Elder L. Whitney Clayton recently was interviewed to discuss his involvement in the LDS Church’s Public Affairs committee. Though clearly this is in response to the huge increase in media related inquiries from the Church, as I reflected upon his remarks, I feel that this is also applicable to our duty (for those who will accept and see it as such) to tell our story in narrative format.

“Our duty to tell our story ourselves, and not to let it be told by others for us,  I think, is one of the clear lessons we’re learning. Learning how to tell that story in a way that is not defensive, and is true to the things that we know to be true, is something that takes practice. It doesn’t come naturally and easily to everybody, so people need to work on it, we need to work on it, I need to work on it,  and I think, members at home could learn something.”

This observation is important because it helps me to understand that there is a duty associated with telling the story of Christ as he has interacted with us in our own lives. Additionally though, this causes me to realize that this is something that for most of us will not come naturally, even for seasoned filmmakers. To tell our story in an open, non-defensive manner, according to those things which we know to be true will require practice and help.

To this end, the next iteration of Sun Swing will be built to help facilitate this focus. This represents on my end a complete shift of focus and priorities from creating a store front for selling videos to creating a website to freely distribute videos and allow user-patrons to support those storytellers that are working diligently to tell the stories of our Lord in modern times. I see nothing like this presently, which is why I’ve felt to create a distinct platform for it, instead of building on something like YouTube or Vimeo (though I may be leasing resources from Vimeo for a time until I can ramp up enough in-house ability to handle this).

Here’s Elder Clayton’s interview: