Canned, Ready to Serve

A 40-minute color movie of a church service--with prayers, psalm and a sermon --has just been premiered at Los Angeles' Wilshire Methodist Church. Called The Templed Hills, it is the first of nine scheduled by Youth Films, Inc.

Sparkplug of Youth Films is muscular, ash-blond Rev. Borland P. Dryer, 36, a boy evangelist grown up, who spent his youth traveling with such famous spellbinders as Billy Sunday and Uldine Utley, later studied at several universities. One day Dryer faced the fact that more people were going to movie houses than to churches. "We were missing the boat," he says. "The visual image was here to stay."

It is possible that Dryer's visual images may prove highly profitable (rental: $17.50 to $25). There are only some 18,000 theaters in the U.S., but there are well over 200,000 Protestant churches.

Cineminister Dryer conducts the nondenominational services for his films and preaches the sermons himself, which are illustrated with his own mood shots of nature (e.g., a glimpse of Yosemite's Half Dome: "God is the Rock of Ages in the midst of a confused world").

Sample titles of forthcoming canned services: Desert Symphony, Lily of the Valley, Blue Horizons, Day Is Done.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.