I've seen this story a hundred times, that a student accepts Christ and then their world falls apart and then they blame it on God.  If we've given them a faith where they believe that accepting Christ means everything is going to go great, then we've turned them away from God for the rest of their lives because God didn't deliver.  And so I really wanted to paint that picture too that [faith] is about trusting God no matter what. The truth is that probably bad things will still happen, and are you going to trust God through that and do what's right anyway?  

YWJ: You mentioned you wanted to make this film real and believable.  But obviously some Christians are going to be fairly troubled by the language in here or the party scenes. What would you say to them?

JB: Another big [criticism] we get is that the movie never directly presents the gospel.  

The first thing I'd say, as a screenwriter, is there are probably no other screenwriters that that pray over every curse word, and I did.  I don't cuss at all, and it's not cool in our ministry.  There are just a couple times where we needed to put some b-rated curse words in there (we didn't go to the big ones) so it would be real. And if you look at it, most of them happen at the beginning of the film. Doug (the movie's bully) says one or two things at the beginning, and so he doesn't have to cuss for the rest of the movie because you already get, 'oh, this is a guy who does that.'  I learned that in screenwriting classes back in college.  If you put a lot of violence in the first two minutes of the movie, you don't have to put violence later on because people get that, 'oh, that's what the nature of the film is like.'  So there are actually very few [bad] words.  I wrote it in a way where I didn't have to put very many cuss words in there at but just enough at the beginning so people would go this is real. And every kid in youth groups, unless they're home-schooled, are hearing much worse words every single day. It's reality.

As far as not sharing the faith, that's very intentional. We didn't set out to make a film that someone could walk out and become a Christian.  Instead, I ... wanted to make a film that would empower [teens] to share their faith.  So if someone says 'why didn't the movie share the faith,' I say 'that's your job.'

YWJ: I doubt very many people are saved just by watching a movie. It takes kind of that one-on-one connection, doesn't it?

JB: Absolutely. So in our youth ministry, we actually wrote a ‘how to present the Gospel using the film.' Our kids are going to be walking on campuses and a student who says 'I saw the movie you told me to see,' they can go, 'there is a deeper message to it.'  We wanted to set up kids to be able to be the messengers, not just say see this film and then good luck.

YWJ: So what's your plan for the foreseeable future, to keep writing and being a youth pastor at the same time?

JB: Yes, it is.  I love it.  Its wearing two hats right now where I am on the phone with a producer or director and then I am on the phone with a 7th grader the next minute. Two different worlds.  I sure love the combination.

More to explore:

Youth Culture Lesson: Devos to Go

'To Save a Life' Resources

Watch the movie trailer