What started as a short Easter service documentary about a converted Muslim in America, turned into a sermon-length film that is bringing hundreds of atheists and Muslims to Jesus. It was produced by Peoria, Illinois’ Northwoods Community Church, and the film titled “Who Do You Say I Am?” won the Capture Summit Church Filmcraft Festival recently held in Houston, Texas.
The documentary recounts the life journey of Sameed Osman, a once-devout Muslim focused on converting America to Islam. The film walks through his fight to disprove Jesus, but through a series of dreams and dangerous encounters, he is forced to answer the question: Who is Jesus?
Northwoods’ Lead Storyteller and Digital Content Pastor Jake Sutton, is the filmmaker, and he sits down with Joseph Cottle for this episode of the Church Production Podcast. Sutton says after hearing about Osman’s story, he knew it was special and deserved time and attention.
“I just felt like we've never really been given the time to take people to visual places where these people were, versus ‘Hey, we're going to have this talking head video,’ which I'm so just over that,” he explains.
And it took time. It was finally ready almost six months after the originally planned Easter debut. Sutton’s teaching pastor knew it was well worth the wait and needed to be viewed by the whole church in its entirety. So he made the film that weekend’s message.
“He's like, ‘Dude, that story is so powerful.’ And then so we watched it for 26 minutes and then he led like 120 some people to Christ. We keep hearing atheists coming to Christ this next week. This guy, who was a Christian converted to Isla,m is now meeting with Samid because he's like, ‘I didn't know there were this many lies, Sam, let's talk about it.’ So, we just keep hearing stories of people coming to Christ through it.”
In this podcast, Sutton shares his backstory of how he got started making movies as a child and bounced around in other ministry jobs until his filmmaking talent was unleashed. He also talks about emotional life detours that could have changed his trajectory if it weren’t for the guiding love and grace from his church family.