a lot of what we do. And yeah, we just want to do marketing, media, and advertising to the glory of God.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, I appreciate you being here helping out on the show today. I really am. I'm looking forward to getting to know you better.

And have you done any comedy lately? I know we talked about doing some standup. Have you been back to the open mic?

Yeah, I've been doing open mics. They typically have them, there's two a week in my city.

And I try to hit at least one of them every week. I recently had a son, my fourth child, second son.

And so it's been a little bit more sparse than I'd hoped for. But actually, the past couple weeks have been and it's been going really well and been really fun.

So awesome. So you have four children? We always joke that my wife didn't have children.

She birthed herself an audience because there's so much comedy. Hey, I will say my oldest daughter laughs at all of my jokes and she started telling her own.

And they're not bad. They're not bad. Awesome.

Awesome. And you have four kids, Jason, you said you have four children? Yep, I've four kids, too. So but my kids are all

I've got three adult children and one who's a teenager still. I mean, I guess my one of my adult children is also a teenager.

Nice. All right. Well, excuse me. Yesterday I mentioned on the opening yesterday was the

Super Bowl. And during the Super Bowl, this wasn't something I was going to bring up. But since lore is is producing

Christian content, in fact, correct me if I'm wrong, Jason, your your your your moniker or your logo ad says

Christian movie shouldn't. What does it say? Christian movie shouldn't suck. Yeah, that's our that was our our first tag.

The first tagline of our company was Christian movie shouldn't suck. So. Well, yesterday, the

Super Bowl happened. And did you guys watch it? Did you violate the Fourth Commandment and get a chance to go

Chiefs? The Fourth Commandment. I don't know how to answer that question, because if I say yes,

I'm saying that I did watch the evening game, which started after sunset.

So that's right. That's right anymore. Well, there was a commercial and the commercial was talked about by a lot of Christian outlets, and it was a he gets us commercial.

And I'm not going to play it. I don't want to get into copyright garbage and anybody say anything to me. But it it it it was it was a picture of people washing feet at different locations, and they included in those locations an abortion clinic.

And and that one got a lot of attention. A lot of people thought it was was was incorrect. That was just wrong.

But the thing that bothered me most, even more than that, was when it said Jesus doesn't didn't preach hate as if to say

Jesus's message was only one of lovey dovey, you know, roses and candy. And there was no teeth in Jesus's message.

It was only embracing all things. But Jesus wasn't like that. Jesus had teeth.

And so I wanted to get your thoughts, Jason, from a from a from the perspective of a writer entertainer.

What do you think they're trying to do? And and what are your thoughts about it? I mean, my take is, well, the

I do think that the campaign as a whole is misguided because the brand ambassador of Jesus is supposed to be the church, the local congregation, and trying to to turn trying to build a brand for Jesus using the world's methods,

I think is is just misguided in and of itself. And, but that that's a and they spent a lot of money for not a lot of quality for for pretty low quality outcome, right.

So especially when the half the time I was like, are these AI generated photos?

I think these are AI generated. Yeah. Yeah. I think one of them has seven toes for sure.

Sure. There were seven toes. So the whole time I was like, man, this is so we we early on we did a satirical he gets dudes commercial about where it was.

It was a bunch of guys, black and white photos of guys drinking at weddings. This is Jesus drink at weddings to he gets dudes.

But the they got so angry with us that we actually ended up taking it down because it wasn't worth the possibilities of things.

Because you know, Jesus loves everyone. And so they hated our satire. But that's a whole nother story that but what you what you really had going on was the person who behind the campaign that took the money to make the ads said that her greatest passion is

D is pushing DEI diversity, inclusion. Oh, that that's who makes the makes those commercials is the

D D is a DEI enthusiast. And you can see it in there, right? I mean,

Jesus established foot washing as a way to show the church authorities how to run churches, right?

You you this foot washing is an example of what a ecclesiastical authority is supposed to look like in the church.

And they flipped around and they said unless this ecclesiastical authority is out telling us that we're okay, the exactly the way we are, then it's hate.

But, you know, Jesus, Jesus, he says, Hey, anyone who stumbles one of these little ones,

I'm going to tie a big rock around your head and throw you in the ocean. Yeah. So very loving message.

So here, which it is loving for the victims, the victims of the crimes.

And I and we have so been, I mean, the the whole thing swings left theologically, because it also just tries to turn

Jesus into a model to follow when that's exactly how liberalism or modernist modernist theology, the first time that it came in and swept through them, sent the main denominations, the

Presbyterians, the Congregationalists, the Lutherans, and it swept through by saying,

Jesus is a great model for life, rather, and, and downplaying the fact that he had to die on the cross for our sins, and that he's now

King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and, and the judge at the end, you know, all of those other things about him, they downplayed all that, and said, he's a great moral model.

And the whole thing is just, it's just refried. Theological liberalism, in my opinion.

Yeah. This is what I posted and got a little bit of attention. I don't know if you saw it. That's my, that's my dad joke.

And I hope it was blasphemy, because it was certainly a blasphemy. Yeah. So I was,

I was to say, I wonder if somebody, you know, actually did an ad in the

Super Bowl like that. What, what do you guys think would be a cool, like biblical take on, on that, like the right way to do it?

Like, we obviously saw the wrong way how to do that. But I would love to hear your thoughts on maybe like, what would it look like for someone to buy a

Super Bowl ad like that and do it the right way? I mean, I, I think that it, well, it's a good question.

My first thought is just that if they were spending any tithe money, they should be fired at all, because that's not what tithe money is for.

Tithe money is for the, to, for the operations of the church and for the relief of the poor.

And that's what it's supposed to be used for. So if they did that, that would be wrong. But this, these were private individuals.

I talked to some of them because the, about, you know, why they gave and, but the,

I mean, I think the right way to do it, oh man,

I don't think there's a right way to try and turn Jesus into a brand. Oh no, yeah. But I think,

I mean, I think the right, I think, I think, because I think the church is the ad campaign, right?

The, the congregational life of the church, the, the preached word, the sacraments, that's our ad campaign.

Jesus already established an ad campaign. And then he told us, and it's a really bad one.

You know, the church is a, is a, what does Paul say?

The church is a barren woman who will have more children than anyone else, right? He already said, like, the way that I'm going to tell you is not the way that you normally would do things.

It's a, I'm sending a bad ad campaign and it's going to win anyway. What you could do, what you could do, you could, you could just have pictures like here's an abortion clinic.

And then just the word repent. Here's a gay wedding. Here's, here's a man beating his wife.

Repent. You know, like, like, like, like Jesus came and his first words were repent.

Like he doesn't get us. He judges us. Right. That's right. That's my campaign right there.

So that's, that's more of what I was getting at. Like, you know, in the whole sense of if this were to happen, like how funny would it be to like have, you know, just a straight gospel message, like an abrasive gospel message, you know, just played out in front of millions.

Well, yeah, it would be, I mean, I think a really how, how

I would probably do it is, um, you know, it's some people that step out in the rain and they're, you know, looking up and they're excited and, and then a few more people step out in the rain and then the rain starts to fall more and more and you back up and in the distance you can see the arc.

It's just people dancing in the rain and then say repent or perish.

Oh yeah. Oh man. That's good. How did you get the hearts? What, what was that?

What lasers? What just happened? It's like an iPhone app.

Oh, it's an app. Oh, that's funny. Okay. It's just, it's just the, that's just the new stream yard thing.

But yeah, I mean, that, I think that would be a really funny ad and you would have everybody talking. Um, that is, that is funny.

But I think you could also do something like, um, you know, the, the, the clip from the, uh, the man in the center cross, you know, there'd be a way to do it that didn't have to just necessarily be straightforward.

Like there's some really powerful moments from sermons that I think you could clip out and make into, you know,

Superbowl ad or, but then again, the man on the center cross was, was Alistair Begg. Half the Christians wouldn't watch it.

Oh, was it? See, yeah. Yep.

Yep. Look at me stepping in it. Well, you step in it all the time. I mean, I'm a

Baptist. I'm having you on my show. And according to you, I'd make people transgender. So you just, you can't keep your feet out of the dirt, man.

That's true. That's true. Hey, well, that's why Alistair Begg can wash them for you. You know, that's right.

If you step in the mud, Alistair Begg washes your feet and a latent flower stands above you with his hands blessing all of it.

I would prefer Kanye. Can I get Kanye to bless us? Well, him and, uh,

Marilyn Manson were doing stuff together. Maybe you get both of them. They're that. Do you see the pictures of them doing stuff together?

Kanye and Marilyn Manson doing a worship service together is the wildest thing. I don't have the picture to pull up, but it's look it up.

It's crazy. I'll have to look it up. It's crazy. All right. So I'm going to do a little game here with you,

Jason, before we split to our quick commercial. And this game is a, would you rather question?

Now we haven't talked a lot about lore yet. So some of my people who are watching may not know what that is, but, um, in fact, let's do this before we begin.

Can you give us a quick synopsis? What lore is that way? When I asked this question, it'll make sense.

Yeah. Lore TV is a new streaming service where the subscribers choose what goes on the streaming service.

So we built us a system, a technology that gives it makes it possible using video game currency for the subscribers to build their own streaming service of what they actually want as a way to get around the

Hollywood executives, uh, and make it possible for people to actually see the kind of content they want to see.

And this is your full -time gig, right? I mean, this is what you do. This is what I do. All right.

All right. Well, uh, would you rather, you know how this game works, right? I'm gonna give you two options and you got to tell us not only which one you're going to choose, but you also have to say why.

And, and since I do have Tim here, I'm going to ask him a, would you rather question too, but him to his is going to be related to comedy, but we'll get to him in just a minute.

All right. So Jason, if you had a project or a studio was interested in getting involved now,

I know Laura TV is a studio. So I'm saying another studio wanted to get involved and either co -produce or produce something.

Would you rather it be a family friendly one like angel or the Kendrick brothers or one of those, one of those studios, or would you prefer it be a secular one like Netflix or prime?

And why would you want one or the other? Okay. That's a really good.

Would you rather? So, um, and I, I think, uh, that as long as they were willing to play by the rules, um, which is on our platform is no nudity and no blasphemy, as long as they were willing to play by the rules.

I think a, uh, as of right now, I'd rather work with a secular company. Um, and that's, but that is, but our goal is to change that.

But here's why is right now the, the, um, companies that make family friendly content, uh, currently have, um, they, they think that their job is to make sermon illustrations rather than movies.

And, um, the, and so we get a lot of bad content because they're trying to make sermon illustrations.

Um, and I think it's the same reason that the, he gets this answer so bad as they think that Jesus needs a rebrand.

Um, and so they, they try to make sermon illustrations. Uh, but really what we need are just quality movies and television shows.

I like to tell Christian filmmakers, your job is to be as good of a Christian as you can be and grow in the

Lord and be as good at your craft as you can. Um, and, and then make movies and TV shows and not, uh, make sermon illustrations.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, I, I kind of thought that was where you were going to go. I was pretty sure you wouldn't want to work with angel studios.

I think they, I think they're based in Utah, but I mean, if they can get me my own planet with a whole group of women afterwards, you know, have you ever met the

Kendrick brothers? Uh, I, let's see, I have not met the Kendrick brothers.

No, I've met, I know how I'm talking about, right. The guys parade and fireproof and all that stuff I've met.

And they are, I mean, they are pastors. They're, they know that they're making sermon illustrations. I think everybody else looks at it and says, they've done it successfully.

That must be the path of success. Um, but it, it's, uh, you know, but they'll, they'll tell you that they're making sermon illustrations.

I mean, I assume they would, I think they know that they're making sermon illustrations. Um, but no, I, you know,

I've met other folks that would love to be able to break out from that, but they don't think that they can take their audience with them.

Gotcha. Gotcha. All right, Tim, a quicker, maybe a little quicker, would you rather for you? And it has to do with comedy.

I saw today that Willie Roberts, you know, who Willie Robertson is the, uh, the guy from, uh, the duck dynasty.

He gets anywhere from 50 ,000 to a hundred thousand dollars for a speaking engagement.

So if he's the keynote speaker, he's going to pull in anywhere from 50 ,000 to a hundred thousand dollars.

Okay. All right. So I just had to throw that out there because I think that's bonkers. I mean, I'll, you know, if you want, if you want me to speak at your thing,

I'll do it for 39, 95 and a Shoney's gift certificate. Just, just tell me where to show up. Right. Like, but all right.

So if you had the opportunity and I know you love to do comedy. All right. So which would you prefer to do?

Would you prefer to do a standup venue where you were in a, uh, like a

Christian context where you were speaking alongside other brothers in Christ, uh, in, in more like a conference setting, we'll say like a

Ted talk, or would you rather be in a situation where you were in like a, um, one of those, uh, uh,

I can't think of the name right now, but like, like a, a showcase at like a comedy club where you were one of the, one of the comedians there, would you rather do it on the faith based side or would you rather go on the secular side?

And, and, and, and trust me, I'm not going to judge either way. I'm just curious where you're, where your mind's at on that. Where, what, what, what do you hope?

So that is tough because depending on your routine and what you're bringing, you know, um, you can have a really good time with a bunch of Christians, you know?

Um, but at the same time, uh, I would almost want to combine those right.

And say, if I can have a bunch of Christians at a comedy club, that would be like the preferred setting.

Right. Um, uh, but yeah, so I think, um, honestly though,

I think I love the challenge of trying to make a bunch of Pagans laugh without being discussed.

Okay. You know what I'm saying? Sure. Sure. Uh, recently I had the opportunity to speak at a church on the subject of comedy.

I did a, I did a message called a theology of comedy. They wanted me to come in and talk about humor in the

Christian life. It was actually, uh, uh, pastor Uri, he's a CREC pastor in Pensacola, had me out.

And, uh, I got to thinking about what, how much fun it would be to get a group of Christians who love to, to laugh.

I thought like, you know, the three of us, maybe we should go on tour guys. We should get, we should do a, uh,

Marcus, Marcus, uh, Pittman, you know, who's, uh, with Laura as well. He posted that he's wanting to do a fundraiser and maybe get some comedy guys to come in and do like a comedy showcase to do.

And that's what made me think about that as I would love if it, if it weren't on the other side of the planet for me, cause you guys, you guys are in Moscow, Idaho, which is ridiculous.

I mean, I, I, it'd take 40 hours to drive and I don't like to get on planes because you know, I'm a,

I'm a big guy, but, uh, but anyway, I would love to do it. Um, but speaking of Marcus, this is going to lead into the next part of the show.

Uh, cause I do have a few housekeeping things I want to get out of the way very quickly. And the first one is to do with Marcus, Marcus and his wife, uh, that is

Marcus Pittman. Many people know him, uh, and, uh, are familiar with him through his media work.

He and his wife are working on trying to adopt and they are doing a fundraiser. And so as part of today's show, because Jason and, uh,

Marcus are not only good friends with partners at lore, we are going to ask that everybody who is able and would like to can go down into the link and you will find a link to donate to Marcus.

And I don't normally ask you for any money or any donations or anything like that, especially for me. But if I know there's something out there where people are in need or people are trying to raise money for a good cause,

I will point you to them. So for my audience today, I want to say if you are interested in supporting people who are wanting to adopt, uh, there's going to be a link in the description below and, uh, would love to, uh, point you to them.

So if you want to know more about them, look at Marcus Pittman on Facebook, he posts about it and you can, uh, you can read more about it there.

All right. The second thing is, uh, I do point people to this. If you like some of the merchandise that we have,

I have shirts, five point Calvinist shirt. I have our make Bible study great again, hat. These are all available at our spring store.

So go find stuff that you like and buy it. You're going to feed hungry children mine. And if you do that, so, uh, also we have a

Bible conference coming up at sovereign grace family church on March 8th and 9th. We're going to be doing it this year on the end times.

I'm going to be preaching on amillennialism and that should excite you because I am the King of the amillennialists.

So come and listen. And I know Jason is probably a post -millennialist. So he's just angry that he's even on the show today, but that's okay.

Come and listen. I just think it's ironic that any amillennialist is talking about Kingship personally.

Well, that's part of the fun. That's part of the fun. But, uh, but come and come and join us. It's going to be a conference with no cost.

Uh, there is going to be food provided on the Saturday that we're going to be there. And if you can't be in the Jacksonville area, you will be able to watch it online.

So be looking for that link as we get closer to time. Uh, last thing. I think it'd be fun to talk about what post -millennialists and amillennialists have in common, because most of the time we talk about the things that we disagree on.

You should have somebody just come and talk about all the things they actually have in common. Well, well, maybe one day have you back.

We'll do that. You're you're post mill. We can, we can make that happen. All right, well, real quick, I'm going to cut to a quick video.

We'll be right back in one minute. Hey guys, I just want to quickly say thank you for watching this episode.

And if you're enjoying it, please hit the thumbs up button. If you're not enjoying it, hit the thumbs down button twice.

Also, if you haven't already, please subscribe to the channel. It really helps us out. And some of you've asked about how to support the channel.

If you'd like to support us, you can go to buymeacoffee .com slash your Calvinist and leave a donation.

Most importantly, we want to make sure that everybody who hears this podcast hears the gospel. The word gospel means good news.

And that good news has to be preceded by some bad news. And the bad news is this, that we are all sinners.

Sin is breaking God's law. So we stand guilty before the Lord of the universe. But the good news is

God sent his son into the world to pay the penalty for everyone who would believe in him. Jesus came into the world, lived a perfect life, and he died a substitutionary death for everyone who will believe.

And he calls us all to repent of our sin, to turn from our unbelief, and trust in him as Lord and Savior.

And if you've never done that, I encourage you to do so today. Now back to the show. And we're back.

For these guys, it was like two seconds, but for you guys, it was a whole minute. All right. So we're going to cut now and begin to talk about Lore.

And I want to ask Jason, can you tell us, you've told us what Lore is, can you tell us how it began and why you wanted to get involved with it?

And what was the appeal for you specifically? Yeah. So it started as an idea that, so Marcus Pittman was a filmmaker, but he had taken a job running the ad spend, running the marketing, the head of marketing for PureFlix.

And he was making their advertisements and then advertising for them.

And he was seeing that the most popular aspect of the most popular thing going in the

Christian faith -based media space was making terrible movies.

And I don't think that's something that many people disagree on. And everybody was hoping that they would get better and better and better at it as they went.

And so I think a lot of people were supportive, but he was seeing that they didn't actually have that vision for improving the art, that they didn't think that art was an objective thing, that storytelling could be objective.

And so the faith -based market was running off a cliff in that direction. So he ended up going and making a pro -life documentary and releasing it on Amazon because it didn't fit the categories for the faith -based market.

And Amazon took it down because, and so he said, we've got a problem.

We've got a distribution problem that somebody's got to solve because the rules for quote -unquote faith -based distribution are strangling the filmmaker, but the secularists won't let something that's solidly

Christian through. And so he came up with the idea for Lore and the best man at his wedding was my podcast partner.

And so he introduced us and said, you guys got to talk because I was seeing the problem from the other end.

I had been working in writing in a secular space, writing comedy, writing an action movie, a teen thriller, some different things.

I had a TV show optioned at Netflix and everything was slowly squeezing at the time, squeezing out the ability to be publicly

Christian. And it could see that was coming and then

COVID really sped it up. So I said, I've got to develop something else. And one of the reasons that Christian media was getting squeezed out was we were always renting the pipeline for production from Hollywood.

We didn't have our own. And so I started working on trying to build some sound stages so that there was the ability to have that, at least that entryway to the pipeline that you didn't have to rent from Hollywood.

And so I was working on that. Marcus was working on the distribution. I was working on the production end. We met and we had the very similar vision for making it possible for Christian artists to have the freedom to just love

God and make the thing they wanted rather than having either

Hollywood executives saying you got to get rid of your faith or Christian executives saying you got to get rid of your truth.

You can't tell the movie in a true way. So trying to build that pipeline out.

And then we got together and began working with a kind of a core group of people that were trying for the startup and ended up coming to the mechanism that we currently are using, which is in -app video game currency.

So you've had a bunch of different attempts at crowdfunding, but what we like to say is everything is crowdfunded.

It's just a question of who controls the crowd's funds. So really trying to build a system where the crowd controlled its own funds and give them the ability to put their money towards the particular projects that they want to see made rather than try and sift through what was being made for them, hoping to find something that wasn't going to melt their eyeballs or their soul and that sort of thing.

But it also made it possible to prove what we are confident is true because of all the conversations we had, which is that Christians don't want more quote -unquote faith -based movies.

Faith -based movies are made for the pastors of the churches, hoping that the pastors of the churches will buy out theaters with tithe money to send people to.

That's how they market. That's how they plan things. That's what they do. And so they have to make a movie that the pastor can say,

I'm confident enough in this movie that I will pre -purchase tickets and then

I will hand them out. Well, that's not a good – for one, that's not really a free market strategy.

And it's treating the pastor like an influencer rather than like a pastor, which is his job, right?

And I think thinking wrongly about the whole system – and most

Christians don't want that because they end up being movies made for 65 -year -old women or movies made for 50 -year -old women to take their husbands to so that the movie can fix their husband.

You don't have movies that are actually just made for people, made for teenagers, made for men, made for dads and sons to watch together, made because the family will enjoy it, right?

Instead of this is something that everybody can watch together, it's something that the kids say, hey, mom, dad, let's watch that, right?

And that's because the artists aren't being given the freedom to really tell the great stories and tell the truth.

But that's – and so we've tried to build also a technology that will prove that Christians want their artists working in every genre, working on all different kinds of things, and not just making the story that their pastor wants them to watch.

That's interesting you mention that because I have been on the receiving end as a pastor.

I'm not an influencer, I'm a pastor. And I've been on the receiving end of that marketing strategy.

I've received in the mail, hey, we can get you a block of tickets at said theater if you're willing to invest this much money from the church and you can bring your whole church to this movie.

Now, so what you're saying does happen if people think that that is just an imagined thing.

No, I remember specifically – I don't remember how it happened, but a group of us did go see the movie.

It was the God's Not Dead knockoff. It wasn't God's Not Dead, it was called

A Matter of Faith. And it was the same concept. Girl goes to college, college professor convinces her of evolution.

And the college professor was played by Harry Anderson from Night Court. Night Court? Oh my gosh.

And Harry Anderson is like one of my top 10 favorite people in history because Harry Anderson was a magician.

I used to be a professional magician and Harry Anderson was a legitimate professional magician. He owned a magic shop in Louisiana in his later years before he passed away.

So Harry Anderson really made the movie for me. I wanted to go see it because he was in it.

That's what got him on Cheers. Yeah, exactly. That's right. So anyway,

I remember going to see that movie. We went as a group and I liked certain aspects of the movie.

But again, I was looking at it as a pastor. This is a sermon illustration. This is as you just said. But I remember leaving and one of the young men of the church, he just looked at me with this sort of like cheeky grin.

And I was like, what? And he goes, that was really cheesy. To me,

I was looking at it as a pastor going, yeah, this is great. This gets people talking about evolution, get people talking about creation, get people talking about the dangers of the different worldviews.

But I wasn't thinking of it in the terms of entertainment. And I was thinking of it in terms of more of education.

So yeah, I get that for sure. Yeah. So one other quick thing.

I met you at Fight, Laugh, Feast. Jason, are you connected with the CREC personally?

And is Lore connected? That's a question I think people would be interested in. I'm an elder in a

PCA church. I did pastor in the CREC, a church plant that is a church now that in Santa Cruz, California, still full of people that I love dearly.

And so the connection is pretty organic with the

CREC. So I went to the University of Idaho in Moscow.

So I went to church there. Doug baptized my first two kids as babies.

Or I have to go. I didn't realize I was dealing with a heretic. No.

And so the connection is really organic. Marcus moved to Moscow after Lore had already started.

So Lore, I guess there's an organic connection maybe to the CREC through all the relationships.

But the CREC is a church and a denomination. And as a business, you're under the realm of the family really.

So I guess there's a deep organic connection.

Of love and brotherhood maybe, but nothing official.

Cool. Tim, are you part of the CREC? What church do you belong to?

So we're in a very weird spot with our church. I go to Christ Church of Acadiana.

And we're technically Southern Baptist. But about a year ago, we started baptizing our babies.

So that hasn't gone over well. So it's like in a weird - What have

I - We're in a weird spot right now. What have I done? Oh, yeah. We're in a weird spot right now.

The chaos of the American church. That's right. We almost don't belong anywhere.

But we have close ties with a lot of folks in the CREC. And we're just kind of in the process of exploring whatever we can.

But right now, we're just kind of sitting where we're at as, I guess, an independent little church. Gotcha.

Well, Jason, I want to ask you this question. Your tagline is, Christian movies shouldn't -

Suck. Shouldn't suck. Okay. So I want to ask, do you think that most

Christian movies really do suck? And you kind of already answered this because you talked about their sermon illustrations, things like that.

But do you think that most, if not all, the Christian movies that come out suck? And if not, which ones do you think are good?

Which ones do you think have - Give us a written list of what we should watch. Well, so -

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Here's what I think. This is a quick answer to the question.

I think that the tag faith -based is a secular way of marketing to Christians, right?

So secular companies put in money to quote -unquote faith -based shows and movies in order to be able to market to Christians and Mormons now as a way.

So it's really not the... I don't think it's a proper designation because when you look at certain movies like Hellboy, I think is a really good example, it's a deeply

Christian movie. And it wouldn't ever be able to be put into a faith -based market because...

And it's parents' job to check

IMDb to make sure that they're showing their kids things that are appropriate for their age level and all of that.

But it's the story of the literal physical biological spawn of Satan who gets lost by his dad accidentally,

Satan, and picked up by a Christian who then adopts him and raises him as a Christian.

And so he's in this fight between the identity that his baptism gives him and the identity that his biology gives him throughout the movie.

And it's a deeply Christian movie written by... The creator is a

Christian and it's a fantastic... It's a great movie.

Van Helsing, I think, falls into the same category where the church has monster killers in its basement that it sends out to deal with the monsters of the world.

These are deeply Christian stories, but they don't fall into the faith -based category.

But we used to not have the faith -based category. So things like Chariots of Fire, a fantastic, phenomenal, wonderful Christian movie, didn't have to have its own category.

It could just be a drama, a sports drama that everybody loved.

So I think it was somewhere around Sister Act that you started getting this development of a faith -based genre.

And then they've just been giving us snippets of money to stay in our lane. They've been paying us to stay in the kind of rom -com drama lane, because they knew that they could make money through the

Lifeway Christian bookstores. Like Facing the Giants and stuff like that? Yeah. And I think

Facing the Giants has... The scene with the blindfold is brilliant.

It's a brilliant, wonderful scene. I mean, maybe the movie overall doesn't all get up to that standard, but that scene is amazing, right?

And you can see the way that a lot of Christian filmmakers have grown in their craft and have really honed in.

I thought Jesus Revolution was really well done, really well made. I enjoyed it a lot. So I do think that you have this growing

Christian filmmaker audience with a lot of really talented people who have a hard time finding the money and the freedom to make stuff.

But I don't know if you've ever done this.

For research purposes, I went and watched the beginnings of a bunch of the

LGBTQ section on Netflix movies. I'm not recommending you do that. It's my job to do distribution.

And so I was curious and trying to work through some questions that I had. They make terrible movies too, that everybody knows are just propaganda to reinforce their tribe.

So the fact that we have some terrible movies that are tribe reinforcing propaganda movies, that's not a problem.

The difference is we also try to say they're great art. And I think that's where we could learn from the comedy club or the comedy store in LA in the 90s.

They had Tuesday night black comedy night where the audience would come and within 30 seconds, if you hadn't made them laugh, they would boo you off stage.

They would boo and hiss until you left if you weren't funny within 30 seconds. That comedy store night produced,

I think, five billionaires because they had to get so good at their craft that they became the best comedians and comedy writers of the 90s and the 2000s.

Right? And Christians need to learn to boo their own comedians until they get better.

Yeah. I think too, Jason, you mentioned art and the critique of it and the

Christian community calling things good art that isn't necessarily good art. And I think part of that too is because the bar for good art has been set so low that if there's something that just gives them an emotional connection or feeds that relatability in any way, they automatically are like, oh, that's good.

When it's like, no, this is actually hot garbage. And would even being able to say like, you know what, that thing, that part was good, that part was bad, and it was fine without treating the artist like they sinned because they made a craft error,

I think would go a long way. Because right now, people think that by saying that movie wasn't good, that they're making a moral claim and they don't want to do that.

Right? So if somebody tells a bad joke where it's not a well -formed joke, we don't know how to say, oh, that joke was bad, but you know, he's trying.

Keep at it, but you missed. Right? We think we're making moral judgments and we're afraid to do that.

And this is why church comedy doesn't grow as a genre within comedy is because it never gets booed.

But the reason all the great writers for comedy come out of standup is because you have that direct response.

This joke works, this joke doesn't work. Nobody laughs at this joke, people do laugh at that. And so you know what works by the time you get to the comedy writing phase of things.

I mean, I think standup is so important for that reason. You've got direct feedback.

It's the same with the Groundlings, with Second City, with the live television shows like Saturday Night Live, right?

You get an immediate response to your writing, whether it's working or not.

And so you get a Bob Odenkirk, you know, you get a Chris Farley, you get the real greats because they've learned, they've honed their craft with a direct response feedback loop.

And I think we need to actually work on developing that whole system.

As Christians, we need to go to standup clubs, we need to build standup clubs, we need to start.

I'm really excited about there's a group down in Nashville that is working on comedy.

So they've got a Groundlings -style comedy troupe of Christians down there, and the folks leading it are just brilliant.

They're doing a really great job. But that's what we need. We don't have any of that pipeline, and Christians need to understand the importance of it.

And they need to learn to lighten up and go have a good laugh on a Friday night.

I want to start a Christian club and call it Two Drink Minimum, just because dry bar comedy is

Mormon, and they're ruining Christian comedy. That's funny though.

Yeah. So are you a, and this just goes to another question. I was going to ask you what your worst movie is.

I guess I'll say that very quickly. One -off, what's the worst Christian movie you've ever seen? Tim, you can answer this too. What's the one you would say, okay,

I saw this movie and I wanted to walk out, or I did walk out, or I turned Netflix off, whatever it was.

Princess Cut. Is that so bad? Princess Cut.

But I just was introduced to it recently. So I didn't watch it when it first came out, but it was a very popular

Christian movie. And they filmed the entire thing with a single lens. So the whole thing is just this flat gray movie.

You're like, what am I watching? The colorist was terrible. The cinematographer, anyway, but I don't like criticizing.

I like to be known for what I love. It makes me nervous. No, that's fine. That's fine. Prince, I've never heard of that one.

I got to look that up. I just love the fact that it was filmed with one camera, one lens or whatever. I don't know if they did that for real, but that's what it felt like.

They didn't really know how to use lenses. And it's hard because it's so hard for me to get past stuff like that, where I'm like, maybe the acting was good.

I don't know. The whole time, I was just like, it's so flat. It's so flat.

What's your favorite bad movie? It's not so much a movie as it was,

I guess, like growing up, man, my mom loved

Touched by an Angel. And so I just got overkill on that.

And I'm like, that it's the worst. It is literally the worst. And it's not even

Christian, really, in a lot of ways. But yeah, that was and it might be because I had such heavy doses of it.

But I mean, even if I didn't have heavy doses of it, it was not good. But that's a good example, though, because they used to think they used to think that was a

Christian show. Yeah, because it's not because it's not materialist.

But there's a lot of ways to be not a materialist and still be a heretic.

Yeah. Well, I recently watched an episode of Highway to Heaven, just because it was on it was it was available on whatever the streaming service

I was looking at out if you remember Highway to Heaven with Michael Landon. And I, my grandmother loved that show.

So it came on. I was like, well, I'm going to watch a whole episode. And the episode was about the angel. Michael Landon's character goes into a school where the principal of the school was also the pastor of the church because it was a school in the church.

And they had he had fired somebody because they weren't a Christian. It was a Jewish lady. He said, you can't work here if you're not a

Christian. That's part of the rules. You have to be a Christian to work here. And Michael Landon's purpose as the angel was to chastise the pastor for not accepting this

Jewish person, even though she didn't believe in Jesus. The whole movie, the whole episode was the fact that she didn't believe in Jesus and that's

OK. God doesn't care. So so I'm watching this with my wife.

I'm like, is this really the is this really the message? This is this is the message is you don't believe in Jesus and that's

OK. I mean, I guess from a secular show. But yeah, if that's the that's the grandfather of he gets his campaign, it's yeah, that's funny.

That's funny. All right. Well, I do want to ask you this. What makes lore the answer to this issue?

What makes lore the fix to the problem? The problem was that there's movies that suck. What are you guys going to do about it?

So, well, there's a couple of things. One is trying to open up the to try and open up.

I guess the Overton window, I think that's not the best. We need we need a new version of that metaphor, but open up the window wider.

So we've got movies in development, pre -production now, like The Lesbian and the

Lumberjack, which is about a woman who thinks she's a lesbian, but it turns out she's just never met a real man. So that's a great premise, obviously.

Yeah. So but but that wouldn't normally you couldn't get that on to Christian, but you also couldn't get that on to a secular world, right?

Into a secular distribution. So trying to to break open the window further to show here's what

Christian artists can do, can work in. And so really broaden the possibilities for the artist.

And then also to really focus in on the kind of content that that that the next generation wants.

Right. So focus in on content for teenagers, 20 year olds. And so we've got

Fridge Magnet, which is experimental cartoons for that that is really in competition with something like, you know, liquid television from MTV.

Right. We're trying to kind of be that MTV of Christian entertainment and make it possible for to make things that that people actually want to see.

But we know they want to see them because they have to put their money towards them in order to see them.

Right. So they're they're the the principles, the principle of capitalism is that the desire is what's purchased.

Right. So if you want so you have to have somebody actually purchase something to really be able to actually say that's what they want.

And so to to build out a system where where Christians can come and say, no, that's what

I actually want and not the executive making the decision for them and then purchase it on the back end, which is what has happened and why we've had to build the system the way we have is because the executives deciding what we can and can't make have a very particular mindset about what is going to count as Christian and what they can market in what the what they have called the faith based marketplace that they've built.

Right. They've built it a certain way. So it builds out new audiences. It builds out new marketing channels, and then it makes it possible for Christian filmmakers to actually have the freedom to make what they want to develop and and find an audience in a way that that undermines the current system, because the current system is, you know, there's some money involved.

I mean, in Hollywood, it's golden handcuffs for us. It's like pewter handcuffs, but at least you've got something, you know, it's like or nothing, but it's still handcuffs that keep the artists trapped and they're unable to just say,

I'm going to serve my audience, which is what good art does. Right. Good art really does actually just say,

I'm going to serve my audience. I'm going to love my audience. I'm going to tell the truth to my audience. I'm going to make truth and goodness beautiful for my audience.

I'm going to make sin ugly for my audience. Right. And right now, the the primary audience is an executive somewhere.

And the the way to fix it is to actually get the audience connected with the artists so the the artists can serve the audience and the audience can give that immediate feedback loop.

So it's a it is the way every cultural revolution has ever happened is when the artists are freed up to serve the the next generation and the next generation, they're being raised by woke parents.

And so they've and they're they're ready to rebel. We just have to give them the the space to do it.

So if somebody wants to sign up with lore, if they want to be a part of what this is, do they do they pay a monthly fee like with Netflix?

How does how does that work? So it's a subscription service. So you go to lore dot TV, LOR dot

TV. And you subscribe. It's fourteen dollars a month. And every week your wallet refills with what we call loot is an internal video game currency.

And then you and you use that to vote for which which projects you want to see get made.

And when a project reaches the amount that it needs, it either begins to stream immediately if it's already done or it goes into production.

So we've got something like Barely Biblical, which is animated stuffed teddy bears acting out the most violent

Old Testament Bible stories. That was a really popular show right now. It's all of the Gentile bears have a full tag.

All of the Jewish bears have a clipped tag. And it's a very, very funny show made by one of the animators of Phineas and Ferb.

And he's very talented. The voice, the voices are the the the voice of the main character is also the voice of Obi Wan Kenobi on on the on one of the

Star Wars cartoon Clone Wars. Yeah, yeah. He's James Arnold Taylor, just brilliant actor, voice actor.

But that and you've got so it's a really great show. Well, the first episode was complete and it got funded.

And it and then they the money that they got for that they're using to make the next couple of episodes.

Second episode is I just got to see some clips of it. It's looking amazing and it'll be ready soon.

And it's so it's getting funded. But we've got a number of a bunch of different shows there, some comedy, some drama, some, some cartoons, some kids shows.

And you can, once you've subscribed, you get to go on and say this is this. This is the show that I want on on there.

So, you know, right now it's looking like the next thing that's very close to getting funded. It's called

Breaking Laws. And it's with comedian Joseph Granda. He's traveling the country breaking the most ridiculous laws he can find and filling it, filming it.

And then he turns himself into the cops and see what they do. It's a very funny show. And then he goes and finds a pastor in that town and asks if he broke

Romans 13. So it's a it's a really funny concept. And so those sorts of things that make it possible to say something, to have a good time and just worry about entertaining your audience and telling the truth and not worry about what an executive up the chain says somewhere.

Now, how much content is currently available versus how much is in production?

I mean, like if we were to if our, you know, a person were to go on and subscribe, what would be what how many shows could they watch?

Yeah. We we've got just over 40 episodes in movies and and it's being filled out more and more every day.

The so there's. But if you come in right now, you really get to actually even decide the direction that the that the subscription service goes in the long run.

Right. Because you get to help build it and leave an inheritance for the people behind you. But they the the audience is funded about 40 episodes right now of just over 40 episodes of TV shows and movies.

Gotcha. Gotcha. Tim, do you have any questions? I don't want to leave you out, brother. I want to see if you have any thoughts or questions for for Jason as we we're getting.

We just went over an hour. I think we're going to start wrapping up soon, but I want to give you an opportunity to to jump in if you have anything.

Yeah, definitely. I know with starting like a streaming service like you guys have and especially doing it in a different way than what maybe is the norm.

I know you guys have experienced a lot of criticism and you got you got some haters.

We do. And yeah, I've noticed that and I've loved the way that you guys have navigated that.

But I mean, what what is that like, you know, dealing with something that you're trying to build and trying to create something new and fresh and then getting opposition?

Yeah, have people that are actively trying to destroy the thing that you're building to serve your neighbor.

Yeah, it's it is really interesting. And sometimes, you know, it is, you know, people that just don't get it.

You know, we we ran an ad at at Turning Point USA that said cancel your only fans and get a free month of Lore TV because it was such this it was such a weird, oversexualized conference that we thought it would be really funny to just be like, you all need to cancel your own only fans.

And so we we ran that ad on a big on a big screen there at at the conference and a bunch of people, you know, a bunch of young men especially came over and took pictures with reposted it.

And we're like, hey, this is the place to be. And so we got all of these young men hanging out with us. You know, they're like 18 to 22.

Because we're the ones that are saying like, hey, this is weird and oversexualized. Why?

Why is everybody acting like, you know, that that conservativism is is just as pornified as everything else.

But then we had some a lot of folks got really mad at us for that, because they said, you're going to introduce young people to only fans.

And our response was, they all already know what only you're the one that's just finding out about it.

So we so then we did a whole ad campaign around it. Quit your cocaine habit and get a free month at Lore TV.

Things like that, which was which was really fun. You know, we sat around and came up with what are the most ridiculous things that we can come up with?

And, and people and definitely there were folks that weren't happy with that.

But I still think it was really funny. So so there are certain things

I have to be careful that lines, you know, I make a lot of funny videos and but there are lines that I have to be careful, obviously.

But I have had a really funny idea in my mind for a while for a video called holy fans, where it was, you get to you get to choose your favorite preacher.

And like, like, like, you know, he'll, you'll get servants, but it's holy, you know, and I guess that might be a line that that I may not want.

But I think it would be funny. So for so Jason, if you want to run with that whole holy fan.

Yeah, I want it. I wanted to do only grams. And it was all grandmothers teaching you things like knitting, canning, and like the things that grandmas used to teach.

It's like, Oh, you sign up and they teach you how to can peaches and stuff like that.

So only grams. Oh, there'll be funny grams. Oh, my God. But I think you know, but somebody can ruin that too.

Like very totally, totally. I mean, that's the thing is, you know, you've got that. But and but I mean, the way that I've approached it, or that we've approached it is we know who we are, what we're trying to do.

And there's people that aren't going to get it. And that's fine. There's people that oppose it. You know, there's a lot of people that they they're working the system right now, and they don't want the system undermined.

And so they they're opposed to us changing anything, because it's it's working for them, or they they love the red carpet, and they see that we hate red carpet.

And, you know, the the only red I want on the carpet is red fire as it's burned down, right?

Like, we don't actually. But that system, there are people that they their entire imagination is taken up with getting to the red carpet and having a place at the table and but that the table is on a flight to Epstein's Island and back like we don't want that a place at that table.

But the so there are folks that they actually don't want the system changed because they think they can make a way up it.

And then there's people that they don't, they just don't like our sense of humor.

They don't think that laughing is something that is a good idea for Christians. Things are too serious to be laughing right now.

You know, that sort of stuff. And, you know, we know who we are, we know what we're trying to do.

And, and I'm confident that if the that that the world will be better off with the if the artists that we're working with have the freedom to do what they're doing.

So that's how and I, you know, I probably have some sort of social disorder because I just don't care what people think very much.

Well, if folks want to get involved with lore, they go to simply go to lore tv. Yep, lore .tv.

LOR .tv. And yeah, they can sign up there. And we're also in the middle of an investment round.

So any investors that are excited about what we're doing, can contact Marcus or I and, and, you know, we're just we're just about to close out this investment round.

So the if they're interested, they can hop on and help us help us finish the the cap table.

Help that lesbian meet that lumberjack, right? Exactly. All right.

Well, I want to say thank you to Tim for coming on and helping me. Tim, do you have any final words before we begin to sign off?

Uh, no, I was a pleasure being on and I really appreciate the opportunity. Jason, it was great talking with you again.

Yeah, it's always a pleasure, Keith. So I, it was fun and I appreciate the opportunity to be here and be able to be engaged in conversation and ask some questions.

So. Absolutely. Well, thank you, Tim. But he needs marketing, you know, page 50. Absolutely.

Absolutely. And Jason, any final words before I sign us out? I hope to see some people sign up because you'll, you'll, we'd love to have you help us build the content.

Oh yeah. Well, again, I want to thank you all for being a part of the York Adventist podcast today, and I hope that you were informed and encouraged by what you saw.

I want to also remind you that we are a YouTube channel as well, and we encourage subscription.

So please subscribe. And if you liked the video, please hit the thumbs up. If you didn't like the video, please hit the thumbs down button twice.

And don't forget that you also can send me a message. If you have a question that you would like me to address on a future podcast, you can send it to calvinispodcasts at gmail .com.

I want to thank you again for listening to your Calvinist podcast. My name is Keith Foskey, and I've been your Calvinist.