(RNS) — For more than half of his life, the Rev. Otis Moss III has sought to find ways to merge the cadence of the sermon with the creativity of movies.
In addition to being senior pastor of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, Moss founded Unashamed Media Group, which he described as “creating small films we hope will be used to teach, to inform, to inspire and shape homiletics in a different way.
“I believe that films preach,” he said.
On Sunday (May 17), in honor of a young black jogger who was recently killed in Georgia, Moss premiered his latest fusion of faith and film: “The Cross and the Lynching Tree: A Requiem for Ahmaud Arbery.”
The 22-minute sermonic film features Moss preaching in his predominantly black megachurch before stained-glass windows that depict African American and church history. Interspersed between his words are images of a black actor pausing to tie his running shoes, clips of two drastically different movies released a century apart but both titled “The Birth of a Nation,” and footage of persecution and protest.
Moss, 49, is an Auburn Seminary senior fellow known for his commitment to social justice and a minister whose sermons placed him on Baylor University’s list of top 12 preachers in the English-speaking world. He learned film editing as a teenager tasked with cutting “Twilight Zone” episodes so a local Cleveland TV…
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