The picture above is probably what you think of first when you think of the word "missionary." However, much of what we do as "support" missionary (teaching the kids of missionaries in Africa) is "unmissionary."
One of the most “unmissionary” kind of jobs I have is as the Video Guy for our school. As a school we provide a complete program for our students—from their education to sports programs to music lessons to weekend entertainment. While our students’ counterparts in the US can go to the theaters, watch 150 cable channels, and rent movies continually with their non-school hours, RVA kids can’t. They’d like to, but they can’t.
Thirty years ago, the only way our students got to see movies was when the US Embassy in Nairobi would get original film reels of Hollywood flicks. Often times though, those movies wouldn’t be appropriate for Christian students. And if they were appropriate, they’d often need words or scenes edited out because of bad language or content. In those cases, an assembly of 200 students would see a diligent staff member monitoring his watch to put a piece of paper in front of the projector and to pull the audio cable out at the precise moment of the impropriety.
Today, we have far more access to movies on our campus and luckily we have some strong technology to make the “editing” process smoother. But before I get into that, who decides which movies—of the hundreds that are released worldwide every month—should be circulated around dorms and households on campus?
The first step is the Video Preview Committee. Consisting of parents of younger children and older children and of staff who specialize in working with the different age groups, the committee meets once a week to a view a movie together and then discuss it. We then approve it for a certain age-level according to dormitories (1st grade and up, 5th and up, 7th and up, 9th and up, or 11th and up), or we determine it to be inappropriate for any student at RVA. (We often pass movies around during the week to watch on our own and then talk about them.)
This step is no easy matter. Some parents are extremely liberal and allow their kids to watch anything. Some parents are extremely cautious and would rather their kids get as little cultural exposure as possible. The committee does try to err on the safe side so that we’re honoring the conservative parental point of view.
To help us further in our job, a great new technology has come up; it’s called ClearPlay. ClearPlay makes filters for movies and imbeds them into their DVD machines. Once the specific movie filter (which edits out various aspects of a film like profanity, sexual content, and violence) is in the machine, that DVD cannot be played on the machine without the editing. However, the way that ClearPlay gets away with “changing the content” of a copyrighted work is that they don’t actually alter the DVD in anyway. The technology simply modifies the way that the owner of the ClearPlay subscription watches it.
The next step is to burn a “ClearPlay” version of the DVD for campus use. The edited DVD then goes into our school’s library where dorm parents can check out the edited and approved movie for their students. The original DVD sits on file in the library (so RVA does officially OWN all of the movies in our library) while the approved version gets circulated.
Since the school’s ClearPlay machine and DVD burner resides at my house, I’m also able to help missionaries with their sermons and Bible studies by editing clips they need from movies. The job of “Video Guy” is time-consuming, but being a movie buff, the job is one that enjoy.
P.S. Here are examples of some of our recent viewings. Kung Fu Panda, approved for 5th grade and older. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, approved for 9th and up. Horton Hear a Who, approved for 1st and up. Hancock, not approved. Iron Man, approved 9th and up.
