Hey there, my name is Dallas Jenkins and you may not know me, but I happen to be the creator of "The chosen".
Which is the first ever multi-season show about the life of Christ.
And it's currently in every country in the world.
It's been translated in over 50 languages and counting, and it's really grown significantly in the last few months.
Well the story of how this came to be in the story of,
Actually my personal testimony of what birthed this show, out of a really dark time in my life.
Daniel heard it, and really thought it would be something that would bless you here on this channel.
And so he asked me to share it, and I agreed.
And I really love his channel, and love this DLM christian lifestyle thing that he's building.
And so I wanted to share my story with you.
And so let's get right to it.
So my story of hope and my story of life change,
and the story of one of the biggest projects in the world right now.
Actually comes from one of the most devastating moments, and failures of my life.
That may sound a little strange, but let me take you back to a few years ago.
So January of 2017,
Was intended to be, and was going to be, one of the biggest moments and biggest months of my life.
I had been a filmmaker in Hollywood for 10 years.
From about 2000 to 2010, and I had a couple of successful projects.
And then I moved to Chicago from Los Angeles, to do some movies and projects there.
And I had an opportunity to work for a huge church, in the Chicago area.
To make movies and short films, and videos for the church.
But these movies were intended to be, that we were going to be able to do.
Were intended to be regular big movies, and we had the resources, and the means to do it.
And one of the cool things that happened was, I did a short film for my church's Christmas eve service.
That, long story short, got in the hands of one of the biggest producers in Hollywood.
And that person connected with another big production company,
and they were interested in doing a faith-based film, that I was passionate about,
that we would film at my church.
And we wouldn't have to sacrifice any of the message.
And they would put up all the money, and they would handle all the production.
And we just needed to help make the movie, where we were here in the Chicago area.
And I got a chance to direct.
And so.
Even though I had some success in Hollywood. It was all done independently.
And it was all done with my own investors and the successes were moderate.
And I always wanted to "make it in Hollywood."
I wanted to be approved of, by Hollywood.
And finally it happened.
I finally got some of the biggest producers in Hollywood.
Some of the biggest studios in Hollywood
All combined to help me make my movie.
And it was a movie that was called, "The resurrection of Gavin Stone"
And that movie, when we finished it. And got the chance to film it and, and get it tested by random audiences.
It tested higher than almost any of the movies, that these companies had ever been involved in.
And the prospects for this movie were extremely high.
We had the opportunity to release this movie in theaters around the country.
And the intentions were, and the plan was, and the goals were, and the expectations were,
that this movie was going to be successful and launch more movies.
And in fact, I made a kind of a verbal agreement with some of these companies,
that we were going to be doing five movies, over the next 10 years.
So I was a director, with a very bright future.
So January 20th, 2017.
I won't ever forget that date, because it was actually inauguration day.
And um, I remember of course.
It was the day that, it was the Friday that my movie was set to launch in theaters.
And leading up to it, the prospect seemed to be pretty good.
And even our lowest projections were still decent,
because we weren't needing to have it to be a huge success.
We just needed to be a moderate success, that we could continue doing the movies.
And I remember when we got the numbers in, early on Friday.
And you can tell right away from the numbers, what the rest of the weekend's going to be like.
What the rest of the next few weeks are going to be like.
I mean you can tell in just a handful of hours if your movie's successful, or moderate, or not at all successful.
And the numbers came in, and they were complete failure.
We knew right away, that the movie was going to be for all intents, and purposes, a bomb.
And in a couple hours these companies, over the next hours and days informed me,
that they were essentially pulling out from doing future movies with me.
And we're going to go back to doing what they did best.
And in just a couple hours, I went from being a director with a very bright future.
To being a director with no future, or at best, an uncertain future.
I was home alone with my wife that day, and we were crying, and praying, and confused.
Because it had seemed so clear, that God was involved in this process.
It was so clear, because so many things that happened, that had made this work out so perfectly,
all the way up until this moment.
And it caused us to doubt.
It caused us to question whether or not God actually was in this process.
And maybe we'd missed the boat all along.
And maybe I had done something wrong, and maybe I just didn't understand what God actually wanted for me.
So, we were really confused.
And so while we were kind of praying and while we split up a little bit.
At one point I was in another room,
and my wife, Amanda, was in her own room, and then she came to me and she said,
"God just laid it very clearly on my heart, almost as clear as if it had been an audible voice.
Two things.
One was the story of, 'The feeding of the five thousand,' and the other was the phrase, 'I do impossible math.'"
She's like, "I don't know exactly what that means. And who knows maybe it's not even God telling this to me.
Maybe it's just my own thoughts, but I feel very strongly about the feeding of the 5000 and this phrase."
So we went to the story from the gospels, and we read the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand.
And we noticed a few things, that we had never noticed before.
Even though we'd heard that story hundreds of times.
And one of the main things that we noticed was,
that the story of the hunger that people had, and when the disciples came to Jesus,
and told Him how hungry they were, it wasn't a surprise to Him.
In fact, depending on your theology, you can even say, that it was actually Jesus's fault.
He is the one who caused them to be so hungry.
He had been speaking for several days, and to the point where He had been speaking over,
over, and over, and for such a long time, that they didn't have time to break and go get food.
And in fact, when the disciples said, 'We need to send these people home to get food."
Jesus said, He really wasn't surprised at all,
in fact, He said, 'If we send them home now, they're actually going to faint along the way.'
That's how hungry they are.
He was actually the cause for the hunger, that necessitated the miracle.
He got them to a place where the only thing left for them to have their hunger satisfied, was a miracle.
Because there was so little food
But here's the other thing that we noticed too.
Was we noticed, that when it came time to do the miracle
Jesus still had the disciples do everything, that they didn't need Him for.
He had them go find the food.
The boy who provided the loaves and fish, of course, someone had to make that.
Someone had to bake those loaves and catch those fish.
And so when those loaves and fish were provided, Jesus of course could have just waved His hand,
and not even needed those loaves and fish.
He could have just had loaves and fish, magically appear in the laps of everyone there.
But He still involved the disciples and He still involved someone's loaves and fish.
And then when it came time to multiply it, He then multiplied it,
and then He still had the disciples go distribute the loaves and fish.
Again, He had them do everything, that they didn't need Him for.
Until the only thing that was left was a miracle.
The only thing that He could do.
And He was the only one who could do it.
So we noticed that.
And then along with this phrase, 'I do impossible math.' We thought huh, maybe,
God is telling us, that the box office numbers are going to magically turn around this weekend.
We're going to be able to teach some lessons, and have some amazing testimony
of how God did impossible math, and took these numbers that at first seemed to be so small,
but then magically, some you know, miraculously something happened, that multiplied these numbers.
But that didn't happen.
And in fact, the numbers didn't get better, and got even a little bit worse at times.
So that night, at four o'clock in the morning, I was up doing what I typically do.
My analysis, my post-mortem as we like to call it.
And if you've ever led a business, or if you've ever been part of a significant project,
and something doesn't go right. You feel a sense of responsibility.
You want to know and you want to understand, what you did wrong, and what others did wrong.
So that you can make sure, that it never happens again.
And that's what I was doing.
And I was writing a 15-page memo, about all the things that I had done wrong and analyzing what I had missed.
And at four o'clock in the morning, a message pops up on my computer.
And it's from my Facebook feed.
And it's from someone who I've never actually met.
We've been Facebook friends for a few years.
Maybe talked once a year, but overall I'd never met this person, and didn't know them very well.
It didn't say "hi", didn't say "hello", didn't say "heard about your movie".
It just said,
"Remember, your job is not to feed the five thousand. It's only to provide the loaves and fish."
And I remember, for a second, looking around wondering if maybe my computer had been recording
What i'd had to say that day, because I couldn't figure out how in the world this guy would know to say something like that.
And so I then asked.
You know, what? What are you doing? You know why?
Where did this come from and he's on a different time zone.
He was in Romania visiting his brother.
And so.
Uh, that's why he was up at this time.
And I said, that's so bizarre, you know what led you to to ask me that, or to tell me that.
And he said, 'It wasn't me, God just wanted me to share that with you.'
It's emotionally remembering it now.
But in that moment, I remember thinking, that my life was never going to be the same.
I remember thinking in that moment.
That who I was up until then, was different than who I was going to be after that point.
Because that lesson, that I needed to learn, I wish I had learned earlier.
But now I knew, that several things were true.
One of them was, that moving forward.
I was going to let go, and going to need to let go of the control,
that I felt so good at having throughout my life and my career.
I felt like I was good at solving problems.
I felt like I was good at getting my projects out to the world, and making sure that they were successful.
And I felt a sense of responsibility for that, and I felt like that was a good thing.
I felt like that was, that I could pride myself on being a problem solver.
But I realized in that moment, that the way that I had been previously,
was not the way that God wanted me to be.
He wanted me to be able to live inside His will and be content with that.
And to be content with making sure that as long as what I provided to Him,
what was good and healthy, whatever that may be.
Small or large.
That's all He wanted from me.
And that the success or failure of it as the world deems it, was not up to me
And whether or not He was going to feed the 5 000, was up to Him.
And I needed to be okay with that.
I needed to let go, once I provided those loaves and fish.
Now again, of course, I'm still called to provide those loaves and fish.
I'm still required to do my part.
But the results are up to Him.
So I was content with that, and so I didn't know what my future held.
I just knew that I was willing to do whatever it took, to provide what God wanted from me.
Even if it was small, and even if that didn't involve movies.
Even if that meant a career change.
I was genuinely willing to be okay with that, as long as it pleased God.
So I decided to pour myself into a short film for my church's Christmas eve service again.
I had this idea for a short film, about the birth of Christ.
From the perspective of the shepherds.
Looking at the stories of Christ, that we know so well, but from a slightly different perspective.
And so I did that on my friend's farm here in Illinois, 20 minutes from where i'm talking to you right now.
These were very small loaves and very small fish.
And it felt like a significant drop from what i'd just been doing.
A big Hollywood movie with all these Hollywood producers.
And now i'm just doing this for my church, but I was perfectly content with it.
Very long story, short.
I had the idea, while I was doing this short film, about a multi-season show, about the life of Christ,
but from different perspectives.
And I realized there's never actually been a multi-season show, about the life of Christ.
There's been movies. There's been mini series.
But there's never been the kind of show where you can take your time,
and really dig into the stories. Like i'm doing with this short film right now.
But I kind of put it aside, because of course It was such a massive undertaking, it would cost millions of dollars.
And right now, I was coming off a career failure.
So clearly, no one was really going to be interested in investing in this kind of a project.
But that short film ended up getting in the hands of a streaming service.
And that streaming service says to me, 'We want to do your show, we heard about your show.'
'We want to do this, and I got really excited.
And then they said, we want to raise the money through crowdfunding.
And I got really depressed.
Because the all-time crowdfunding record was 5.7 million dollars,
from projects that had big fan bases already.
And big uh, you know intellectual property, where people were already excited about this project.
And I was coming off of a career failure.
And we were starting from scratch.
And so I knew, that this was very unlikely to work, and I thought Crowdfunding rarely works.
And it's usually only for small projects, and I need, I think probably more money
than the all-time crowdfunding record.
That's going to be pretty ridiculous, but loaves and fishes
I was in this place where I really had nothing to lose, but I also thought.
Hey, it's not my job to feed the five thousand.
It's only to provide the loaves and fish and this can be my loaves and fish.
And we'll see what happens.
Again long story short.
That short film ended up going out on social media, and it ended up getting a massive response,
and it was used as the catalyst.
Almost like a pilot episode, to raise money for this show.
And I remember when I was sitting at a computer with my wife, and we were looking at the numbers.
And we realized that, we were passing 10 million dollars from over 19 000 people around the world,
shattering the all-time crowdfunding record.
My wife looked at me, and there were tears in her eyes, and she said, 'I do impossible math'
That's what that meant
And just like a lightning bolt, like God had done a year before, when He first shared that phrase with her.
It was, she, it was another lightning bolt and she knew exactly what that meant,
that God was laying it on her heart again.
Right then and there, that this is what He meant by, 'I do impossible math'
And we realized, that those little loaves and fish from that short film,
multiplied so tremendously, into this bizarre,
unexpected, completely unpredictable, shattering of a crowdfund record.
And it led us to this show, "The chosen".
And season one was totally financed, and season one has now been out for several months.
And in more impossible math, we made it completely free to the entire world.
And have actually quadrupled and quintupled our income.
Because people have been paying it forward, after they watch it.
Because they're so passionate about the project.
And so now the project has been translated in over 50 languages.
And it's in every single country in the world, and the app has been downloaded well over 6 million times.
And we're well into our way of financing season two.
We're going to be starting on production shortly on season two.
And this has all happened in the span of just two years.
So, what is the lesson of this story?
Does it mean that everything you bring to God, is going to be successful as the world deems it?
Of course not.
My lesson was learned before 'The chosen' took off.
In fact, if 'The chosen" had bombed financially,
I would still be sharing with you the exact same message, that i'm sharing with you right now.
In fact, I gave this message. I gave kind of some of these lessons that i've learned
Before 'The Chosen' came out, after Gavin Stone.
I was sharing with people the story of how God had changed my heart,
and changed my life and I didn't know what the future held.
And I still don't even as I stand before you today.
But I didn't know what the future held then and I still had the same message to share.
Which is joy regardless of happiness.
Hope regardless of circumstance.
Being content in wherever God has you, as long as you're presenting the loaves and fish to Him.
So the lesson that I wish that I had learned years ago, and I hope that you learn now.
Is to bring your loaves and fish.
And just make sure that they're as good and healthy as they can be.
So that when you present them to God, If He accepts them, that's where the transaction ends.
If He accepts your loaves and fish, and they're good and as healthy as they can be and acceptable to Him,
then be excited and grateful, because the transaction is now complete.
The rest is up to Him.
That's the story of 'The Chosen', and that's my story.
And I hope it can also be your story.