I started these projects as synopsis videos to go along with sermons I preached in my youth group. I was a pastoral intern in a junior high ministry at Grace Community Church located in Sun Valley, CA. In the Fall of 2013 our junior high pastor launched a sermon series called Route 66 where he began to preach one sermon for every book of the Bible. For the first few sermons our pastor showed a You
Tube video that summarized each book he preached with sketches on a whiteboard. These videos were produced by a group called the Vine Project. After making his way through the first five books, my pastor graciously extended to me the opportunity to continue cutting my preaching teeth on the next book, Joshua. Unfortunately, the Vine Project only made videos of Genesis through Deuteronomy, so I was stuck. I didn’t want to be “that guy” who would disappoint our students, because there wasn’t a fun video to play along with my sermon. That’s when I came up with the “bright” idea to make my own whiteboard video of Joshua. I figured, “How hard could it be?”
Well, if you’ve ever watched my first video about Joshua, you can tell by the poor quality how hard it can be. And yet despite of how pathetic it looked, it was so well received by my youth group and others around church that I continued to make a whiteboard video for every sermon I preached during the Route 66 series (except one for the book of Job). Obadiah, Matthew, 2 Corinthians, and 1 Peter followed. And to cap off our time in the Old Testament and the New Testament, I created a summary for both when we reached each successive milestone. Throughout that time I continued to learn how to make better whiteboard videos. I tweaked the lighting, changed the position of the camera, adjusted the voiceover. I learned to do the best I could with limited resources. But by Christmas 2014 Route 66 came to an end. So I hung up my whiteboard marker and moved on with other responsibilities in my life, thinking I would never make another video again. But a recent downturn in my health has opened the door for me to spend some time reviving the WordBoard project. Many of my friends encouraged me to continue making these videos and I’ve seen how valuable they can be. The Christian church today is inundated with poor theology and an embarrassing IQ of the Bible. WordBoard is not designed to replace the Bible—it can’t anyways, because the videos are way too short—but it is intended to stimulate an eager desire to know the Bible from cover to cover. So with great excitement (and fear) I pick up my marker again.
