It's not your job to feed the 5000. You only need to provide the loaves and fish.

From a podcast on Faithdriven Investor

If you haven’t yet watched The Chosen, please add it to your binge list!

Seasons 1 and 2 are available via website or app for phone, etc. It’s an amazing narrative of the life of Jesus that has enjoyed significant popularity. 400M+ views so far. Season 3 is coming soon.

Watch this 3 minute trailer:

Dallas Jenkins is the creator, director and co-writer of The Chosen, which is also the most successful media crowdfund of all time. He was recently interviewed in a podcast. 

"The Chosen is a historical drama based on the people of first century Galilee, using the Bible as the primary source of truth. And I think that has unlocked the stories for many people. I felt like the Bible was in black and white, and now it feels like it's in colour. And it's not because we've changed anything. It's just because people are now, for some reason, understanding it better and being able to picture it now so that when they do read the Bible, it feels more alive than they understood it before. We're doing the best we can to portray plausibly an authentic version of what would have happened in these people's lives during this time."

Dallas continues (abridged):

"Hollywood wanted to make movies with me, financed my movie, produced my movie, 'The Resurrection of Gavin Stone' and released it in theatres. Everything was great. I was a director with a very bright future, and then my movie completely bombed. My lowest moment, confused wondering why God allowed this to happen, wondering where my future was.

"There's an episode in Season One of The Chosen where Simon is trying to solve his own problems, and he ends up fishing all night and he can't catch a fish. And the next morning he encounters Jesus and Jesus does the miracle of the fish. Then Jesus asks them to give up everything and follow him. After my Hollywood movie bombed, my wife, Amanda was just as crushed as I was. We were sitting there crying together. We were home alone and just so confused and so broken, and God was pushing us to read the story of the feeding of the 5000. We were trying to figure out what he had for us in that story. At four o'clock in the morning, when I was writing a 15 page memo on everything that had gone wrong, a post-mortem that most of us do after a success or failure, God laid a message on the heart of a man who was in Romania. He called and said, "Dallas, it's not your job to feed the 5000. It's only to provide the loaves and fish."

"When I really got to that place mentally, spiritually, emotionally, intellectually - all of that, I genuinely believed that all I cared about was that if I handed my loaves and fish to God and he deemed them worthy of acceptance, the transaction was over and I was comfortable with that. I wasn't intimidated by doing this because I was like, what have I got to lose?

"I had this idea for a show about Jesus. And I released to the world a short Christmas film that I'd directed for my church. Angel Studios saw my short film were blown away by it, heard my idea for The Chosen and really wanted to do it. And they said, 'We want to raise the money through crowdfunding,' and I was like, 'Oh, that's ridiculous. Crowdfunding doesn't work. We need a few million to do a show like this to do it right.' I was in this loaves and fishes state where it's not my job to worry about. It's not my job to feed the 5000.

"We asked if people wanted to crowdfund Season One of a show about Jesus, I figured we'd raise, you know, $1,500. And then we ended up shattering the all time crowdfunding record and raising over $10 million from 19,000 people. Some who invested said, 'I've never done this before'. When they watched the short film, something about it compelled them, something supernatural happened, they just thought they had to contribute. It sure does feel like God is doing something. And the proof is in the fact that through the show, people are reading their Bibles more than ever. People are praying more than ever. We're just hearing that over and over again.

"After Season One, investors started to approach us and say, you know, we think we can get $30 million for you to do the next couple seasons and then you do not have to worry about raising money all the time. But we decided if we want to do future seasons, we have to continue to crowdfund. We've made the show totally free and now have to rely on people choosing to pay it forward if they want to. They don't have to. This also honours the original investors.

"Finally, I want to read a verse that has become my life verse over the last five or six years, Psalm 34v5; 'Those who look to him for help will be radiant with joy; no shadow of shame will darken their faces.' I can think of all the times that I've been ashamed in my life - it's never been when I've been looking at God. It's always been because I've been looking at myself. I've been inward focused. But when you're really looking to God for your guidance, when you're looking to him for your fulfilment, when you're looking to him for your identity, those who look to him are radiant and their faces shall not be ashamed. That's where we need to be on a day to day basis - looking to him. That's where we're going to find radiance."

Listen to the 60 minute podcast here.