The picture that emerged was much different from how Mackie had heard Christians talk. For Lubeck (and his old teacher, evangelical exegetical powerhouse John Sailhamer), the Bible was not the haphazard bundle of mismatched texts many theological liberals seemed to claim, but textual and manuscript evidence still had to be considered honestly. It included two classes from Ray Lubeck, whose dynamic, literary approach to the Bible awakened something in Mackie. He soon found himself among a few other skaters enrolling just a couple blocks down the street at Multnomah. There he had a powerful conversion experience during a “Bible talk”-an encounter with Jesus that he credits with saving his life. His love of skating sent him seeking ramps and refuge from the Oregon rain in SkateChurch’s converted warehouse. Instead, he found his passion when his parents bought him a skateboard and a Thrasher Magazine subscription: “Skating and street art became my life,” he says. He’d never (voluntarily) read the Bible, he’d been expelled from a Christian school in fifth grade (ironically, that school met in the same repurposed church building that now houses The Bible Project’s studio), and he’d nearly flunked high school.
While today Mackie holds two master’s degrees in biblical studies and a PhD in Semitic languages, he was not a stereotypical Bible college student.
Both were from local Christian families in Portland and attended nearby Multnomah Bible College (today Multnomah University), whose pale-brick library boasts a brass plaque stamped with the words of founder John Mitchell: “Don’t you folks ever read your Bibles?” Tim Mackie met Jon Collins at SkateChurch, an urban Portland youth ministry that’s exactly what it sounds like. So then why the overwhelming success of The Bible Project? Against these challenges to interest and infrastructure, a little studio in Portland has quietly built an empire of Bible content that’s drawing the world to the Word-by the millions. In an age of endless information, scriptural availability, and omnipresent teachings on the Bible, are we-“people of the book”-in real danger of losing it?
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But today, confidence in the Bible’s truth and reliability is rapidly eroding, questions about how the text came to us are at an all-time high, and even among scholars friendly to faith, there seems to be little consensus about how to read our sprawling, enigmatic, diverse, and often-confusing book. Since the Reformation, Protestants have held that a rich relationship with the Bible is central to the Christian life. I’ll soon be having coffee with Bible Project founders Tim Mackie and Jon Collins, old acquaintances, at their offices to hear the story behind their efforts to connect the world to videos like this-visions of the Bible as “a unified story that leads to Jesus.” The Bible Project has more than 1.2 million subscribers on YouTube and over 90 million total views on their videos. With my viewing, the video will have been watched more than 3.4 million times. I’m watching a video from The Bible Project, a Portland, Oregon, animation studio. It plays on, until in just 4 minutes and 39 seconds I have “seen,” like never before, the Book of Job.
Sea turtles swim among the stars the rings of Saturn give way to underground caverns prickling with crystals. All morphs into a virtual tour of the universe. A whirlwind forms among the images, constellations flickering within like lightning or the synapses of a great mind. A soothing voice speaks, and a story leaps into animated life: a man falling victim to a cosmic setup, a heavenly gamble with the reputation of God at stake.
Particles phase into the outline of a DNA double helix, mimicking the pinpoint lights of the globe. My screen fills with a glow of color, rich golds and reds blending and shifting.
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