Why Can't We Just Show the Home DVD of WESLEY in Our Church?
If Your Church Was Full of People But Each Sunday Only ONE of Them Put An Offering In The Plate, Could You Keep Your Ministry Going? The answer is "no." And neither can we pay the substantial costs of producing Wesley if every congregation buys only one copy of the Home Edition at the lowest discount price they can find -- and then exhibits it without a license. Remember, only a tiny percentage of your retail DVD purchase price comes back to the talented people who actually made the film when you buy a product from a retail outlet.
Jesus said, "The worker deserves his wage."In addition to the visionary investors that ventured the capital we needed to produce a quality film, in many cases talented key people worked on "deferment." That is, they worked on the movie for the equivalent of minimum wage, with deferral of most of their normal income until the movie is able to recoup its expenses. These are essentially loans that actors and crew have made to make the creation of the movie possible - because they believed in the project. Many movie producers treat this obligation cavalierly, and fail to ever pay such deferments; but we believe that it is a moral obligation to pay those who worked on the movie their full salary - Jesus said, "the worker deserves his wage" (Luke 10:7). We know that most church members have little understanding of how independent faith films are financed and produced. We'll be glad to explain the math to you if you're interested. But take our word for it: we cannot repay our investors and meet our responsibilities to those who worked hard on the film if churches "cheat" and don't pay for a church exhibition license. So how can we legally show the movie to church members?Purchase the appropriate Church License for your congregation. The price is based on the average attendance at worship, so that smaller churches do not have to pay as high a fee as larger, wealthier congregations. Even easier, purchase our complete Church Movie Night Kit which includes everything you need except the popcorn and the people!
You can also check out our exciting Fundraiser License which will allow a group of churches to exhibit the movie as part of a fundraising program, with no up-front cost to the district or group of churches. This special license will only be available for a brief period of time.
We buy the Church Video License every year, why isn't Wesley covered by that?
The tiny
income stream from CVLI would not permit us to pay for the movie, or
to produce future movies of similar quality! If there is not theatre in your area that will play Wesley, we strongly encourage you to check out the Fundraiser License! |
Before we answer this question, let us ask you
one: 
We appreciate the fact that your congregation
is working to abide by movie licensing requirements! And we
encourage every church to purchase the annual CVLI License so that
they will be able to legally show DVDs from major distributors.
However, just as many fine choral anthems are not covered by the
CCLI license, only certain distributors and films participate in the
CVLI license. CVLI produces an extra revenue stream for large
distributors with many films under their umbrella, but pays very
little to smaller indie producers. Movie covered by CVLI are
often mass-market movies from large distributors with huge sales
volumes or films financed as nonprofit ventures, often on very small
budgets. More and more, indie Christian producers are opting to not
sign on to the CVLI agreement.