What You’ve Been Searching For

The Chosen Christmas Special

Well, I’d like to tell you that I caught the episode of The Chosen Christmas: The New Messengers, the other night, but that’s only partly true because I fell asleep. All the wonders of being old, but through the magic of the internet, I caught it, picked it up where I left off the next day. And I have a reaction and a review for you because this is what you’ve been searching for, and The Chosen is being searched for an awful lot. I’m Joel Fieri. Stay tuned.

So as I said, I caught the episode of The Chosen Christmas Special called The New Messengers. And I have a review for it, going to put on my critics hat one more time, and I want to break it down because the way they presented it, if you haven’t seen it already, the way they presented The Chosen is they did it in three parts, three basic parts. One was a lot of musical presentations by a lot of Christian artists. The second was dramatic readings and presentations by members of the cast of the show The Chosen and some interviews with the musicians, which I want to touch on. I want to differentiate between the music and the musicians. And then finally, the story actual the dramatization of Mary and Joseph going to Bethlehem and another side story.

I want to start with the music. There was an awful lot of music. That’s one of the reasons I think one of our family didn’t make it to the dramatic presentation. There was just a little bit too much music, but it was pretty darn good. The music video presentations were excellent. I think this is what The Chosen is known for. It’s the most, besides the story itself, is their fundraising. They have a budget for this show and it shows. The music, the videography and the directing of these music videos and then the music presentation was excellent. And for someone who talks a lot, who’s in Christian media and talks a lot about the quality of Christian media, The Chosen is getting it done. You can tell they got a good crew, good writing, good directing and it shows.

Dallas Jenkins has done a fantastic job with this. The songs themselves were very good. Because I’m an old guy, maybe a little bit old school, I love the hymns that they did and the Christmas carols that these contemporary artists were doing, especially How Great Thy Art by a group called The Bonner Family, which is a gospel group, the most beautiful hymn in the world sung just in an out of this world manner. It just blessed me to no end. Matt Maher did Hark the Herald Angel Sing in a really folksy kind of high energy fun way that really engaged me. So for the most part, I really liked the music itself. I guess the only criticism I have, and this is probably just a prejudice or preference on my part, I mentioned the gospel groups. There was a children’s choir that did a really interesting presentation. And then, there were the contemporary Christian, I would say the pop kind of genre of contemporary Christian music, Phil Wickham was probably the one I was most familiar with and a guy named Brandon Lake and a couple others.

They were very good. Don’t get me wrong. They’re very good artists. But the criticism I have or the problem I have with this kind of music, and it’s maybe just a shell thing, but they all sound the same. They all have the same kind of, the men anyways, the male vocalists in this pop genre of Christian music, they all have kind of the high tenorish breathless kind of raspy voice that I’m sure it’s been focus group and it sells a lot. Especially to the female audience or whatever who buys most of it, but I just wish that they had a little bit more variety in their voices and their presentations. It all seems to be trying to go for that same kind of dramatic thing where the gospel groups and especially Matt Maher just gave energy, and they just were really into the songs they weren’t trying to put on any kind of really deep atmospheric type thing.

Maybe it is just a prejudice of mine. I’m an old school guy. I grew up in the seventies with deep male voices like Jim Croce or Gordon Lightfoot or whatever. Or even in Christian music, Randy Stonehill did not sound like Keith Green, who did not sound like Larry Norman. I’m dating myself, you guys Google those names and you’ll find out who they are. It’s my only criticism. It seeps into church. I know a lot of that music maybe is just kind of the Hillsong Bethel type motif they do. But that seems to be, I’ve been churches where the young worship leaders have that same voice. It seems to be something that’s always there, but that’s overall that didn’t really distract for me from the music.

The only thing that distracted, it was a little bit too long. There was a little too much of it, and we lost a family member too, because of it. So overall, I would say the music was good with a little bit of detraction on that.

The dramatic presentations were good and I love the way they did the names of God. If you haven’t seen it yet, they do go through the names of God. They do three or four presentations from actors who are actually from the series. They go through the names of God, which I thought was a good way to do it because so much of the gospel story, or, I mean, sorry, the Christmas story where Jesus is born, he is King of Kings and Prince of Peace. He has so many names in Luke’s account of it. That is good that they went through the names of God himself, also. I thought that was an interesting take on things.

Another criticism I had, I don’t mean to pick on the musicians, but they’re such a big part of this. The interviews with the musicians were, which they did along with the storytelling between songs, the biggest argument I could think of why we don’t have creative artists determining our theology. The interviews with the musicians, they’re very good at expression and artistic expression, but theology, they were a little weak. It was very much a man centered kind of feel-good gospel for the way they understood why Jesus came to Earth. Jesus didn’t come to Earth to die so we can deal with our stresses better or so we can have a more fulfilling life. He died because humanity is depraved and in desperate need of a savior, but that didn’t come through it.

It was just all kind of pop culture, a little bit too much for me. But at the same time, that’s just the world creatives live in. They have to have that kind of attitude to put forth a good expression in worship. So, I don’t blame them necessarily for it, but I just think this is a good example of why we don’t have creatives determining our theology. They can determine how we express and worship as long as they’re guided by people who have a really strong view of the gospel. So again, I sound like I’m picking on certain musicians, but that’s just kind of something I see in the Christianity that’s I’m concerned about. I think it was manifested here through that, but overall, I thought those were pretty good too, the dramatizations. I just kind of gritted my teeth through the musician interviews. Okay. Is that fair enough?

And finally, we came to the dramatic presentation and it was Mary and Joseph, mostly Mary and Joseph, heading to Bethlehem. Mary’s pregnant and they’re heading there for the census, and they’re discussing things on the way. They’re interacting on the way. It was just basically how the producers and the writers imagined Mary and Joseph might have talked about this. This is what The Chosen does. It takes the story and embellishes it a lot. Dallas Jenkins said it at the very beginning. He said, “This is a reasonable possibility of the way things might have gone.” They’re not trying to put this forward as this is how it happened. It’s just kind of a dramatic presentation, because again, if you went by just whatever the Bible says for your dialogue, you wouldn’t have enough for a dramatic presentation.

It was just basically them going to Bethlehem, talking about how a big part of the conversations were what the angels, each angel told them about Jesus and about the birth and why they were doing and why they were chosen. And then, them finding the inn in Bethlehem and actually the birth of Jesus itself. This is interspersed with Mary years later, talking to Mary Magdalene about this story and how she was trying to communicate that this is something [inaudible 00:09:29]. She never told one of the gospel writers. I won’t spoil it for you and how that message was going to get to him. It’s funny, I was a little disappointed with the dramatic presentation. It didn’t seem like much, it was just kind of Mary and Joseph going to Bethlehem and Mary talking to the other Mary a little bit, and then they have the baby and it was just kind of no big deal.

But then I thought “Dummy, that’s the gospel story.” Jesus, God chose the humblest of circumstances, the humblest of people, the lowliest of people and the lowliest of place to enter humanity. He could have come with fanfare and in power and glory, but instead he came and humbly to the dirtiest place he could think of to the most humble people he could. That’s the whole idea. I don’t know if they were going for that, but if they were going for that, I think they communicated that. At first, I was a little disappointed because I expected more, but then I thought, “Well, no. That’s the gospel story. God coming to earth as a child, humbly in a stable, laid in a manger, the King of Kings, God himself entering humanity in the humblest way.” More glory to God for that. So all in all, I liked The Chosen. My system for rating, I think was Bible bookmarks.

I’ll give it three and a half out of five Bible bookmarks. Take away, sorry, musicians. That’s just maybe my bias, but I did like it. I think it’s something like I said, when this comes out, we should have a couple more days before Christmas. I would suggest with your family, watching it. It’s on YouTube now. You can fast forward through the music if you want, but I would definitely catch at least a couple of the hymns that they did and the carols, and definitely watch the dramatic presentation.

That’s my review. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you have a Merry Christmas from Christian Podcast Central, and I’m Joel Fieri. This is what you’ve been searching for. Thanks for listening.