Dallas Jenkins, creator, producer, director and writer of “The Chosen,” delivered Tuesday’s forum address, focusing on overcoming failure and being submissive to God’s will.
Crafting his remarks around his own failures and resultant faith in Christ, Jenkins drew strength upon the miracle of Jesus feeding the 5,000.
“It wasn’t until my 40s that I learned … my success is rooted in failure,” he said.
As a filmmaker, Jenkins had high hopes for success. He wanted to be acknowledged by the movie industry as a successful director and would admittedly practice his award acceptance speech in front of the mirror.
In 2017, he thought he had made it. His newest film received rave reviews in early screenings and was backed by successful groups.
“Hollywood runs on math,” Jenkins said. You can know within the first couple hours if a movie is going to do well and on day one, his movie was not doing well.
Jenkins felt like his dreams in the movie industry were over. He realized he was not going to receive the praise and legitimacy he craved.
“God’s not the author of failure, that’s what we’ve been told our whole lives. And I failed.”
He immediately began to question himself and what he was doing.
Mourning his defeat, his wife was impressed to tell him to read the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000 and that Goes does “impossible math.”
After reading the story, Jenkins and his wife realized something new. Jesus brought the crowd to the place that the only way to satisfy their hunger and desperation was through Him.
Jenkins realized that God brought him to a place of desperation and “hunger” so he would need to rely on Him.
Left with an uncertain future, Jenkins stayed up until 4 in the morning to analyze what went wrong. As he was working on it, a message from an acquaintance appeared on his screen:
“Remember, it’s not your job to feed the 5,000; it is only to provide the loaves and fish.”
Another message, again referencing Jesus’s miracle of feeding the 5,000.
“That moment changed my life. I knew that God was present. I knew that God was looking over this. I knew that God had brought me to that place of failure, and He had something in it for me,” Jenkins said. “In that moment, all I cared about was God’s will and I surrendered, probably for the first time in my life. I got to a place where I was truly OK with whatever God wanted me to do.”
With additional time now on his hands, Jenkins created a short Christmas film centered on the shepherds’ perspective at the time of Christ’s birth. This later sparked the idea for a TV series focused on the followers of Christ and their perspective.
Through a series of miracles and God’s impossible math, “The Chosen” received the funding it needed. Since then, it has been translated into numerous languages and available in every country, has touched the hearts of millions and is one of the most successful shows in the world.
“Whether in failure or in success, the message is still the same. Bring the loaves and fishes so He can do the miracle,” Jenkins said. “This is the kind of math that God is part of. He takes the small broken things and makes something out of it.”
