First Person: Alex and Stephen Kendrick
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I have woken up to the fact that as a dad, it's not just me setting the rules and regulations for my kids. It's about me winning their heart. As men, as husbands, as fathers, there's tough stuff. We have to be strong when everything about us feels like giving up. Welcome to First Person, a weekly conversation with people who teach us what it means to follow Christ out of thankfulness for His work in our life.

I'm Wayne Shepherd, and today we're going to talk with two men, brothers, who are following God's leading in making movies. We'll meet Alex and Stephen Kendrick today on First Person. Just before the interview, I hope you'll visit our website we've set up to go hand-in-hand with today's program. At FirstPersonInterview.com, you'll find additional information and links about today's guests and their new movie, Courageous, coming to theaters next weekend. Plus, you can listen to past programs by clicking on the archive option at FirstPersonInterview.com.

Well, over the past few years, I've had fun getting to know Alex and Stephen Kendrick and their various movie projects. My introduction to them came through Facing the Giants and then Fireproof and now Courageous. Along with Michael Katt and Jim McBride, previous guests here in first person, these men have been called of God to make films that are true to the gospel as they speak to the hearts of moviegoers.

Recently, I sat down with Alex and Stephen to talk about their calling, and I started with Alex and asked him which was harder, making the movie or waiting many months for its release. Wow. Well, there's different elements to both, but no, making the movie is by far much more difficult. It's a lot of hard work, isn't it? Oh, yeah. But it was a labor of love in many ways. I've seen you on the set. I've seen you direct. I've seen you act. And while it's hard work, it's got to be just a blast.

It's very fulfilling. It is very difficult, but it's also very fulfilling in knowing that these movies will outlive us. I mean, they're going to be around even longer than we're alive. Thank you for that.

Stephen is sitting right beside you, so be careful what you say. But Stephen, you can keep each other honest here today. Okay, I will. All right, I'll come back to you in a second. But Alex, I want to talk to you about backyard movie making. When did all this start? Wow. Well, when we were very young, our next-door neighbor had a little Super 8 movie camera. That's a movie camera that uses film but no sound.

And we started fiddling around with that. And then when video cameras came out, we made our own movies in the backyard with very foolish stunts using trampolines and things like that. Yeah, yeah. But anyway, but the older we got –

feeling a calling to go into ministry in high school and college, the love for telling stories via videos or movies never left us. And so we now see how God combined those two interests to use for his purposes.

So back in those backyard days, were you both doing all the same things, or did you direct and act at that time, and Stephen kind of produce and write? Well, you know, when you're that young, whoever is in front of the camera, the other brother's behind the camera. So I think it was a little bit of everything. You didn't have a crew? No crew. We were the crew. Okay.

All right, I should mention that the movie will be out in a matter of days now. That's right. So we are all eagerly anticipating that wide release of the movie. Many people have seen the pre-screenings and are talking about it, but we're all kind of excited about being on the threshold here. Well, for us, it's like delivering a baby and sending him off into the world. You know, we have...

prayed over this, dedicated it to the Lord, delivered this after a year and a half of prayer and blood, sweat, and tears, and now just praying that God will use it to change lives. Courageous has been a labor of love, but it has been the most difficult by far. Yeah.

we'll talk more about the movie, but take me back to those backyard days. Um, was, was your mom and dad supportive of what you guys were doing? They were, um, yeah, there are a lot of the things that, that they found out in the aftermath. We're showing a video of, you know, a car running over somebody or, or, uh,

I remember the stunts we would do. Looking back, it was like, holy cow, I cannot believe that we were doing things that dangerous, you know, doing flips off of little cliffs and stuff like that. And Alex was on the back of a motorcycle and swinging off of a vine while he was on the motorcycle. Just a lot of the stuff we did. And so when they would see those clips, my mom would be like, how did you do that?

I don't know, you know. And she would be concerned about the danger element. And a lot of it was just, you know, tricks. Well, I'm glad you're both here in one piece today, too. We are, too. In Courageous, now, you have roles that you each play. You both co-wrote the movie, the screenplay. Yes. You act as producer, Stephen. That's right. And Alex, you act as director and actor in the movie. Do you ever...

think about changing hats at all? Does it all get changed around a little bit? Well, over time, it's kind of funny. When we were kids, Alex did, you know, most of the directing and I was in front of the camera a lot. And I told people in kindergarten, I want to grow up and be a clown and a stunt man. So you're the extrovert. Right. And, uh, but then as we got older, Alex is, is a naturally gifted actor. And, um, I enjoy, and we realized this really on facing the giants. I really enjoy being behind the scenes, organizing the troops, putting the schedule together.

praying through all the resources. And I didn't know that's what a producer did. You know, I would see producer in the closing credits of movies. I didn't know what that was, but it's the person who's bringing all the pieces together, organizing, making it happen behind the scenes. And so that's been a joy for me that God has wired me to think like a producer. But Alex has a movie screen on the inside of his forehead. He can see the scenes, feel the emotion beforehand, and he can help direct those actors and the cameraman to capture that. And

So even in the editing room, he knows how to squeeze the most out of a scene. Alex, I've talked to Jim McBride, your executive producer and the executive pastor at Sherwood Baptist in Albany. I've talked to Jim about the unity that you four have along with Michael Katt.

And you insist on that unity. And long before you decided what the theme of the movie was going to be or what the script would look like, you sat down and prayed about should we do this at all? Exactly. We're not assuming that we'll always make a movie or even write a book. And so all of that comes through a season of prayer. And the first attribute we seek before any project is, God, we need your favor on this.

And because we need your favor, we're seeking you first. And, you know, as we look at Scripture, the people that did that in honor of the Lord, the Lord showed up. The Lord directed, protected, and blessed. And so we noted before distribution or funding or anything, God, we want your favor.

And so that being the case, the four of us, Pastor Michael Katt, Jim McBride, Stephen, and myself, we go into a season where we just seek the Lord. Lord, what do you want us to do? And that lays the groundwork for whatever project it is. How do you keep that sense of dependency when you've made a pretty successful movie? I mean, Fireproof was a great movie and saw great success. How do you keep that sense of dependency on the Lord moving on to the next thing? We are very aware that without Him, we can do nothing.

And the things that we have done where we did not bathe it in prayer did not go over very well. And so we look at the two and we say, Lord, please help us never to forget that you must be honored in the center of everything we do.

And so the Lord says, you honor me and I will honor you. You draw close to me and I'll draw near to you. And so we do that first. And as we have done that, he has never, ever let us down. Never will. And so we don't look for certain box office milestones or saying if we didn't sell a certain number of DVDs, it wasn't successful. We see the fruit first in the lives. Lives changed.

And second, usually things outdo what we expect. And so we, yes, we give full credit to God. We still haven't figured out why some of these things work the way they work. I can't imagine the detail that goes into the planning of making a movie like Courageous.

There's a lot. There's the writing stage and research. There's casting, auditionings, location scouting, shooting, then editing, and post-production, music scoring. It takes a year for us to do one. But you know what? The other thing is Stephen and I can't take very much credit because we are surrounded by people of like mind who pray with us and work very, very hard. And so I didn't compose the music for...

and courageous. You know, I didn't do the stunts and courageous or the special effects and courageous. I mean, somebody's around us helping us do all those things. And so when you have a team of good people around you, as is the case in any area, and you can find success when you're in unity and work together. So Stephen, you met and you prayed together and you were in unity that you should move ahead with another movie. You weren't sure you should even do a movie. You wanted the Lord to decide that. Now you've chosen a theme. How did you come to that theme?

After Fireproof, we saw the Lord impact so many marriages, and we already had the thought, I wonder if we're going to end up shifting towards parents or fatherhood. And at the same time, Alex and I are very passionate about that issue because our father was a chain breaker in our family. He forgave his dad and his grandfather for their ungodly examples, and he said, as for me and my house, we'll serve the Lord. And he's been a hero throughout our lives.

And, um, and, but now Alex has six kids and I have four and our oldest brother, Shannon has five kids. And, uh, we're constantly saying, Lord, teach me how to be the dad I need to be, you know, show me what I need to be doing according to your word to disciple my children. You know, when you, when you look in scripture, it's not the church's job and thank God for the church. It's not the wife's job. It's not the,

school's job, the training of children. The Lord in Deuteronomy 6 calls on dads, and in Ephesians 6, he says, fathers, train up your children in the way they should go and raise them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. And so it is on us, and it is my job to disciple my children, to pour God's Word into their lives, to connect them with godly people who will lead them to follow the Lord. And so we've been praying through, how do we do that?

And at the same time, God started laying scene ideas on our hearts, confirming this is the right direction to go. And Alex got the idea really based upon a parable that Jesus did of the sowing the seeds of the different kinds of soil, of these different men who have different backgrounds, different fatherhood issues.

and how they're trying to face fatherhood head on. Alex, we've heard much about Courageous, and there have been some pre-screenings, but just a brief synopsis of what people are going to see when this movie comes out in a few days. Everybody has a dad. When you think about your dad, you either are grieved because of some scars or are grateful because you're blessed. Courageous is about four officers who think they're good enough dads.

They soon learn that being good enough is not good enough, not in this culture. A fifth dad joins them later on. And after a tragedy, they wake up to the fact that the brief years they have with their children must be redeemed. What I mean by that is they must use this time to pour into these formative years. And they can't be hypocrites when they do that. And so one of the dads writes out a resolution after this tragedy, after he gets a wake-up call.

And he writes this resolution out of what kind of father he's going to be. And he gets these principles from Scripture. He asks his law enforcement buddies to hold him accountable. They start looking at this thing thinking, well, I need this too. So they end up all joining him. And then we see how that plays out when each of them are tested in different ways, as all men are tested in different ways, and how that plays out in their lives. So some do very well. Some do not do so well. And we see the consequences either way.

But at the end of this movie, we have been so encouraged that men identify with one or more of these dads. And at the end of the movie, they come out saying, I know what I need to do. The Holy Spirit's speaking to me while I'm watching this movie. And yes, I'm entertained, but I'm also crying, I'm laughing, and it stirs me up, and I'm reminded of the importance of my role in my kids' lives. That's what we're doing. We'll talk more with Alex and Stephen Kendrick about how they have changed as a result of Courageous. That's coming up.

Next week, we'll celebrate the one-year anniversary of First Person by taking you to the historic Fox Theater in Atlanta, Georgia. On a recent Friday night, we were there for the red carpet screening of Courageous, along with 4,000 other people, and you'll hear interviews with some of the cast and many friends who were there that night. It took place in Atlanta, and you'll hear it next week here on First Person.

Alright men, stories. I want stories of the making of Courageous. We're going to see this movie hit the screens here in a few days and people are anticipating it, but I want to know the real story behind it. Stephen, you want to start? Alex came up with the original idea for these men going on this journey of fatherhood.

And as we begin to pray it through, we realize that Scripture is calling men to bless their children. And our dad at our weddings blessed us. He opened up his heart in front of everybody else and said, I love you, I'm proud of you, I believe in you. And people just wept. And so we wanted to communicate in the movie the importance of having your kids' hearts

blessing them like Jesus' father heard from him when he was baptized. And so we kind of interwove that into the storyline. But what Alex and I do in our writing is we put a big piece of butcher paper on the wall, and as we come up with scene ideas, you know, there's a couple of scenes. The opening scene came from a sermon that I preached back in 1999, you know, that was talking about love. But

It may be during a quiet time. It may be interacting with somebody. We'll come up with these scene ideas, and we'll write them on these little sticky notes and stick them on that piece of butcher paper. And we color code them by emotion. If it's a tearjerker scene, it's blue. If it's a funny scene, it's orange. If it's an action scene, it's a color. So you've got a living storyboard. Yeah, that's right. And it's an emotional rollercoaster storyboard. We can look up on the screen.

on the butcher paper and start at the beginning and go on this emotional journey that the audience is going to go on. And sometimes we're like, Hey, this is, let's swap these two scenes here. You know, let's, let's take them for a twist here, you know? And so as we jumped into shooting the movie, we saw that God had been preparing people to be in the movie who were passionate about the message.

message. One of the men who helped us understand fatherlessness was a guy in our church. His name is Dan O'Connor. He's in the military. His dad abandoned him when he was a kid growing up. And Dan, huge macho guy, bald, just, I mean, he looks like he could be your bodyguard. But I'm talking to him over the phone. I said, tell me about growing up without a dad.

And tell you what, for an hour, he bawled like a baby. He melted, huh?

and what 24 million children across America feel every day that they go to bed at night without the voice of their father in their home, longing for him to affirm them, bless them, establish their identity, answer life's toughest questions, encourage them to stand up, be strong, and move forward, and to be right there with them like our Heavenly Father is with us. And so...

But I remember Dan impacting and influencing us and some of his ideas, you know. And then J.J. Jasper with AFR Radio, Stephen Curtis Chapman, both of them lost children. And this movie talks about what is it like to lose a loved one. And they helped us to understand that issue. And so as we're crafting those scenes –

And sometimes Alex and I are going through this piece of butcher paper and talking about these scenes and describing them, and we're crying to get, you know, saying, holy cow, you know, I think the Lord's inspiring this. And so we would sit down and write, and sometimes we're rolling laughing. We can't even, you know, we're stopping because we're laughing so hard at some of the banter. There's a...

who's on first kind of moment in the movie where these guys are going back and forth in the dialogue with Javier. And then there's a Snake King scene that Alex came up with in the backseat of the car. Hilarious. It's very, very funny. That's all we can say. Yeah, that's all we can say. It is hilarious. But anyway, those kind of things, we're grateful that the Lord confirms with a peace in our hearts, with the authority in our lives, and with ideas and resources, and he's saying, move forward. I'm in this.

Alex, so it's an open process. I mean, you seek the input of others even in the storyboarding of the movie. You do that all the way through the process? We have to. You know, Scripture says...

where there's much counsel, there's safety. And so we, we want a plot that works, you know, and if we're going to invest a year and a half to two years of our lives in this, we want it to work and just be a bullseye. So we get a lot of counsel. And, um, so when it deals with fatherhood, when it deals with women, how can women support the man of the house to be the most effective father he can be? Um, it will,

What does Scripture say about someone moving beyond having been hurt by a father? How can they break that chain and not carry that same grief to the next generation? So all those things were so important to us as we're writing this movie. And at the same time, we want it to be engaging and entertaining and powerful to leave you with a well-rounded story.

movie experience. So yeah. How do you get the scenes to be so realistic? I'm thinking of the gang scene, for instance. I mean, do you have to really work at that? Well, you do, but you know, first you get a lot of counsel. We actually had a former gang member that was high up in one of the local gangs and he came out and consulted with us and he said, this is how we would have done it. Well,

He's a believer. Yeah, he's a believer. And so we very carefully go through every scene and do whatever homework we need to do to make sure that it's very realistic. And then we get good people to help us shoot it. Our cinematographer is very talented, and we got great actors in this one. So, yeah. Stephen, a favorite moment for you in the making of Courageous?

I think there were a lot of favorite moments. When Alex and I are sitting in front of a computer in prayer saying, Lord, we believe this is what you want us to write. And then when we see those people that we envisioned walk into the room and audition, and we're like, there's Javier. That's what we've been praying for for months. There he is. And there's David. And there's Nathan. And then when we shoot the scenes...

We've got a guy on set who edits right away, and we'll capture the footage. He'll drop it in and start doing a rough edit on the scenes. And it's emotional on the set sometimes because we're like, thank you, Lord, that you continue to bless and confirm and that the vision you planted in our hearts, you're now making a reality. And then most importantly, it's very fulfilling to watch the movie with people

and see how God is speaking to them. Because one of our prayers has been that God's grace will touch the heart of people right where they are with what they need to hear. And every person has a different movie experience because the Holy Spirit is compelling them back to himself and to surrender to him.

I have a favorite moment making this film, and I have many favorite moments, but one of them was we're shooting this scene where we're chasing these gang members, right? In real life, these thug gang members love the Lord and are Christians. Between takes...

They're walking over to the people in this neighborhood who are just watching us film a movie, and they're sharing Christ with them. They're witnessing to them, and in the course of them being the bad guys in the film, between these takes, they're winning people to Christ. Okay, this has a Matrix moment to it because you're breaking out of— Absolutely, and so these neighborhoods—and we were in some pretty rough neighborhoods—

You know, what you'll see on the screen, the bad guys in real life still, they love the Lord. They're sharing Christ. They're winning people to Christ. But they look bad. Yeah, they do. But you know that Jesus brought us the right people for this film. And even the people who are bad on screen, in real life, there was unity on set. And we're loving people around us that we're encountering. And it was ministry even while making the movie. Alex, how are you different as a result of Courageous?

I have woken up to the fact that as a dad, it's not just me setting the rules and regulations for my kids. It's about me winning their heart. If I have their heart, they'll listen to me. And we don't have to worry so much about teenage rebellion years and things like that. When I have their heart and it's open, they listen to me. So it's my job as dad to first love them just like God loves me and second to live out my faith and

And when they know they are loved, when they know I am grateful that they are my children, they listen to me. And that's true for any dad. And so that became more a realistic part of my fathering while making this movie.

Stephen, same question. How are you different because of Courageous? You know, one of the scenes in Courageous, they ask about when do you become a man? What does it mean to be a man? And as we were researching scripture about that issue, I was asking that question growing up. I'm like, when do I become a man? And what does that mean? If somebody says, yes, you are a man, what does that mean?

And going through God's Word, it's very clear. We actually put this in the Resolution for Men book in chapter 4. Scripture walks through that we need to embrace our masculinity as men. David said to Solomon, act like a man, be strong. Paul in the New Testament said we need to rise up and be men, be strong. Being strong and courageous is part of our masculinity, that we need to hear the Holy Spirit saying that to us, that in tough situations—

that he's saying, don't give up. You be strong, be strong, rise up, be strong. And as men, as husbands, as fathers called to lay down our lives for our wives and our kids,

there's tough stuff that we're going to be going through in life. And as the leaders, we have to be strong when everything about us feels like giving up. And multiple times over the last year, we've been through some really tough stuff working on this movie and these books. Spiritual warfare has hit us pretty hard. And over and over again, the Lord has brought those scriptures back to my mind. Stephen, you be strong in the midst of this. I'm with you and I'm never going to leave you.

Stephen Kendrick, along with his brother Alex, talking about their calling to make movies that change hearts. I hope you'll pray for these men and all the men and women who will be challenged to live more godly lives as a result of this ministry. Once again, Courageous will be released this coming Friday in theaters across America. For times and locations, we've placed a link to the movie's website at our website, firstpersoninterview.com.

Recently, I was asked by the producers to host the red carpet screening of Courageous at the Historic Fox Theater in Atlanta. It was a great night as 4,000 people had a chance to see the movie for the first time. Well, next week here in First Person, we're going to bring you the highlights of that night as I spoke with many of the cast and friends as they came out of the premiere. Now, with thanks to my friend and producer, Joe Carlson, I'm Wayne Shepherd. Join us on the red carpet next week on First Person.