The holiday movie season is here, and a Grammy Award-winning duo is delivering the first big release. For King and Country’s highly anticipated “Drummer Boy” hits theaters Friday. It’s a nearly 90-year-old classic and a longtime, signature carol for the Christian pop duo’s Christmas tour.

Joel Smallbone told CBN News’ Studio 5 how they turned “Drummer Boy” into a story for the silver screen.

“It’s so fascinating because it’s almost like the movie chose us more than we chose the movie. Well, it’s For King & Country. It’s a British mantra. We always got dressed up in this sort of Revolutionary War attire. We did this rendition of the Little Drummer Boy. Luke is the drummer boy. We’re two brothers; you end up on opposite sides of the battlefield. It was like writing itself already,” he continued.

“And then in 2018 was the kind of precipice moment that we were like, oh wow, we love these sort of ideas of what does it mean to have forgiveness? What does it mean to choose each other? What does it mean to end up on opposite sides of the battlefield of life? And that was really the inception of the film. And from literally 2018 to today, we’ve been working on bringing it to life,” Joel explained.

Luke Smallbone shared the day-to-day of working on the set for this film.

“It was in Ireland. So, when we were over there, Joel was over there for about 4 months. I was over there for 3 months. And it was kind of one of the wonderful things because Joel and Ben, our other brother, co-directed the film, and I was one of the producers. Joel also acts in the film. I have a tiny little role. I say seven words. I’m not pronounced there. I will be looking for your vote, trust me. And obviously, to be able to make this film with brothers, obviously Joel was on both sides of the camera to be involved. And at the end of the day, it was a dream come true to make a project like this with people that you love was very special,” Luke said.

Altogether, it is a tale of brothers on opposite sides of a battle, and a love story, and a forbidden bond between a soldier and an enslaved young woman.

“We’ve sort of said it from it’s like Hamilton meets The Patriot meets Greatest Showman meets Pride and Prejudice. It’s like if you ram them all together,” Joel said.
Sources:CBN News

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Christian singer-songwriter Colton Dixon said the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the government’s restrictive response to the COVID-19 pandemic “changed” him.

Dixon, 35, told CBN News seeing Kirk murdered for exercising his right to free speech pushed him “to seek truth harder.”

“I feel like, just for a lot of people, whether you believed in what Charlie stood for or not, just for a lot of people, it was, like, it just — I don’t know, it changed me,” said Dixon. “It was just, like, ‘Wow.’ [It] gave me a new outlook on things, even just to seek truth harder.”

The up-and-coming generation, he added, aren’t taking things at face-value anymore, regardless of the source. “They’re seeking truth for themselves,” he explained.

As a Christian recording artist, Dixon said he believes he has found the answer: “The answer’s Jesus.”

The recent spate of culture-defining events have, according to the “Build a Boat” singer, “anchored my feet down in my beliefs so that I’m not going to be pushed around by a little Chihuahua who might bark louder.”

“I kind of even really figured out why I believe what I believe,” he said. “[B]ecause again, it’s just COVID and just all these different things, they’re trying to get you to do different things and I’m like, ‘OK, why aren’t we just going to do it?’ Let’s figure out why so we’re not just being stubborn and hardheaded.”

“We open up God’s Word, we pray, we seek godly wisdom, and then we come to the conclusion, ‘Oh, this is why,’” Dixon said. “So now I just feel more steadfast in why I believe what I believe.”

As he’s ruminated on his convictions in recent years, Dixon has become noticeably more comfortable creating edgier content — at least edgier for the status quo in the contemporary Christian music world.

The “American Idol” alumnus just released a new song, “Bones,” based on the Old Testament passage of Ezekiel 37, chronicling the story of the prophet being transported to a valley filled with dry bones. God asked whether the bones could live and then commanded Ezekiel to prophesy over them. As the prophet began speaking promises to the bones, they assembled and were covered in flesh. Then a second prophecy called breath to fill their lungs and they became a living army standing to their feet.

Dixon said the song is “straight from Scripture,” recalling reading the biblical account and feeling “super inspired” and “like God gave me revelation” about speaking “over the dead things in your life.”

During a time of year when most of American culture is fixated on death from a secular perspective, Dixon saw an opportunity to flip the script around Halloween with a biblical understanding of death.

“What if we could … take this passage that already theatrically lines up with a lot of the visuals of skeletons — that’s what this whole passage was, it was a valley of dry bones, the bones rattling, coming together, flesh coming upon the bones, it was like zombies out there, you know, in Ezekiel 37,” he reflected.

That passage of Scripture, Dixon emphasized, shows a biblical interpretation of death, which, for the Christian, he said, is “just a little blip on the timeline of what our lives look like.”

He said, “For the rest of the world, death is the final word. … That’s the period. Life after death is this big mystery. But for a believer, death is not the final word; the cross —what Jesus did on the cross — is the final word, and not only that, but three days later, Him resurrecting from the grave so that we could spend eternal life with Him in heaven. … Death can be a scary thing to talk about, but as a believer, I don’t think it should be.”

The song — and its music video, which is set at night in a graveyard — is certainly unorthodox in its approach, but it paints a clear picture to the world that this life is not all there is. It also tells the story of spiritual power, a nod toward Romans 8:11, where Paul wrote, “The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you. And just as God raised Christ Jesus from the dead, he will give life to your mortal bodies by this same Spirit living within you”.

“I think that this song is … a kick in the pants for sideline Christians, where I’ve found myself before,” said Dixon. “It’s time to start using the spiritual authority that we have as believers and not just talk the talk, but walk it, as well.”

In fact, for Dixon, it was his wife Annie’s certainty about spiritual authority that led him to do some self-reflection.

“I found myself being so in awe of [my wife] that that was her first response [to pray and speak over things],” he said. “But then also going, ‘Why isn’t that mine?’ You know? If I’m really going to be the best spiritual leader of our house, I need to stop kicking my feet up and actually get in the game and start doing this for real.”
Sources:faithwire

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Mel Gibson is calling on churches to pray as he prepares to bring one of the most important moments in human history to the big screen.

In a special video message to Pastor Samuel Rodriguez and members of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, Gibson offered a new glimpse into the spiritual weight surrounding his highly anticipated film, “The Resurrection of the Christ Part One,” which is scheduled to hit theaters May 6, 2027.

“I’m so grateful to all of you and can’t wait for you to see ‘The Resurrection of the Christ Part One’ in theaters May 6, 2027,” Gibson said.

But Gibson’s message wasn’t simply about promoting a movie. He issued a direct request to the church: Pray.

“Please prepare your churches to pray for us as we get ready to release the film in theaters next May,” Gibson said. “And thank you for all your prayers and support in leading your churches to ‘The Resurrection of the Christ’. God bless.”

Gibson also revealed that Rodriguez was with him in Italy during production, where he got a firsthand look at the work in progress.

“Pastor Samuel was with me on set in Italy during production, and he saw firsthand the epic scale of what we’re putting together,” Gibson said.

The video also included powerful statements about the potential spiritual impact of Gibson’s latest project, with Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller declaring that the filmmaker is “preaching the gospel with this modern means.”

“’The Resurrection of the Christ’ is not just a film,” the Rev. Franklin Graham said in the video. “This is the greatest event in history, and it’s being recreated right here so you can see it.”

Graham expressed hope that the movie “will touch the lives of millions of people,” while another described Christ’s resurrection as the very source of the church’s life.

More than two decades after “The Passion of the Christ” brought Jesus’ crucifixion to audiences around the world, Gibson is now preparing to tell what happened next.

The message of this next chapter is unmistakable: The resurrection is not simply the end of a biblical story. It is the foundation of the Christian faith.

As Pastor Samuel Rodriguez declared, “This right here, this is the exclamation point of Christianity.”
Sources:CBN News

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