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See All Videos in This Series: Stop | Follow | Lead | Go

"Hi, I'm a Christ-Follower."

"And I'm a Christian."

So begins the "Christian vs. Christ-Follower" video, a viral hit on YouTube based on Apple's popular Mac vs. PC ads. The videos were created by Community Christian Church for their services, and were uploaded to YouTube by Eric Bramlett, Creative Arts Director at the church. Each video has now been viewed more than 45,000 times (the first has been viewed more than 225,000 times!), and Bramlett's YouTube channel now has over 450 subscribers.

But how did this happen? How did this one series become such a phenomenon? Tom Greever, Media Arts Director of Community Christian Church in Naperville, IL, recently sat down to answer some of the most commonly asked questions about his team's surprise hit.

Tom, what's your role at CCC? What level of responsibility did you have with the "Christian vs. Christ-follower" videos?

I am the Media Arts Director, which means I'm the primary video guy. Basically, anything that shows up on a projector screen at our (currently) eight Chicagoland locations I am in some way responsible for.

Who came up with—and executed—the idea for the "Christ vs. Christ-follower" video series?

Our Creative Arts Team came up with the idea together. We meet every week to plan our services about eight weeks before they run, so this idea was just one of many we had for consideration. Because of the cultural impact the Mac/PC commercials have had, we thought this was the best framework to communicate our message.

I shot and edited them start to finish. Elic (the Christ-follower character) did most of the writing with his brother Eric (the Christian character). My friend Mark assisted me on the shoot and recorded the song. But ultimately, the whole process is collaborative.

Why did you create these videos?

To understand our intent, you have to understand our audience and the context in which the videos were originally shown. Our services are geared mostly to newcomers: people who have never been to church or who have not been in a long time. That's who we have in mind when we plan our services. That's not to say believers don't have a place, that's another conversation altogether. But when we plan our services, we are constantly asking, "If someone is here for the first time, are they going to get it? How do we reach the person who may know nothing about doing church'?"

Interesting. So tell us a little bit about the actual church context in which these videos were shown.

As for the context, each video was a "sermon roll-in" for our "Christian No More" series. That is, they introduced the teaching pastor. So the content of each video connects directly to the teaching for that particular week. The "Christian No More" series was our attempt to open the discussion on what it means to be a Christian: Let's get the stereotypes out on the table and separate what Jesus calls us to do from our own misguided intentions.

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