Beyond the Screen: How Christian Films are Transforming Lives | Alexandra Boylan | EP 127

talk about the impact of prayer in God's Word. Welcome to another episode of iRefresh's podcast, and I'm welcoming back Alexandra Bowen. So good to have you here. Thank you for having me again. I'm so excited to be here. It was so fun. We love it because we have a passion for film. Now, I'm on the the backside of it with my son producing and doing writing. But I love it when we have talked about some of your stories of what we're gonna be showing on our screen is you have a lot of different ones that you and your sister have been doing together. And so I would love to hear some of the stories behind your creating the film stories. Yes. Oh my gosh. Yeah. God's stories from our stories, right? Awesome. Yeah. They have so many incredible stories of how God has shown up when we have stepped out in faith and said, we're in this, and then God has swooped in and done incredible things. And Catching Faith was our first female-driven, faith-based film. And we were really lucky enough to get a two-year deal on Netflix, which is huge because that viewership is massive. And actually, this was Netflix just started out. So we were like, what's Netflix? And I saw it. I know. I saw that one. That is so cool. Because I was always looking for the Christian family movies. Yeah. And that's when I discovered your movie. I know. How amazing is that? So, so many years ago, we've known each other, but we just met recently. Right. But God knew we were going to meet. Isn't that crazy? Amen. So, yeah. So we were two years on Netflix and we have this amazing story because we were invited to Cuba on a movie tour. And a woman from... who lived in Florida. She was from South. She was from Columbia, a missionary in Cuba, living in Florida. Yeah. And she was actually struggling with her faith and some things she was dealing with in her personal life. And on this Friday night, she asked her husband if she can pick the movie and she picked Catching Faith and they watched it. And she said that by the time the film ended, She had felt the Holy Spirit come into the room and that God said, I love you. I'm here. I want you. I have a plan for your life. And she just felt so moved by the story and being represented as a woman in the leading role and her journey. And then she saw in the end credits that the Elijah Project books that the girls are doing in the Bible study is a real study. And she went to the website. And it had a blinking free click here for free PDF download. So the woman downloaded it, stayed up all night doing the study, and just felt like her faith had been restored. And she had gone to her church and asked if they could do it in the church. And then she felt like she was like, no, I need to take this to the women in Cuba. They need the message of this movie. And so she gets the information from my sister's phone number. And she calls my sister and she tells my sister Andrea the story. And she says, I would love to take this. I'd love to translate into Spanish and take it to Cuba, to the women in Cuba. Would you let me do that? And my sister said, absolutely. I'll donate the books. Yes, if you need them. My sister calls me and she's crying and she tells me the story. And she's like, I don't know what God is up to, but he's up to something because there is no PDF download of the movie on the website. And now, ever since that movie, the books and the movie went to Cuba, there are now over 500 Elijah Project ambassadors in Cuba teaching the Elijah Project. We've been over there as a team to share the movie with churches, and we have watched God transform people's lives from this one movie and this one book. And I just think that's just one of all the many stories where we've gotten to see what God is doing with our acts of faith. So to me, when I hear that kind of a story is that we need to even look at that. How can we recommend these movies into youth groups? Is having a youth group to come and to do a Friday night with each of them. But pre-plan it. If you're a youth pastor, that would be such a great thing. Make sure you have the studies available from what I'm understanding. Yeah, yeah. So we have old companion materials. We have Bible studies, youth group curriculums, journals. We have everything. We even have family. We now have free PDF downloads for family studies so that there are questions that parents can watch the movie with their kids and then sit down with the questions to facilitate a conversation. But, oh, my gosh, our movies are perfect for youth groups and churches and slumber parties. That's another huge compliment we're getting. Oh, my gosh. Kids are picking them for slumber parties and sharing them. And that was a big thing. When Andrea and I started making faith-based films, we saw a huge need in the young adult space to speak into young people. And her daughters at the time were about 14 years old. And Andrea's daughters were like, Mom, there's nothing for us to show at a slumber party that can speak into faith. Wow. Because all the faith-based films are so adult-driven or adult themes. And we were like, well, then we got to do something about that. And then we made Switched, which was our first teen girl movie. And it's a very important topic and conversation about love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and love it. your neighbor as yourself, and it's about bullying and anti-bullying and what it looks like to love your neighbor as yourself. We continue to hear that kids watch it over and over and over. They share it with their friends. And that was our dream and our goal when we started was that we could make hip content are proud to share with their friends. And, you know, because a lot of times parents are like, oh, I'm begging my kids to watch a movie with me. And they're like, mom and dad, we don't want to watch that. But then they're like, oh, this is cool. This is awesome. That's so perfect. You know, one of the things I think I'm going to do a side note on here too is you actually even have a Christmas movie. We do. Oh, yes. There's a happy feeling about that is having a good... A good, strong. Tell us about your strong Christmas movie. I love our Christmas movie. We shot it in my hometown. We shot it at my father's church in Massachusetts. We shot it at my graduating high school. My entire hometown rallied around that movie. But I do, I'm very excited about Wish for Christmas because Wish for Christmas is actually about a spoiled, self-centered senior girl in high school. who when the big winter ball gets moved to Christmas Eve night, she can't attend because she has to go to church with her parents. And she makes a wish that her parents wouldn't believe in God anymore. And when she wakes up, she finds out that her wish has come true. And she finds out what her life is like when the light of Jesus is removed from her parents' heart. And they become a reflection of her, spoiled, self-centered, everything she is. So she sees herself reflected in her parents. And she goes on a faith journey to come to know the Lord. and bring her parents back to faith. And it is such an awesome movie, beautiful message. And actually, how I came up with this, because I always am coming up with these fun, crazy wish movies and switchy bodies, but I was a minister's kid. And I used to always, you know, as I... When I was a kid, I was like, if my parents weren't minister kids, I could get away with more stuff. I could do this. I could do that. But then as an adult, when you look back and think, well, what would my life have been like had my parents not had faith or paid attention to my life or this and that? And I was like, this would be a great illustration for young people to realize how grateful they should be for their parents. especially if your parents are paying attention to what's going on in your life. We do that a lot with our stories. We're showing both sides of the spectrum so that of how parents deal with their kids because we're trying to show parents to, we've had some mothers come to know Jesus after watching Switched. Because they saw themselves in the mother of the bully's mom. And say, wow, I'm like that with my daughter. And then I want to come to know a different way. So Wish for Christmas is just so much fun and such a fun. That was bought by Pure Flix and Universal Studios. We got a great release. AMC picked it up for their Christmas lineup. So the movie did really, really well. And I think the message is so important for young people to not take for granted what they have. You know, that's what I love about each of your movies. They have such a powerful message that we really need. It's a real focusing on ourselves. I'm like, wow, this is what I'm like. And when we look in the mirror sometimes, there's a part of the lack of godliness in our life. Yes. It's done in such a way. to be reflective, not judgment, but it's a reflection of, okay, is this who I want to be? Because your life, and a lot of it, and you've got other books, but one of the books I'm enjoying even reading is Creating Your Own Career in Hollywood. Now, you're like, I'm not... I'm not going into Hollywood. I'm not doing all that. But what I do like is you have some incredible takeaways, a lot of different quotes. Now, it's a secular book. So I'm going to preface it that way. If you're looking to see Jesus in the book, it is the things that she does and you talk about even is they're all faith based. It's when you talk about being positive, you can't give up. You have to keep going. Well, what does the word say? Yeah. You're right. The Lord's always trying to get us to fix our eyes on him. And he's asking us if you would press in, keep moving forward and trusting Lord in the journey, you will get to the other side. You will find the hope of what he's put on our heart. Because each of us have been given a destiny. Yes. And a calling on our lives. And all the different ways are the stories we all... Which is what I'm hearing from you is your movies are stories that came from either you or your sister. Yeah, our lives. Yeah, you write what you know. Yeah, it's a little bit easier than formulating these ideas. Yeah. The thing that I think is a powerful message is it's something to be considering. Yeah. And even you've got a movie here too, The Greatest Inheritance. Yes. Which I remember saying, explain that one. So The Greatest Inheritance is about an estranged family that all returns home to bury their mother, but really to get their inheritance. But when they get home, they've discovered that their deceased mother has buried the deed to the estate somewhere on the property. and has left clues and challenges that they have to do together as a family to find it. And ultimately, she is trying to bring her family back together and teach them that the only thing we inherit on earth is the kingdom of heaven. And it's such a powerful story. And when we were writing that story, I mean, a lot of it comes from our own family. We're like, yes, our mother is going to be controlling us from the grave. And then she knows it. It's okay. She's awesome. I love my mom. But, you know, you take from, like, she always says, you can't do this with the grandfather clock. You can't do this with that. And I'm like, well, when you're gone, we've got to do something with everything. You know, I watched that, and we had a passing of a family member. And I'm like, I remember in the movie when they had sticky notes and they were sticking notes all over people claiming things. And I'm like, oh my goodness, I've seen that throughout my life with people passing on. And so there's humor in our message. I think that's what I really appreciate is the stories that you're telling, you bring some humor into a lot of them because that way the truth, as painful as it might be, it doesn't come off as a judgment but as a reflection of is this really look at how it is and what would you really like it to be like. Yes. And we are so into, like, if we're bringing you down, we're bringing you right back up. We want you to enjoy it. We want people to, there's enough depression in the world. And I even think faith-based spams sometimes tend to be too dramatic. And it's like, the joy of the Lord is our strength. So we always want to make sure that when you're leaving the movie, you're feeling joyful, inspired, uplifted. And sometimes the only way to talk about these really, really deep conversations is to laugh along with it because you have to have a good time and you have to have fun. And I mean, that is a big thing we've heard from so many people is the fighting over assets when somebody passes away. So we were like, this is something we really want to speak into. And we really want to talk about that. The only thing we ever, no one, we're not, we're not taking any of this with us. It is all, what we're going to take with us is our relationship with Jesus Christ and what we have done. And souls, I'm making movies hoping that there are people in heaven because of the work that I'm doing here. That's what I care about. And then that's kind of what the movie talks about. And it's just a really delightful. And we always hope that when somebody finishes our meal, especially that movie, they'll call a sibling. They'll call a parent that they haven't talked to in a long time. And maybe reconcile an issue that you had because it's not worth not talking to our loved ones. So the movie has so many great nuggets in there that we hope that people take that away. And, you know, the movie came out, we shot it in July of 2020 during the pandemic. And it came out right after the pandemic. And we really believe that God had a timing for that, that when people had lost so much, this movie came out to say, you didn't lose anything because you can never lose your relationship with Jesus Christ. And it's all that matters anyway. Amen. That's something we can take with us. Yes. You know, that's where I'm sure you, if you have even other stories to highlight, that's great. Because I really feel like this is such a great place that you use your storylines, your own personal experiences, because you're trying to share a message of hope and maybe redirecting other people. Because if people can learn. From our mistakes or learn from what we went through and we survived it. That's the whole thing I have to say is there's a place of surviving and here's a good way to survive well on the other side. I feel like through your book and then through your movies. You're giving us something that has a restorative value. Yes, absolutely. And, you know, maybe you can tell us of other people as we're highlighting of other people that are impacted in different ways from the various ones. Because you have catching faith is one and two, actually. Yeah. And obviously the one is it's Christmas, but yet it's not really Christmas in a way. You can watch it all year round. The message is all year round. Because the message like, wow, that's that's good when you're looking at who we really are. Right. That's important. Right. Everything, too, I love that you're addressing identity. Yes. Identifying when we're feeling less than who we were called out to be. And really, I have to say, too, for what we do with our freshness, it's about praying into what God sees as your potential. the potential that God sees in us, even through the scriptures. Yeah. And you identify those, but you don't do it in, like you said, in preaching. You don't get this whole sermon. Like, it seems like a lot of times you'll get something where it's It's like over the top, and yet you have a flare of a message. And even in, I think it's an identity crisis where the scientists, it's explaining, because it was a, you do it better, of explaining the God idea within science. Yes. The science. Yeah. Well, science is our way of understanding the created order. And it's actually like, instead of separating science and Christianity or science and God, we could actually... Science is our way of understanding what God has done, how he has created the universe. And one of the funnest things for Identity Christ was we wanted to find a Christian science woman, which was like our, because we were always into female. films. We want to find women who that can see other women doing things because we believe if you see it, you can be it. So we made our professor be a woman so that young girls could say, I'm going to grow up and become a science professor. We want them to see it. So we found a woman named Dr. Georgia Dunstan. She created the Genome Project from Howard University, and she has the most incredible YouTube talk called The Genome Declares the Glory of God. It's incredible. I've listened to it probably like 500 times and I still can't quite grasp everything she's saying, but she talks about the genome and our DNA and every single person has 3 billion individual characteristics that only you have. There is no accident there. And that was like, we wanted to study that and infuse that into Identichrist to back it up with, this design is intelligent. We are an intelligent design. We were created. And then we put that, we infused that into the science class to back up. I believe there was a creator of the universe that created everything. And everything that's happened has been the creation coming to fruition. Wow. That's really good. It's really good. Even with Switch, you have a scientist. I play the scientist. We love science in our movies. I know. I was like, did you have a minor in science? Because you're bringing that up a few times. And I'm like, oh, I actually know what she's talking about. I'm like, I don't think they just made this all up. Because I'm like, yeah, I remember reading about these different topics. And so what I love is you are literally merging even a scientific topic. of things into your storyline and real life experiences. And then yet you're bringing the flavor of the word of God in the middle of all these stories. Yes. So impactful. And one of our biggest things that we've sometimes chosen not to do is not to say it comes from Psalms 133. We actually just speak it out. And the Bible says that when you speak out, your word does not come back void. So we speak it out. And sometimes we do not add the Bible verses. But if you're a believer, you know it's from the Bible. And if you're not a believer, we pray and hope that it will lead you back to the Bible. And we've had people on set hear something. like the Good Samaritan story, which is told in Switched. We had a crew member who was not a believer, who was on set hearing that story over and over. And she came up to my sister and she said, is that really a story in the Bible? My sister said, yeah. And she goes, I didn't know the Bible had stories like that. And then that opened up her heart to want to, and that is our desire and our prayer and our hope with what we do is that we open up people's hearts to go back to the Bible, to go, huh, I want to go in with that. Cause I didn't push it into you. You got to hear it and go, well, I want to go find out more about this Bible and what it says. Because, you know, even like the twins in Identity Crisis, I don't know where their faith was when we casted them. But they read the script and they called Andrea and I and they said, you wrote the most beautiful line I've ever heard in my life that were fearfully and wonderfully made. And Andrea and I said, we didn't write that line. We plagiarized it from the Bible. And so that's where we're always hoping that when we're presenting the Bible truths in a way that people hear it. And because I think if you tacked on the Bible verse before you said fearfully and wonderfully made, it's like they checked out before that. But because they were reading it and they were like, or seeing that, they were like, I'm fearfully and wonderfully made. I want to be fearfully and wonderfully made. And I'm like, you are fearfully and wonderfully made. And there is a place that tells you that. And let's go back and study that word, you know? So that's what we love to do. And we feel like that's a better way to get people to go back to the Bible than to be like, it's John 3.16. God will work some mysterious ways. We put it out. We let God touch the heart of those who are seeing it and how they need to hear that story to implement it into their life. Yeah, we kind of step out of the way and let God lead. Amen. It's powerful. So as we're close, I'd love you just to share with the audience what's on your heart is just really encourage them with your stories. Yeah. Well, that's why I feel so passionate about what I've done and what I continue to do and what I will never give up doing is, especially talking to our young, our youth, they need, they want to be told what's right and wrong and they want to be told what's right. what there is a truth out there. And I think with our young people right now, they're so confused and that's scary and it's creating suicide, it's creating depression because there's too many of this messaging that you can just figure it out on your own. Everything is good, everything is not good and everything. So I wanna continue to create things that speak into young people that they feel safe and that they are being told the truth and that they can take away an armor of God as they walk out into their life. And that is so important. And I encourage if God's calling you to do that, to do that and not be afraid about what the world's going to say. I work in Los Angeles, California, the most, you know, the hardest industry in this business, but I have been never hiding my faith. I have spoken it out and I have been very adamant about who I am, but God has been able to use me there. And I have a, you know, when we're good people, which we are, I'm going to be able to do that God can use everything we're doing. Even when somebody doesn't want to like me because they find out I'm a believer, somehow I had done something in their life that made them happy and that makes them want to know me more. I don't think I'm saying that correctly, but I just mean like our character speaks volumes. Being kind, being kind, doing exactly what the Bible tells us to do. Our number one thing is to love Him and love our neighbor as ourself. And that has always been my goal in everything I do. On set, everything I go, I try to speak life into everyone. But I just think that if you're being called to do something like this and it feels really big, don't worry about it because God will take care of. And one story I feel that I'm supposed to tell, so I'm going to tell it, is that when we were shooting The Greatest Inheritance, We were in Columbus, Georgia. There was a lot of lightning storms coming through, and when a lightning storm comes through at a certain distance from your film set, you have an automatic 30-minute shutdown. It's an automatic law from the union. So we were having a lot of issues with weather, and we'd be like getting through scenes, and the weather would come, we'd have to shut down for 30 minutes. We were trying to do the final scene of the movie when all the kids come to him and they find the deed, And we read the letter that the mom reads, and it's all about that, you know, Jesus, and it's all about Jesus. And, you know, the kingdom of heaven is like a grain of sand and all the things we talk about. So it's a very important letter that she tells. And we had Jaleel White, the actor, he was leaving that night to get on an airplane. And we were getting notices that electricity was coming, lightning was coming, and rain was coming. And we were like, oh, we had pushed off this scene probably three days. We kept pushing it because we were outside. We couldn't run inside. So we were praying. I'm on the call. I have, we have prayer warriors when we're filming. I'm like, okay, get every prayer warrior to pray over our set. We cannot have the rain and lightning come. And so we're out there. We're shooting the scene. I have goosebumps. We're shooting the scene. We wrap it. The second we wrapped, rain fell and we all ran into the house. And the woman who owned the house came up to me and she said, I want to show you something. There was rain all the way around her property, and just we had a circle of no rain on our property. I'm going to make goosebumps. Goosebumps. And it was like, God is so good. And he protected our set. And she goes, this is the rain all around. Even our neighbors are like, why is it not raining on your property? And it's raining over here. And I'm just like, those are just some of the stories that God has made out of our stories. And then what an incredible thing is on set. Everybody, a crew member, a cast member, is witnessing miracles happening on our film set. And I was like, we're doing important, meaningful work. And God knows that this message needs to go out to someone who needs to hear it. And he'll put a ring of protection around your property so that you can get that spoken out loud. so that it gets in that can and it gets out in the world. You know what I mean? So that story still to this day is just. That's so powerful. Because God says in his word about he's so caught up in our detail. Like that is so detailed. That's detailed. That he hears that much. If you would actually call on him anytime. Now, does that mean it's always going to go that smooth? No. No. We've had plenty of days at Raid all the time. And you're like, come on, Jesus, show up. Where are you? Yeah. You know, but I love the fact, though, in those moments that they can see a God moment. Yeah. You know, it's a God moment that you can't deny. You can't deny it because it's supernatural. Right. There is a God is doing something that only God can do. And there is no other explanation for it. That's so good. Yeah. It's faithful. Incredible. We want to always provide a means so that we want to. walk alongside those who are passionately pursuing all that God has in any of your industries that, you know, God's put up something in your heart that you should pursue, you know, listen to God and follow it. Your obedience to his voice is key. It has a ripple effect. That's, that's one thing I think is so powerful is the ripple effect of our prayers that we don't know what we're touching on the other side. We, it, we'll continue to hear, you're going to continue to hear stories out of the stories you told. Out of the stories I told. That's right. I love, that's a beautiful way to say it's a ripple effect. What you're doing, one little stone you're throwing out, God's using that to bless hundreds and hundreds of other people in the ripple. Alexandra is going to explain to you how we can partner to continue a lot more stories. Thank you. So theboylansisters.com is our website. On our website are all where all of our films are available. The companion materials, if you wanted to get them for your family, your youth group, your church. The novel Identity Crisis, we published a novel to go along with that because we want kids to be able to read the book. and really, really understand what it looks like to have their identity lie in Christ. It wasn't enough just to have a movie. We needed a novel too. And so theboilandsisters.com, and then right now we have partnered with a nonprofit organization that believes in the messages of our films. We might not be having, the studios are not getting behind what we're doing. And so we are asking our audience to support us. And we are doing a campaign that if a million moms gave us $1, we could green light our next movie. So if you go, I know this will be on the screen to this QR code. It is a tax write-off donation. And every dollar that you send to us goes right into us creating materials, producing and creating movies for you and for your family and for the entire world. Because our films get released all over the world. And God is using these in other countries. And your support matters. We are always hearing from parents that they do not like the content that's coming out of Hollywood and it's not going to change. So please support us because we are changing the, the, the quality of entertainment and the messaging. Yeah. Yeah. So you learn how to get connected with them. Also, you can go to the iRefresh.net where we're going to be doing the show notes. We're going to give you all of the ways to link together where we want to come together in prayer and believe that God's going to continue having them write the story so that it's, It's a multiplication of stories after stories as they put that out there on film. So thank you for joining me. Thank you for having me, Cheryl. Thank you. Thank you.