While attending a small, English church service, Tom Russell and Courtney Russell, both Media Arts Professors at BYU, felt deeply inspired by what they witnessed. A young boy named George stood up and began to sing. Tom Russell notes how all eyes in the congregation were watching the little boy with deep affection. At that moment, Russell says that he noticed how this specific setting drew families together. He says that he thought, “...with the support of these people, he’ll be okay his whole life.” Russell then began conceptualizing how he could capture this feeling on film. “I wanted to make a film about the value of Christian ideology.” He explained that too often in film, especially in recent years, Christians are portrayed as simpletons or villains. He wanted to add a more well-rounded perspective of how Christians live and who they can be, “It’s a very diverse community, the Christian community. And it’s a very bright community,” he says.
The idea to document how different Christian congregations lived and shared their faith turned into a sixty-day filming project. Tom Russell and Courtney Russell, along with eight students and several other faculty members packed up and headed to Europe. Tom Russell highlighted the importance of the student team he had assembled and their great contributions: "We handed the equipment to the students and said go.” He explained that as the days passed they became better and better at working with high-ranking members of different denominations and finding the most effective ways of interviewing and collecting footage.
Congregation is a documentary about different denominations of Christianity but also the decline of congregational worship in the UK. Russell explained that baptisms are a third of what they were in previous years. He mentioned with deep sadness that many beautiful churches are being converted into malls or even bed and breakfasts. Though these statistics are difficult to see, Russell emphasized that the project was in no way meant to push a certain way of life upon those they interviewed, or likewise for the eventual viewer, “Instead of saying, here’s how you ought to live, instead it is, this is how it impacted my life.” Congregation will be a more personal look into the individual lives of congregants and how their active participation in their religious community has shaped their lives.
The project hopes to encourage unity across denominations of Christianity. Russell emphasized the importance of Christian denominations learning from one another. He described his own experience of doing so as “...testimony-strengthening.” Recounting a conversation he had with a woman of another denomination while filming the documentary Russell says, “...I said I was from a different faith. She said ‘Another denomination or another faith?’ And I said ‘Oh, denomination.’ We are different denominations—but of the same faith.”
He shared that the ultimate goal of the project was to send the finished product back to those congregations highlighted in the documentary, so they can show others. He hopes that as a result, there will be a greater appreciation for the kind of community that Christianity provides.
Because of the amount of footage shot, as well as the tedious work that comes along with putting together a documentary, Congregation is still in the early stages of editing. Russell has said that part of the work is finding the story's shape and that “...the students have been instrumental in helping us do that.” Tom hopes that in a few years, Congregation will be ready to dispense to the public. Though the project is still a way out, its impending impact is undeniable.