A piece of Hollywood is converted into a call to Christianity

It started as a box-office bust, a true-to-the-Gospel account of the life of Jesus Christ that earned just $4 million when it was distributed by Warner Bros. under the title ``Jesus" in 1979 -- less than the film's $6 million cost.

But ``The Jesus Film" has enjoyed unparalleled success in the years since. Propelled by missionaries who have made it a central part of their conversion efforts, the film has become the most-watched movie of all time, shown in 235 countries, translated into nearly 950 languages, and viewed by a worldwide audience of perhaps 3 billion.

``Jesus" has motivated about 200 million conversions to Christianity, according to the Jesus Film Project, the $34 million-a-year division of Campus Crusade for Christ that's dedicated to spreading the film's reach. The claim, which can't be independently verified, reflects the seeming ubiquitousness of the film among Christian missionaries.

``The power is not in the great cinematography," said Greg Gregoire , the project's chief of staff. ``Our bottom line, basic objective is to provide a visual story of the life of Christ to the body of Christ. It's literally a visual Bible."

The two-hour film is hardly movie magic. Conceived and funded by Christian groups who wanted a biblically accurate depiction of Jesus' life, the film sacrifices special effects and character development in the interest of textual fidelity.

Nearly all of the dialogue was taken directly from the Gospel of Luke, and the actors deliver lines rote -- more Sunday school than ``The Ten Commandments," or even ``The Passion of the Christ."

Still, the film is being shown in waiting rooms at medical mission clinics, a simple way to introduce people of all ages and educational backgrounds to the basic tenets of Christianity. Missionaries lug copies hundreds of miles into remote villages, organizing community showings in areas where many people have never before seen moving images on screens.

Dr. Fred Loper , a veteran medical missionary and the executive director of Baptist Medical and Dental Fellowship, took the film on a 2004 trip to Honduras, where he and his team had only 24 hours to spend in a remote village. Getting there meant a two-day mule train trip, and he and his team brought a projector, a 10-by-10-foot screen, a generator, and a tarp for villagers to sit under along with the medical supplies.

They arrived at midday and set up a clinic that saw patients all day. That night, they showed the film. A local pastor gave a 15-minute sermon afterward, and then asked whether anyone wanted to become a Christian . Seventeen people came forward, Loper recalled, including a village leader and his wife.

``I don't think they'd ever seen a film before, so it was quite a big attraction," Loper said. ``This was the first time they were exposed to the word of Christ."

Yet the film has also emerged as a flash point in a simmering debate over the value of short-term mission trips, where missionaries spend anywhere from a day to a few weeks or months in a community.

To critics of such trips, ``Jesus" is a shortcut that's fostering false conversions, with new Christians wowed by the moving images of the film but largely ignorant of the religion itself -- and therefore unlikely to change their behavior after converting.

``Being shown as part of an ongoing ministry is very good. But being shown as an initial come-on, I'm skeptical of," said Dr. Dan Fountain , a leading figure in the medical mission movement who worked 35 years as a missionary doctor in Congo.

``We first need to go in and listen. We need to develop relationships," Fountain said. ``If they are converted on the spot, what are they being converted to? What is happening to their underlying beliefs and values that are part of their culture? There's no change there."

Nonetheless, the ``Jesus" franchise is growing by the day. At the project's headquarters in Orlando, workers are helping churn out a new translation every three to four days, in keeping with the project's goal of presenting the film to everyone in the world in their native languages, Gregoire said.

The film is available for free at jesusfilm.org, as well as in DVD and VHS formats. Next up are ``Jesus" podcasts and cellphone downloads. Project leaders are in talks to produce an anime version of the film that will match the dialogue from the original, so the existing translations can continue to be used.

``I wouldn't want to try to count up the number of people who made some sort of specific commitment because of this film," said Ronald J. Sider , director of the Center on Ministry and Public Policy at Palmer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania. ``It's been a wonderful and powerful tool to get the basic message of who Jesus is out to enormous numbers of people."