Churches Pay to Play Movie Clips to Help Preach and Teach

The pastor of a Lancaster church interrupted his sermons during two services last summer to show brief scenes from videotaped movies, including one of a person praying in “Joe Versus the Volcano,” starring Tom Hanks.

At a San Fernando Valley church, a youth group program played a videotaped scene exemplifying perseverance in the 1990 movie “The Mission,” starring Robert DeNiro.

The videotapes shown at the Lancaster United Methodist Church were legal; the showing to the Methodist youth group was illegal.

The difference: The first church had paid a licensing fee and the second hadn’t.

However, to help its churches stay honest, avoid fines and move creatively into the video age, the United Methodist Media Center in Pasadena this week notified the 400 Methodist congregations in Southern California and Hawaii that by paying a yearly fee of $125 to the regional media center, they could show most videotaped movies without worrying about violating copyright laws.

“A lot of churches think that if they don’t charge to watch them, it’s legal,” said the Rev. Steve Horswill-Johnston, director of the media center.

“But in the last couple of years, one Methodist church had to pay a one-time fine of $500 and another was warned by a government agency about its unauthorized use,” he said.

He said that his media center negotiated one of the few agreements by a regional Methodist entity with the Los Angeles-based Motion Picture Licensing Corp., which represents more than 40 studios and producers whose films are sold and rented at stores--with labels warning that they are for home use only.

The licensing corporation, which was formed in 1989, caused a stir last year among nursery schools, warning some 50,000 operators that they must pay licensing fees up to $325 annually to show movies such as “The Lion King” to children.

But Harold Bauer, who works for the corporation in Newtown, Conn., and handles all licensing inquiries from religious groups, emphasized that Methodist, Presbyterian, Catholic, Baptist and other churches he has dealt with appear eager to understand their obligations under the law and comply.

“They are saying, in effect, ‘We shall not steal intellectual property,’ ” Bauer said in a telephone interview.

After dealing with innumerable licensing requests from individual congregations for years, Bauer said his new emphasis is to save time and effort by making comprehensive licensing agreements with regional organizations that cover many congregations, such as entire Catholic dioceses and the California-Pacific United Methodist Conference based in Pasadena.

Nevertheless, Horswill-Johnston said he knows that many church leaders, regardless of denomination, are “choosing to ignore” the law because they think it is unlikely to be enforced.

“Most churches learned in the ‘70s that they needed to follow copyright law on printed sheet music, but they don’t see the urgency of complying with video law,” he said.

That could be risky, said Furman York of Nashville, director of EcuFilm, an ecumenical distributor of educational and religious videos. “I’d hate to think that a local church might be selected by federal authorities to make an example of,” York said. “It would be costly,” he warned, both in legal bills and fines.

At the 900-member Lancaster United Methodist Church, the Rev. Robert Stimmel said he used a portable screen and projector to illustrate his sermons with movie clips, once for a scene from “Joe Versus the Volcano” and another time for a segment of “The War,” starring Kevin Costner.

“We used them in the same way that a preacher normally reads or tells a story during a sermon,” Stimmel said. The pastor said his church welcomes the new blanket licensing agreement arranged by the Methodist Media Center--a task his church previously did on its own.

Some religious educators maintain that under certain conditions, they can use video clips in classes without permission, but it is not clear that Sunday schools can do so, Horswill-Johnston said.

The licensing corporation’s Bauer put it this way: “If a video is shown in a not-for-profit setting, with only students and teacher present, and if the subject of the video is incorporated in the academic plan at the outset of the school year, the school exemption from copyright law applies. They don’t need a license.”

The agreement the Methodists signed with Motion Picture Licensing Corp. does not cover movies from the Paramount and Columbia studios, which Bauer said do not approve of blanket licensing. At times, some studios let their agreement with the corporation lapse, then renew it later.

Thus, before the San Fernando Valley Interfaith Council and the host Hindu Temple and Cultural Center in Chatsworth showed the movie “Gandhi” last Sunday, the council leaders had found that permission to show the Columbia Pictures movie could be obtained through Swank Motion Picture Co. in St. Louis.

“We had to use their copy of the movie, and we paid $125 plus shipping for the one-time permission to show it,” said Arlene Landon of the interfaith council.

The issue of using videotapes in religious settings will grow in importance for those congregations that see the possibilities of using film segments in religious education and worship services, Horswill-Johnston said.

“It’s the language of life for many young people,” said the Pasadena-based minister.

Certain movies made originally for theaters have inspiring moments even if the setting or words are not explicitly religious, he said.

“God’s story is told in movies by people who are not even connected with the Christian faith,” he said. “Something young people may have seen first on a Saturday night, the church can show on a Sunday morning and make the connection between the secular and the sacred.”