In the 20^th century, Archives became museums of obsolete technology, collectors of valuable records in formats no longer commercially viable or practical. This growing list includes wax cylinders, wire recordings, analog audio tapes, audio cassettes, microcassettes, Dictaphone disks, 1” and 2” video reels, U-Matic video cassettes, VHS and Beta cassettes, as well as 8mm and 16mm films.

From the mid-1930s through the late-1980s, 16mm film was a very popular medium for schools, businesses, churches, and parachurch organizations. The Evangelism & Missions Archives has hundreds of movies in these formats (especially 16mm), as well as the production and correspondence files of evangelical film companies. Meant to be shown in church or at church events, these movies were particularly thought to be a means of attracting young people to church. 

Here are some of the different film categories that can be still viewed in the Archives, either through the original film or in video or digital copies. 

Home Movies

Throughout most of the twentieth century, missionaries had various ways of illustrating their work and enlisting support for prayer and finances from their home churches. Missionaries on home furlough would visit supporting congregations and bring along scrapbooks of photos, slide shows, or films. These amateur productions illustrated different aspects of the missionary’s work, from witnessing and distributing tracts to medical care and training church leaders. They also served as a travelogue, showing the culture and distinctive local flora and fauna from far-off countries which the average church member (at least in the 1940s and 50s) would probably never visit. Home movies in the Archives include those of Victor Plymire, who filmed Tibetan urban and mountain scenes around the late 1930s, including many views of Buddhist ceremonies (Collection 341), Paul Stough showing his work in the Belgian Congo in the 1930s and 40s (Collection 89, a sound track commentary was added by Paul in 1992), and Peter Deyneka Jr. highlighting his many trips to eastern Europe, Alaska, and South America in the 1940s and 50s to work with Slavic populations (Collection 237).

Watch Victor Plymire’s silent footage of the Kumbum Monastery in Northern China (all scene titles were created by Victor Plymire).

Broadcasts & Evangelistic Services

Another type of film in the Archives are the films or television broadcasts of evangelistic outreach. Some of these are kinescopes, films made directly from a monitor of a live television broadcast. Others are productions of a rally, crusade, or other evangelistic event. Sometimes these films were made by a ministry for their own use, other times they were made for the purpose of distributing to churches, so people who could not attend the live event could watch the film in their local church.

The Archives holds filmed services by Billy Graham (Collections 15 and 20), Kathryn Kuhlman’s television broadcasts Your Faith & Mine and I Believe in Miracles (Collection 212), Stephen Olford’s Encounter (Accession 1984-033) and Percy Crawford’s ground-breaking evangelistic television program, Youth on the March (Collection 357), as well as many other filmed sermons, evangelistic rallies, and broadcast programs.

Watch three films from the Archives documenting a 1945 Youth for Christ evangelistic rally on the digital exhibit, “The Greatest Youth Gathering in History.” Footage from one 1949 Youth on the March can also be viewed through a 2024 blog on Percy Crawford’s ministry, “As this is our first broadcast…”

Professional Film Productions

And then there are the hundreds of movies made by Christian film companies, particularly for the Fundamentalist and Evangelical market. From about the 1940s through the 1980s, a small group of specialized firms produced cinema for churches and youth groups both as a business and as a ministry. First seeking to overcome the deep suspicion in Fundamentalist and Evangelical circles of film as a corrupt medium tainted by Hollywood’s sinful reputation, these firms explored the creative possibilities of film as a vehicle for the Gospel.

With the growth of the popularity of television and video cassettes, this market eventually shrunk and many of the firms closed or ceased production during the 1990s and 2000s. However, during its day, the dedicated producers, writers, directors, and actors turned out some remarkable work. There were films about missionary endeavors, the work of particular parachurch ministries, biographies, lectures on different aspects of the Christian life (particularly how to witness), dramas with Christian themes, sermons, and many films specially tailored to children and teenagers.

The Archives holds films from several of these companies, such as the Moody Institute of Science and Cathedral Films. We also have the almost complete files and product of three major companies: C. O. Baptista Film Mission (originally called Scriptures Visualized Films) which was one of the earliest Christian film companies and the first to experiment with animated film (Collection 225); Gospel Films, which later became Gospel Communications (Collection 723, Accession 2021-028, not yet processed but available to researchers) and Ken Anderson Films (Collection 673, Accession 2013-032, not yet processed but available to researchers). Films from a wide variety of publication companies and sources can also be found in Collection 307: Ephemera of Christian Film and Video.

All three of these companies are gone now, but the history of their productions and the results of their labors are preserved in the Evangelism & Missions Archives. Watch The Songs of Fanny Crosby (1947) and Five Minutes To Live (1946) from C. O. Baptista Films, two examples among the many held by the Archives of 20th century Christian film productions.

Showcasing how missionaries, evangelists, and Christian filmmakers creatively presented the story of the Gospel and the work of their ministries to both believers and non-believers, these films offer compelling examples of the evangelical movement’s embrace of new technology, as well as the changing dynamics of religious engagement in the 20th century.