Light of the World Movie (2025) with Producer Brennan McPherson

Official Light of the World Movie website:
https://lightoftheworld.com/

The Covenant Eyes Podcast welcomes Brennan McPherson, producer of Light of the World and president of the Salvation Poem Project. This powerful new animated feature film tells the story of Jesus through the eyes of the Apostle John—and it’s coming to theaters worldwide on September 5, 2025.

In this conversation, host Rob Stoddard talks with Brennan about:
🎥  The vision behind Light of the World
🎥. Why the film was created in hand-drawn, 2D animation
🎥. The challenges of producing a gospel-centered animated film with a team of over 600 people
🎥. Why they chose John’s perspective to tell the story of Jesus
🎥. Brennan’s personal journey of faith and the hope he wants families to take away from this film

🌍 Light of the World will premiere in theaters across the U.S., Canada, Central and South America, Europe, and Australia. Learn more, get tickets, and explore free resources at 👉 https://LightoftheWorld.com

🔔 SUBSCRIBE FOR MORE INSPIRING CONVERSATIONS:
https://youtube.com/@covenanteyes

📌 RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
Free church curriculum & family devotionals
https://lightoftheworld.com/resources/

BEHIND-THE-SCENES VIDEOS & ACTIVITIES FOR KIDS:
https://lightoftheworld.com/minigames/

UPCOMING CHRISTIAN VIDEO PROJECTS FROM SALVATION POEM:
https://salvationpoem.com/our-work/clayfire/

🙏 If this episode encouraged you, don’t forget to like, comment, and share with your friends and church community.

CHAPTER LIST:
0:00 – Welcome & Introduction (Rob Stoddard introduces Brennan McPherson)
0:41 – Brennan’s Story & The Salvation Poem Project
2:15 – The Vision Behind Light of the World
2:46 – Why Tell the Story Through John’s Eyes
3:53 – Release Date & Global Theater Launch (September 5, 2025)
4:34 – Building the Team & Disney Animators Involved
5:50 – 600 People, 3.5 Years: The Making of the Film
6:07 – Why Choose 2D Hand-Drawn Animation
8:18 – A Film for the Whole Family (Not Just Kids)
9:07 – Sneak Peek: Light of the World Movie Clip
11:19 – The Goal: Helping Families Fall in Love with Jesus
12:50 – Brennan’s Favorite Scene (Jesus Weeping)
14:30 – Why John’s Perspective Matters
16:24 – Free Resources at LightoftheWorld.com
17:36 – What’s Next: Games, Music, & More Films
19:34 – Brennan’s Personal Faith Story & Encouragement
21:56 – Closing Thoughts & Call to Action

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Transcript

0:06

Well. Hello again. Welcome back to another episode of The Covenant Eyes Podcast. I'm Rob Stoddard, I'm your host today, and today we have a wonderful guest and a wonderful film that we're going to talk about, Brennen McPherson. He is the producer of light of the world and president of the Salvation Palm Project. So, Brennan, welcome to The Covenant Eyes Podcast. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me, I appreciate it. Well, great. Well, Brennan, if you wouldn't mind, just start out telling us a little bit about yourself, and how you got to the point of, making this this film. And what is this film all about? Well, I mean, I was just living in a cardboard box on the side of the road, and someone. No. I'm kidding. So I, I, grew up in a Christian home and was always into, art, music and and writing, ended up starting to work for the Salvation Poem project a number of years ago. And about three and a half years ago, we started making a transition and decided that we were going to build out the nonprofit ministry into more of a nonprofit media company, where we were going to be creating high, high level media with the mission to craft stories to share Jesus Christ with the world. So we make gospel centered media in a variety of different mediums interactive games, film, multimedia, discipleship courses, music publishing, etc. but it's all gospel centered. And so back when we started work on this film, three and a half years ago, there was four people that worked at the nonprofit. So I was kind of I fell into the role of got to figure out how to build the team and make a film. So no preexisting experience within film other than being a, you know, a guy who loved watching behind the scenes stuff all of his life. You know, I buy a film and watch the behind the scenes making of featurettes before I watch the movie. So, you know, a little bit of, of some experience as well in music production and, and storytelling and, creative production, but very little in film or animation. And so it was more of a responsibility thrust on me and, had to figure it out. Well, excellent. Well, tell us a little bit about light of the world. What, what it's all about. What we're going to see. So light of the world is a hour and a half long feature length animated film on the life of Jesus, told through the eyes of his youngest apostle, John, who in our film is pictured as a teenager because he probably was a teenager. It's very different from the old bearded man portrayal of most of the disciples. But, you know, even Jesus himself was in his early 30s during his ministry. And we know Peter was an adult. He paid the temple tax, but he seems to be the only one who paid the temple tax, which means they were probably younger than 20. So we wanted to show this, the the story of Jesus through a perspective that hasn't been done before and an intimate perspective. John was the one of the closest to Jesus. He was the only one who was present at the crucifixion. And he was present for most of the most important, events in Jesus life, ministry. And so, we wanted to show how Jesus changed a person's life and how Jesus can change other people's lives. So showing that through John felt like the perfect vector. And it's, hand-drawn 2D animation, old school Disney style, because it's it's beautiful forever. You know, we wanted to make something that would last. So our goal as a ministry is to launch this film, and then all the proceeds of it go back to the ministry to translate it into hundreds of languages and get it shown around the world, to hundreds of millions of people to help them to fall in love with Jesus and make permanent life change. So that's a man. That's that's wonderful. So the the film is due out, is it September 5th? This is correct. Yeah. It will be out in theaters everywhere, September 5th across the US, Canada, central, South America, even some European countries and Australia. And so, if you go to light of the world.com, you can keep an eye on where the film will be releasing and on how to find, how to purchase tickets as well. Wonderful. Well, for many Christian, especially animated films, getting it out broadly and produced this way is not an easy feat. Tell us a little bit about the team behind the film and just how all of this came together. Sure, yeah, it definitely is not easy. I mean, making films at all is very, very difficult. At the beginning I said a little bit, there's like four of us at the nonprofit. When we started making the film, mainly it was me and John Schaefer, who was the lead producer of Superbook for CBN. We were the ones who were tasked with trying to build the team and figure out how to pull off the film in three and a half years on budget, on time, with no preexisting structure. And so luckily, he brought a lot of experience to the table. He also brought some relationships. We pulled on Tom and Tony Bancroft, who are twin brothers who worked for Disney for a number of years. Tony Bancroft, his kind of claim to fame is he co-directed Disney's original film Mulan. The original one, the hand-drawn one. And both Tom and Tony were animators, from everything from beauty and the Beast to Lion King, The Emperor's New Groove, Lilo and Stitch. And so they had a long history there, and then eventually left and did lot of things like VeggieTales and, their own projects, etc. and, now we're teaching, animation at Lipscomb University, but they came on board, Tom co-directed with John, and then Tony was, one of the two heads of story and also, animation director and, tons of other people were involved. Over 600 people worked on this film, for a period of about three and a half years. So it's a huge undertaking to do an animated film, but, largely it worked because God had mercy on us, because it wanted to fall apart every week. But that's film. Yeah. That's tough. That's, full. Great. That. I mean, that's a huge undertaking. Brennan, for those, in our audience and myself, tell us a little bit more about 2D and in why is that an older style and why did you choose to use that? Yeah. So, I mean, some of the earliest animation was stop motion, but then pretty close after stop motion came hand-drawn 2D animation, which is basically you draw a drawing, you know, like this flip books used to see. Yeah, right. You have it. Each frame is another drawing. Right. And and then you, you hit through the frames fast enough and it looks like it's moving. It's magical. Right. Okay. So that's traditional 2D animation is frame to frame. Now we have modern technology that allows you to do other things. Rigged animation at a pretty high level, interpolating, which basically invents frames that don't exist between two drawings and fills out the space. So there's lots of tools that make it more efficient now, but it is still an incredibly work intensive art form. It's mainly gone to boutique animation because Disney dropped it in favor of CG when they saw that that was an efficient way to make films that were very cinematic. But there's always been this hole in the market where people love 2D animation, especially in children, have an easy time relating to it. It's not overly stimulating. And us as animation nerds, we love it because it's a beautiful art form, and we wanted to express our care and love for Jesus in a beautiful art form that we really respect. Also 2D animation. When you have something that's hand-painted, hand-drawn, it's beautiful forever. It's not just beautiful for the next 3 to 5 years and then it looks dated. You know, that's how a lot of CG animation becomes dated quickly, because technology progresses so quickly. And we knew we needed to have an evergreen product that could be used for the next 20, 30 years, because that's our plan. It takes a long time to translate a film into 500 languages. And so there's some practical considerations, but also artistic. We just love it. We love the medium. And we thought that we could do something very unique and, highly stylized and, had its own special appeal by doing it in hand-drawn 2D animation. So with this, with this film, it is out for the entire family, right? Mom, dad it is. The kids are all going to love it. It's not just directed at children or. No, it is not. It is the full gospel presentation. And we don't water it down for children. It's you see, everything and you see it in a way that I think is going to be really refreshing to a lot of adults. And we'll, I mean, we've done a lot of early screenings and everyone from eight year olds to six year olds have absolutely loved it and adored it. So, you know, we think this is absolutely a full family film of course it is. PG you see, Jesus crucified. We we think we've done it in a very tasteful manner. But, you know, you have to make those decisions for your own family. Your taxes...Can you pay them or not? Yes. Of course. Oh, no. My son. John is. Right here with your money. Three days double what you owe. And if you can't pay, we take your father to prison. I brought someone who can help. This is Jesus. Never heard of him. He's helping people. I want to be a part of that. This is my chance to show up. Now, we've talked about this. It's just a story about. We're going to. Need a bigger boat. This. This light. He turned water into one. He's the king of old kings. I knew a guy who ate those. The baptizer with the honey and the wild hair. Oh. That gets me every time. Oh. Come on. Tell me. About this. Jesus. Jesus is no Messiah. He's nothing. And sometimes evil men silence those who speak the truth. What is truth? This is not the end. It's the beginning. It's the light of the world. What's your greatest hope for families to, you know, to take away from this movie? Well. I don't believe that art is a great vehicle for a sermon or complex theological truth. It's very highly stimulating. You have very little space to actually communicate complex truth in it, right? Yeah. But what it is especially great at is inciting desire in people's hearts and at giving people an experience, an empathetic experience of someone's life. And so really, what that means is our hope for this film is that people will watch it and will fall in love with Jesus and experience through watching John go through his journey kind of sense. The, the change that comes through Jesus relationship to John and know that that can be something they they themselves can access. You know, the end of the film. It's unique. It feeds into a direct call to action. If you want to learn how to follow Jesus, go here. It goes through a free discipleship material that's being used by the biggest ministries around the world. And we know it's effective. And so our goal is that this film will lead to holistic, long term spiritual good for full families. Yeah. I still fall in love with Jesus and serve him. Amen. Amen. And that's great. So, Brendan, do you have a favorite scene in the movie that you'd like to share? I have a couple favorites. One favorite scene, is one that. It's pretty personal to me. There's a moment where. Jesus. Well, John walks up to Jesus, tries to make a joke, and then he sees that Jesus is crying. And Jesus is grieving the loss of a beloved character. And, their interaction there. And John seeing Jesus emotion, and us as the audience, seeing Jesus became a man and subjected himself to all of the ups and downs of living a human life of experience, loss of experiencing loss and grief and sorrow and pain. And separation from people that he cared about, and seeing other people suffer, you know, roped to the wheel of time like we are. He experienced it. And for me, that was very meaningful because, the year we began work on this film was the year that we lost my brother to cancer. And so it was like, right in the midst of the grief of that loss and the trauma of it. And, knowing that Jesus walked through that with me, that he grieved when I grieved that he wept like I wept is something intensely, personally meaningful to me and something that I really wanted to be in the film. There's a couple versions of it that it wasn't in there, and I'm so glad that it made it in there, because it's the truth of who Jesus was. He's a he says. We put those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice, and he himself modeled it and lived it. Well, that's and that's wonderful. That is so true. That is so true. He he walked what? We walk and then. Yeah, means a lot. So, Brennan, let me come back to the angle of seeing all this through the apostle John. Yeah. Was that a difficult decision to go that route or. Why? Why really? Did you, did you choose the apostle John to just tell the story through? It was a decision that I made really early on, actually. It was one of the things that kind of was that North Star for us as we developed the film. Because you have 85 minutes to tell all four of the Gospels the important pieces in animation for a full family. That's you got to cut a lot. So what do you put in there? Right. And so we needed some way to just narrow down the scope of it. And telling it from John's perspective was fairly easy for a number of different reasons. One, he was he was the only one present at Jesus crucifixion. And so obviously we wanted to cover the crucifixion. We needed to have a viewpoint that was there. And also him being the youngest, it felt very accessible for a global, full family audience. You know, 13 year old going through that coming of age story as an adult. You remember that time in your life and you can relate to it as a young child. You want to age up to it. And as a teenager you're like, I'm living it. And so it's very accessible. So that's a very like pragmatic reason for it. Yeah. But also it was a unique perspective we had never seen done before. And it, it excited us from an artistic standpoint. But that allowed us to say, okay, anything that isn't relevant to John's life change arc we cut. So it really helps you narrow things down, focusing on what's most effective and most powerful for telling the gospel story. And so in a way that has personal stakes, personal importance. Yeah. It's wonderful that, I can't wait to see that. So, Brendan, where do audiences, our audience, go to find out more about the film and, anything else they have? Go to light of the world.com, and you can follow us on social media. We're on Instagram and Facebook, etc., all the regular platforms, but go to the light of the world.com. Sign up for updates. Look at all the content we have. We have a bunch of behind the scenes video content. We've got mini games for kids that are free. We've got a free church curriculum for people. We've got, you know, a 90 day family devotional that's coming out, a children's picture book, coloring and activity, books that people can get through Tindale and, lots of different ways to dive deeper into, their faith through the vector of this film, through the lens of the film. But also to then go beyond that. So yeah, go to light of the world.com for more information, to find out how you can get tickets, to get free resources to watch the videos. That's the home. Home for everything. Well, guys have a lot there. That's wonderful. We'll put that in the show notes for sure. So, everyone will be able to find that, Brendan, tell me so if you've now got this one first film feature film done, is there going to be more from you? Yeah, we do have plans to make many, many more films now, God willing. You know, it depends on a lot of things. But we have, different scripts that are in various stages of, completion. And we're right now working on an interactive video game, that's inspired by the Gospel of John, but it is a full fantasy. So it's kind of it's kind of Narnia esque, but that's going to be, like a six hour play experience, a premium game, something that you would find on Xbox or Nintendo Switch or PC. But it'll be completely free. And, you know, we're really excited about expanding into the gaming sphere. There's very little, in, in the gaming space that's a good offering for families and children. It's much larger than the film industry by far. And there's it's nearly a wasteland for spiritually appropriate content. And I grew up a gamer, to say the least. You know, many of my relationships were built around games. I love games, but I also recognize the potency in their dangers. And we want to make digital products that get people into physical, real relationships that are healthy for them long term. And so we are really working hard to push and innovate in the gaming sphere, as well as in film. And then of course, music and literature, as well. Come along for that. So. Wow, wow. That's wonderful. That's exciting. I do wholeheartedly agree. There's a there's a big void there in the gaming world. And, that's exciting to hear. So and there's a lot of people starting to work on it. But you know, we're we're in the very early stages of that. And so we're hoping to see a lot more people jump onto it and contribute as well. Oh, great. Well, Brennan, again, thank you for joining us today. Any last thoughts that you want to pass on to our audience? Now's your chance. Well, one thing, I grew up in a Christian home, and, you know, was a good boy growing up. But it was really in college where I realized I had to live more of an integrated life if I was really going to be serious about this. And, the thing that I discovered that really changed everything. And it was through a variety of different things. One being a book by Andrew Murray called Abiding in Christ. And then some other influences as well, started spending sustained time every day in prayer and reading scripture and really just setting my desires on Jesus himself. Because the greatest commandment, commandment is to love God with everything that you have. That's why we exist to worship and be with him and to enjoy him. And I think that's one thing that is lost a lot of times in our busyness is enjoying Jesus. That's what the entire Christian life is about. That's why it's why we exist. It's why we're alive. And so I hope that this film helps to spark in people a desire for Christ. And I hope that they follow that and dive deep and spend time setting their desire for hours a day, every day on Jesus, because that is what leads to real transformation. You know, we go through our Christian life and we feel like, oh, I gotta be better. I gotta do better. That's not how it works. As we spend time setting our desire on Jesus, he gives us the desires of our hearts. By changing what we desire. He makes us desire him and the things that are good instead of the things that are against him, that are against us. That's how we experience life. Change is we. We allow him to change us. We patiently wait in his presence as he does the work. And so the one thing that I would love to just leave with everyone is just that encouragement to make a dedication, to really spend time setting your desire on him. Because that is what leads to life change. That's what leads to him pouring out of us as we are with our family and friends, and we naturally will just share who Jesus is to us. Because people will see that we're different and we're different because of him, not because of us. So that that's what I would, I would say is like the most important thing. Okay, well, wonderful words. And I can hear your heart in that. Brendan, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for making this film. Really looking forward to it. So again, I'm glad you can join us. And, we'll, we'll look forward to, when this comes out. Thanks, Rob. It's good to be with you. Yeah. To our listeners, again, hope you will share and like this. And especially go and see light of the world. It's going to be a wonderful film. We'll have the, links in the show. Notes. Thanks again for joining us. Look for the next episode. Thank you so much. God bless. Bye bye.