Good Friday is the day we celebrate the Good News—Jesus Christ died in our place for our sins. At Mars Hill, Good Friday has always been a big deal that devastates us until we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus a few days later on Easter Sunday. On Good Friday we remember that the cross is something done by us: we murdered God. Then on Easter Sunday we remember that the cross is something done for us: God died in our place to forgive our sins.
With Good Friday and Easter Sunday quickly approaching, we would appreciate your prayers. We have been blessed with an amazing
creative team at Mars Hill Church. Exhausted on the heels of filming Re:Train classes and a last-minute trip to Haiti, along with the roll out of
Churches Helping Churches, on top of the normal workload of Sunday services, they are now undertaking an amazingly wonderful project.
Right now our
creative team is shooting a special thirty-minute short film for Good Friday that we will use across all of our Mars Hill Campuses this year and also simulcast live online for free. Our plan is to package together the final film and creative materials, making them available for other churches and ministries to use next year.
As we have been working on the script, God has been lining up incredible additional talent who are excited to take part in this project. The filming is happening on the Spartacus set at Universal Studios; the production designer for the TV show 24 will be doing the set design; and an incredible, well-known makeup artist has signed on to do the makeup and special effects. He is an Oscar winner who has worked on films such as The Passion of the Christ, No Country for Old Men, Flags of Our Fathers, and Ocean’s Eleven. Behind the scenes, a team of volunteers is working late into the night preparing the costumes, scoring, and other aspects of this multimedia event.
Please join us, live or in person, for Good Friday and Easter Sunday. In the meantime, prayers would be appreciated, as this is an incredibly complex project with tight deadlines.