A year and a half ago, Joe Backholm, the former President of our sister organization the Family Policy Institute of Washington, shared with me his vision for equipping the church with good answers to tough questions – make short videos. I’ll admit, at first I was a bit skeptical. I’d rather read an article than watch a video, and I also know from personal experience that there is a big difference between making an informative video and making a video that people actually watch. However, Joe already had a number of successful videos under his belt, including this one where he gets college students to react to his self-identifying as a 6 foot 5 inch Chinese woman (Joe is a 5’9” white guy), which garnered over 3.5 million views. So I encouraged him to move ahead with it, knowing how desperately we need new and compelling ways to communicate the truth about the contentious issues we work on.
This week, Joe officially launched the fruit of his vision, www.WhatWouldYouSay.org If you like the style of Prager University, you’ll love what Joe and his team have done here. I’m also happy to point out that this endeavor is an intiative launched by the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, whose president, John Stonestreet, will be giving the keynote address at the MFI banquet next month (you can still reserve your tickets here.) The videos are four minutes long and feature three easy-to-remember points in response to the types of questions so many of us are being asked. The first three videos tackle the issues of natural marriage, gender identity, and when life begins. Please watch them and share with friends and family. I’m excited about this project’s timely and accessible approach to the issues and their potential to help communicate God’s truth to a confused but questioning world.