RevelationMedia and the International Mission Board announced a new partnership to produce the first fully animated Gospel of Luke told entirely in American Sign Language.
The project is in effort to reach a Deaf community, a group that mission organizations say remains almost entirely unreached with the Gospel.
The Richardson, Texas-based ministry will build the project on the same animation technology it developed for iBIBLE, its interactive visual Bible, but this time the Biblical characters themselves will sign, RevelationMedia said in a press release.
“In many parts of the world, Deaf individuals are treated as second-class citizens,” said Steve Cleary, founder and CEO of RevelationMedia. Disconnected from the hearing world, he said, Deaf people often feel forgotten and unloved, and RevelationMedia wants to hand them the hope of the Gospel in a visual language they actually understand.
Movieguide® has tracked this quiet movement in Christian media for a while now. Deaf Missions released JESUS: A DEAF MISSIONS FILM in 2024, an entirely ASL production calling the Deaf community “one of the largest unreached people groups in the world,” and the kids’ streaming platform Minno rolled out an ASL version of its Bible series for children who sign. This RevelationMedia-IMB effort pushes that same idea further, aiming for full-length, natural sign-language storytelling rather than an interpreter inset in the corner of the screen.
“We are excited to partner with Revelation Media, to leverage innovative technologies to bring God’s Word to life and accelerate the translation of the Bible for Deaf peoples,” said Victor Hou, chief of staff administration for the International Mission Board, in the press release.
Related: New Jesus Movie Could Reach 70 Million Deaf People Around the World
Officially, about 70 million Deaf people live worldwide, though unofficial estimates run as high as 400 million. Only 2% are considered reached with the Gospel in any form, a number both organizations cited as the reason for the project’s urgency.
RevelationMedia has begun animating Luke’s first chapter, with a goal of 24 episodes total, one for every chapter in the Gospel. Once that first chapter wraps, the studio plans to reanimate the same scenes into more than 300 of the world’s sign languages, so Deaf viewers everywhere can encounter Luke’s account of Jesus in their own native sign. According to RevelationMedia’s fundraising page for the chapter, production costs run about $200,000, and a matching grant is currently doubling every donation up to $100,000.
“This new project will impact the over 70 million Deaf people in the world with the good news of the Gospel,” Cleary said. “We are honored to partner with groups such as the IMB to make this dream a reality.”
The technology underlying the project traces back to iBIBLE, which RevelationMedia describes as the first visual and interactive Bible presenting the whole biblical narrative as one continuous story.
The Gospel of Luke in ASL remains in its early production stages.
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