Watch: The Steven Curtis Chapman music video for Journey to Bethlehem

Plus: is Sony copying Angel Studios' "pay it forward" program?

Steven Curtis Chapman (the guitarist on the left), We the Kingdom, and company stand in front of a projected scene from Journey to Bethlehem.

It’s Friday, and that means it’s time for another new Journey to Bethlehem video.

More than one, actually, this week.

First, there’s the music video for ‘Brand New Life’, a song that plays over the film’s end credits. It was written by Steven Curtis Chapman and the film’s main songwriting team (co-writer/director Adam Anders, his wife Nikki, and Peer Åström), and it’s performed in the video by Chapman and a band called We the Kingdom.

You can watch the video here:

The song is also available as a lyric video:

The studio also released a featurette today in which Adam Anders discusses the song with the musicians who perform it (fun fact: Anders, now a major music producer as well as a filmmaker, got his start as Chapman’s bass player back in the 1990s):

The studio also sent out a video this week in which Adam and Nikki Anders invite people to scan a QR code and donate tickets that other people can use to see the movie for free—which sounds an awful lot like the “pay it forward” program that Angel Studios has used for films like His Only Son and Sound of Freedom:

(Have any other studios had programs like this? Movie distributors have always encouraged people to give tickets away or buy them in bulk, but this thing of giving money to the distributor and/or its agents, and letting other people approach the distributor and/or its agents directly for a free ticket, feels like something new to me.)

The studio and its publicists also sent out a new video this week featuring reactions to the film from Catholic leaders and influencers:

Which reminds me, I never posted this video of Protestant reactions to the film:

The Journey to Bethlehem soundtrack comes out November 3, i.e. one week from now; the movie itself comes out November 10, i.e. two weeks from now.

Previous videos for Journey to Bethlehem:

• The teaser trailer (April 28, 2023)

• The official trailer (September 14, 2023)

• The ‘Heart of Journey to Bethlehem’ featurette (September 20, 2023)

• The Mary and Joseph featurette (September 29, 2023)

• The Mary’s sisters featurette (October 3, 2023)

• The Antipater featurette (October 6, 2023)

• The Fig (donkey) featurette (October 10, 2023)

• The ‘Can We Make This Work’ clip (October 13, 2023)

• The King Herod featurette (October 20, 2023)

• The Gabriel featurette (October 25, 2023)

Other previous posts on Journey to Bethlehem:

• ‘Has The Road to Bethlehem not been filmed yet?’ (August 19, 2022)

• ‘Adam Anders’ Nativity musical now filming in Spain’ (February 23, 2023)

• ‘Adam Anders’ Nativity musical gets a title’ (April 3, 2023)

• ‘Exclusive: Journey to Bethlehem director Adam Anders on his years-long quest to make a musical about the Nativity’ (October 23, 2023)