Crowd-Funded Christian Series 'The Chosen' Just Received the Best Christmas Present

Back in April, my colleague Duke wrote about “The Chosen” and how meaningful the Christian streaming series has been on his walk as a believer in Christ (see Come and See: The Best Show Ever About Jesus Christ, The Chosen)

At the time, the series’ second season had just launched.

He wrote:

Thank the Lord that during this time I found a show about the life of Jesus Christ and His Apostles called “The Chosen” and it is one of the best things I have ever watched.

Ever.

In the history of my limited time in the world.

The concept is incredibly simple but altogether unique. There have been endless stories done on T.V. and in movies about Jesus and His time walking the big blue marble we call Earth but those all dealt with the stories from the Bible in a compressed time frame. You can do a story about certain passages from scripture in 2, 3, or 5 hours but you can’t put all that happened in between those famous events that have been told numerous times. While the Bible does not go into all the in-between of every minute or every week for that matter, what were Christ and His followers doing before and after the accounts of his words and miracles being performed?

…

The creator of this enterprise is a gentleman by the name of Dallas Jenkins who envisioned doing a multi-season show about Jesus and telling a story about the happenings surrounding these historically recorded events.

That, in and of itself, would be a daunting task, but the other amazing part of this is that “The Chosen” is now the largest crowd-funded project in history and is being paid for by people that are just in love with this show and I happen to be one of those people.

Now, the show has announced in an email to fans that it will go ahead with Season Three; because loyal viewers have once again boosted their support, they say the new season can be produced in 2022, according to the Washington Times.

The Washington Times:

As of June, “The Chosen” had garnered more than 200 million online views and raised $22 million from viewers wishing to underwrite future episodes.

Those numbers have grown in the months since, aided by the record-setting Christmas special “The Chosen: The Messengers” which had a ten-day run on 1,500 movie screens nationwide.

The Washington Times shared an earlier quote from the series creator and executive producer Dallas Jenkins, who gives a sort of sneak peek at the upcoming season (though no release date for it has been published yet).

During the September 2021 filming of that Christmas program, Mr. Jenkins expressed optimism about the scripts and stories for the show’s third season.

“I’m currently finishing up the writing of season three, and we are planning to start filming early 2022,” Mr. Jenkins said in an interview on location in Goshen, Utah.

“I never want to get ahead of myself, but we’re covering some ground and covering some stories that the fans I know are going to be extremely excited about, that the scripts are turning out great,” he said.

Now, $22 million is a chunk of change. But while they don’t share the final tally, it’s not cheap to make quality television programming like this. And remember, while looking at that number, that the program is free to watch for anyone who wants to. That’s right. Anyone can watch this story about Jesus — no strings attached. That’s a pretty Christian concept, if you ask me.

“The Chosen” is available in a bunch of ways, including by a mobile app for Google Android and Apple iOS devices, or on the cable channel BYUtv.

Or you can simply hop on YouTube. Watch the Christmas special below, via The Chosen’s YouTube page.