Josh Whitehouse 0:00
I’ve never been one for small dreams. I think, I think we should, we should dream big and we should reach for the skies. I mean, we have a God that is, that is so big. Why? Why dream small? Why? Why dream small?

Jeff Nichols 0:21
Welcome to Fellowship One:Seven a podcast from Child Evangelism Fellowship for the Christian community, on this podcast, we dive into the world of child evangelism and discipleship through interviews and discussions with ministry leaders and thinkers. Hey everyone. Welcome to Fellowship One:Seven a podcast from Child Evangelism Fellowship. We are honored today to have Josh Whitehouse with us. He is the founder and director of Go Chatter Studios. It’s a nonprofit ministry dedicated in engaging the next generation with scripture through LEGO stop motion animation. Their mission is amazing. It’s bold and it’s creative, and they want to recreate the entire Bible and LEGO stop motion. I know you’re going to enjoy the conversation today with Josh. Josh, it’s great to have you here today on Fellowship One:Seven. It’s great to be here. Thank you so much for having me. Jeff, honestly, when when I heard about this Fellowship One:Seven podcast with you today, and because I know about the partnership that CEF has with your studio, Go Chatter Studios. I could not wait to hear more about what you’re doing, how you’re doing it, and just the vision behind it, too. So let’s start there, Josh, let’s start with kind of the heart behind the vision of Go Chatter Studios. How did the idea come about to make these videos and specifically use LEGO stop motion to tell these Bible stories.

Josh Whitehouse 1:48
Yeah, it’s a great question, Jeff. And thank you so much for having me. I had the real privilege of growing up in a very strong Christian family where I was surrounded by lots of lots of great biblical resources, and kind of enveloped in the teachings of Jesus, in the Bible, in Bible stories. I grew up with picture book Bibles and watching Veggie Tales and what’s in the Bible. So yeah, I was surrounded by all these Christian resources. I also, ever since I was five, have been the biggest LEGO nerd that you have ever met. I have been building, building LEGO models, literally ever since I was young. And that particularly developed into into a much more serious passion when when I was a teenager, and it was it was when I was a teenager during lockdown, that I first started making some very basic LEGO Bible animations for for my mum, because she was doing the online Sunday school at the time, and she asked me to make some LEGO Bible animations for her. And so I made a few of these. And after making them, I started to I realized, I started to see that the using the gifts and passions that God had given me in LEGO and using that to create Bible stories was was a way of giving just a little bit of the privilege I’d had growing up in a Christian home, the resources I’d had, giving that to people literally all around the world, and that that was where really sparked the heart of this ministry. And God has, God has taken us on a journey since then, God’s taken these animations on a journey since then, since those first few in lockdown, but now we are a year old charity. So, so we set up as a charity just over a year ago, and we’re now making the whole Bible in LEGO stop motion, three to five minute long, really, really high quality LEGO animations and Bible stories, and using them as, as I said, as a way of resourcing children, of resourcing younger me’s with the Bible, exciting them about the Bible, exciting them about Jesus, and engaging them with with the gospel.

Jeff Nichols 3:52
That is amazing. Josh. I’m telling you, young people today need to hear your story. Every young person needs to hear your story because it was it’s so easy to think that ministry looks a certain way. It seems to fit in a certain box, and you’ve made a LEGO box out of it and said, No, it doesn’t have to look like that. It can look out of different ways.

Josh Whitehouse 4:10
That’s that’s exactly what I thought. Yeah, that’s exactly what I thought when, when I was younger, because I remember one, one story that really impacted me as a young kid, seven, eight years old, was the parable of the talents and and how we should use our gifts and talents for God and for His glory. And when I first heard that, I was already well into, into my into my LEGO obsession at the time, and I thought, Okay, well, how do I use LEGO for God? Do I? Do I build a church? Because that’s that’s like your typical view of ministry, isn’t it? Is. It’s building churches, it’s, it’s, it’s, yeah, it’s going out to Papua New Guinea, and being a missionary out there. But actually, it’s incredible how God can use just ordinary people and ordinary skills and and use them for His glory in in creative ways there. I mean, this isn’t my idea. This is, this is God’s idea. This is God’s doing and it’s amazing seeing how he brings to life his followers and uses them for His glory.

Jeff Nichols 5:08
That’s amazing. So this is relatively new. I mean, just since lockdown, since 2020, and then only a one year old, you know, ministry that you got going on, and this is a ministry that you establish, this as a nonprofit ministry, rather than taking a business model of a for profit business that we want to grow and grow and maybe sell off and be acquired or whatever. What made you go that direction?

Josh Whitehouse 5:31
Yeah, there was a couple of reasons. The first, the first and most important reason is, I have a heart for the Bible to be freely accessible. For biblical resources to be freely accessible. I don’t think there should be a paywall between anyone wanting to access Christ. We’re not in this for the money we’re we’re in this to give to serve others, as Christ served us. So that’s the first and biggest reason, is I didn’t want there to be a paywall in front of any content that we were creating, any restriction to people being able to access these, these biblical stories. The second reason, a slightly simpler, simpler and obvious one, is that we couldn’t sell anything that we were doing because, because we use LEGO, right, we’re restricted by the trademarks. And that’s true. So, so, so we’re a nonprofit. As a nonprofit, LEGO allows us to do what we do, but we wouldn’t be able to be a commercial organization, making a making a profit from from doing, selling our animations.

Jeff Nichols 6:28
Yeah, that makes sense. So, so just to give the people a thumbnail sketch of what you’re doing, you’re creating short animated videos using LEGO stop motion LEGO to illustrate specific stories of the Bible. Tell us. We’ll mention this again on the back end of this, but tell us where they can find you online. So to watch, watch these videos.

Josh Whitehouse 6:49
Yeah. So the best place to watch them is, is YouTube. We publish all our videos on YouTube, and you can, you can search Go Chatter Studios on YouTube. So that’s where you’ll that’s where you’ll be able to find all or even if you just search LEGO Bible. Ours will probably be somewhere up there. But Go Chatter Studios is the name of the ministry. Then if you want to, if you’re a church or a school or a Christian ministry and you want to download the videos, you can download them completely for free, and you can do that on our website. That’s Go ChatterStudios.org so GoChatterStudios.org and you can download all of our content for free on our website, and that’s where you can also donate to help support the ministry.

Jeff Nichols 7:27
Awesome, GoChatterStudios.org and another place to find those is because of the partnership between Go Chatter Studios and Child Evangelism Fellowship those those are being those can also be found in our U-Nite, that’s U N I T E our U-Nite Kids app. So you’ve graciously allowed us to put those onto our U-Nite App, and that’s a great place to find them too. So that’s what we’re talking about, so that everybody understands what we’re talking about.

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Jeff Nichols 8:24
Your vision is to recreate and animate the entire Bible in LEGO video form. That’s an incredible vision. Why such a big vision? Tell me about that far reaching vision that you have.

Josh Whitehouse 8:38
Yeah, well, I’ve never been one for small dreams. I think, I think we should, we should dream big, and we should reach for the skies. I mean, we have a God that is so big. Why? Why dream small? Why? Why dream small? So I think I’ve always been someone that has wanted to do the biggest, the best, at the greatest possible. Of course, that that can’t be done without, without God’s help and without his support. So that’s my personal background and and then when I, when I started making these LEGO animations and Bible stories, in many ways, it was really the obvious next step. Okay, we’ve started making some Bible stories. Let’s do the whole Bible. Let’s dream big. Let’s, let’s make as many as we possibly can. And so we’ve made these 12 slash 13 so far, and we’ve already seen such an incredible impact from just a few animations. So we want to continue that. And the way to continue that is to keep on making more and more and and by the end of the project, the hope is to have animated the whole Bible in LEGO stop motion.

Jeff Nichols 9:36
I know everyone’s going to love it, especially the kids are going to love these. I watched a bunch of them. I think my favorite is Jonah, the animation. And my favorite, I love Jonah. I love the Jonah, but I especially loved the Bible in 90 seconds too. That’s the perfect way to get a big picture view of the Bible. You guys did an excellent job with that. It’s just very intriguing, even for an old guy like me, to watch that LEGO animation. But I know it’s especially intriguing for the younger audience. Why do you think that is such an engaging medium to use to tell the stories of the Bible?

Josh Whitehouse 10:13
There’s three reasons that I think LEGO, specifically, LEGO is so good to retell Bible stories, and that’s that it’s universal, it’s authentic and it’s accessible. It’s universal, it’s it’s available to everyone. Everyone can engage with it, everyone can enjoy it, everyone can understand it. LEGO is something that breaks down cultural barriers. It breaks down age barriers and and so everyone, the whole world, can engage in and we’re seeing that we’re starting to translate our content, and it’s doing just as well, if not better, in some cases, in other languages. So that’s first reason is it’s, it’s universal, and the second reason is that it’s, it’s authentic. LEGO as a medium, and particularly stop motion. LEGO stop motion is something that that you can see the passion that has been poured into it. And that I love, I love the phrase that when it comes to content creation, people get out what you put in. So when we, when we’re, when we’re putting in passion and effort into our content, people get that out of the content. And when we’re putting God into our content. People get that out of the content. So, so, so that’s the second reason is that LEGO is a medium. Is authentic. People can feel it and and there’s something they can’t always describe it but, but they can see and feel the passion that has been poured into our animations. And the third, the third reason is that LEGO is accessible. It’s it’s something that when someone coming across a LEGO animation online, particularly if they’re a non Christian, a non Christian is going to engage with the LEGO animation just as much as a Christian would. Is something that is accessible to all cultures or people, and we see that again online, we get literally hundreds of comments we’ve received online from prisons, atheists, agnostics, all really enjoying our animations. And so something that is accessible to a really wide range of audience, that’s, that’s those, those three reasons, is why I think the LEGO as a medium is, it’s, it’s placed in a really unique place to to be able to reach such a wide audience.

Jeff Nichols 12:18
That’s a great explanation. Josh, very easy to understand, and I can imagine it’s catching on. What type of response have you had so far to these videos?

Josh Whitehouse 12:27
Such an incredible response. Such an incredible response. So, so in a year, I’ll give you a few stats. In this past year, we’ve we’ve grown by 200,000 followers from a following base of basically nothing. So that’s in one year again, well over 20, maybe 25 million views in just one year, from from from basically nothing. And so those are the big numbers, but, but the things that really excite me are the comments. So I mentioned earlier, we get comments from, from people on online, saying that, hey, I’m a Muslim, I’m an atheist, I’m an agnostic, but I love this animation, and this animation really impacted me. And we also, we also received a comment a few days ago, maybe a week ago, saying, Hey, I I started reading the Bible again, watching this animation, and I like, how amazing is that the God is God is taking LEGO and people are reading the Bible because that’s what we want them to be. We want them to be reading the Bible. And so God is taking LEGO bricks and getting people to read the Bible from from LEGO bricks. And I, I just think that’s I just think that’s incredible, but, but for me, the encouraging thing there is that we receive dozens, maybe hundreds, of those, those types of comments. But I think that’s a fraction of the way that God is using this ministry, because particularly for a digital, online evangelistic ministry, most of the time we’re never going to see how God is. I think it’s true in life in general, in that a lot of the time we never see how God works and how he’s at work. But particularly so when we’re sitting behind the screens and our audience is behind another screen, 1000s and 1000s of miles away, across the Atlantic. And so I think this is the encouraging thing for me, is that when we’re seeing comments like this, I see that as just a fraction of the impact that the God is creating around the world through through what we do, and we’ll never know a lot of that, and until we get to heaven, hopefully, but in this life, we’ll never know. And that’s a comfort, because it doesn’t put the weight on our shoulders. It gives the glory to God.

Jeff Nichols 14:28
That’s right, that’s beautiful. You said it very well. I’m fascinated by the way movies are done, videos are done, and when I saw this, it just absolutely fascinated me to learn how you do this. I know you could talk for an hour about all the creative process, or more, the way, the way it’s done. Can you give us a little thumbnail description of the way it goes from creative thought to the actual production to getting it onto YouTube? Yeah.

Josh Whitehouse 14:55
So the first and most important step for us is that all our animation. Start in the Bible. So that’s, that’s where everything we create is. It starts in the Bible. Starts with our script writer, Rachel Hood, who’s a very, very skilled poet and author, writing the scripts, taking the Bible stories and turning them into a really engaging and accessible script that that you hear in our animations. That’s the first step. The next step then, is the animation. Is the LEGO this is, this the fun, fun bit. For me, it’s where, it’s where we bring in the sets. If you’re watching this on video, you’ll be able to see some of the LEGO and the sets behind me on the shelves. And so I’ll make any sets that are needed for the animation. So for example, for Jonah, I had to build a boat and a whale and Nineveh and all those sorts of things. And then you get to the animation itself. And our animations are stop motion animation. And stop motion animation is quite a unique animation technique, where you take a photo and then you move all the characters so they’re physical characters, physical LEGO you move all the characters by a tiny, tiny amount, and then take another photo, then move them all again. Take another photo, move them all again, take another photo. And that process takes quite a while. So on average, it will take us an hour to animate just one second of the videos that you see online, just one second, an hour per second, yeah, and that’s an average so that we there we some animations, that we some clips would take longer than that.

Jeff Nichols 14:55
Your videos average three to five minutes, right?

Josh Whitehouse 16:28
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s right. That’s right. So, so it’s about 200 to 300 maybe even 400 for some more complicated videos, hours that are going into the creation of each of our animations.

Jeff Nichols 16:40
Jonah is one of your favorite Bible stories. Or is there one that you’re you’re working on now that you’re just really excited about for the people to see?

Josh Whitehouse 16:54
Yeah, so, so I’m currently working on the story of Gideon, but I’m really excited for our viewers to for our viewers here to see Jesus walk in water, which is the animation my colleague Sophia, is working on at the moment, and is looking absolutely amazing. She’s just working on the on the scenes of Jesus and Peter on the water together and and figuring out how to do that in LEGO has been, has been quite complicated. I mean, you’ve got a stormy scene in plastic bricks. How do you do that? So I’m very excited. I’m very excited for you guys to see Jesus walk in water as a recording. It’s going to be released in a week and a half hour. Give you the date. So it will be released on Wednesday the 26th so if you watching this after Wednesday the 26th it’s already out. If you’re not, then you get excited for Wednesday the 26th of November.

Jeff Nichols 17:36
You mentioned your writer. Those who haven’t seen a video yet the narration is done in poetic form, beautiful writing. Josh, I mean that that writing is so impressive. It is so beautifully and well done. And it’s not it’s not fluffy, like it’s not going Bible light. It is telling the story as the story is written, and that’s one of the things I loved about it. And it’s told in a beautiful way. So good job on that. I know that churches and families and ministries are using this and ministry settings and discipleship and evangelism. What are some of the ways that you’ve that you’ve heard about churches and families and organizations using these videos?

Josh Whitehouse 18:16
Well, I’ve literally just come back from a school showing showing one of our, one of our animations and and is, as we were talking about earlier. The great thing about LEGO is it’s universal, it’s accessible, it’s authentic, and so it’s it’s just this perfect tool to be able to engage schools and children and families and churches with the Bible. One of the great ways, though, that I think that our animations can be used is combining our animations with a LEGO workshop, with with your church or with the school, and running, running a LEGO workshop as part of your Sunday school, getting a whole pile of LEGO, showing the story of Jonah, and then getting the kids to build a whale, to build a boat, or even An animator like there’s a there’s a free app stop motion studio that you can get on your phone and and I’ve gone into schools and churches where we’ve shown one of the videos, and then they’ve they’ve all got this app on their phone or a tablet, and and then we do a LEGO stop motion workshop, and they learn how the how the animations are made. And this is such a great way of engaging not just your church goers, but the local community as well, because inviting people to a LEGO workshop is such an easy thing to do. Who doesn’t want to go to a LEGO workshop. And you’re bringing, you’re bringing people from outside the church in bringing, you’re going into a school where, where it’s maybe not a Christian school, and you’re engaging people, and people are going to remember that, like, like, it’s not going to be all this weird Christian event. It’s going to be, oh, look, there’s a LEGO workshop that we’re going to and and then you’re telling the Bible stories. And when I’ve gone, I’ve been able to share some of my personal testimony as to why these why. I spend 300 hours making an animation of the Bible, and so I think, I think LEGO workshops, combining our animations with a workshop with a practical activity, is is just such a great way to engage churches and schools and in person communities.

Jeff Nichols 20:17
That’s very creative. That’s a great idea. I know some people will jump on that idea. It’s a fantastic idea. Speaking of ministries, as we’ve said, CEF and Go Chatter Studios have partnered together in various ways. One of the ways is putting your videos on our U-Nite App. Tell us about that partnership. What’s that partnership meant to you, and how is our ministry connection strengthened the work that you’re doing, because we want to help you any way we can for worldwide ministry. And we want to help Go Chatter. We want to get these videos anywhere and everywhere we possibly can.

Josh Whitehouse 20:46
Yeah, well, one of the, probably the biggest thing that I loved about U-Nite TV is your heart to make it completely for free. The fact that it’s a free app to download, and all the content on there is completely for free. And so, so when, when, when CEF reached out to us. It was like, absolutely this. This so well aligns with our heart of making the Bible accessible, freely accessible, to everyone, all around the world and and so, so that that was something that really sparked me and, and I really appreciate about about U-Nite TV is that it’s great, great quality content on there, but all completely for free. So that’s, that’s one of the things I love, and and it’s just, it’s just great for us. We’re wanting, we’re wanting as many people around the world to to be able to access our content for free on platforms like U-Nite TV, like YouTube, like our website and and any others that were on and so, so U-Nite TV is been a great partnership for us and and it’s really encouraging. I get the quarterly, quarterly stats updates, and then it’s really encouraging seeing the 1000s of views that that people are watching our animations on your platform. And, yeah, incredibly encouraging. So it’s a it’s been a blessing to partner with Unite TV.

Jeff Nichols 22:00
We love our partnership with you, Josh and Go Chatter. We want to get that to continue to go on. I would imagine that part of that growth is going to be translation work, of getting the videos translated. How is that on your radar? Is that being done now?

Josh Whitehouse 22:14
It’s being done now and and on our radar in the longer term as well. So at the moment, we’re we’re working on three translations. We’re doing Spanish, Portuguese and Gaelic, Scottish, Gaelic, because the Church of Scotland got in touch with us and were really keen for us to do Gaelic translations. So those are the three that we’re doing at the moment. But as I’ve said, LEGO is universal. Is one of the great things about LEGO is it’s not bound to one culture. And so to our heart with this ministry is really to take it to as many languages, as many people groups, as as we possibly can. So from next year, we’re adding another two languages. We’re going to be doing German and Korean as well. And the plan is to continue growing and continue growing. And it’s been really encouraging. We’ve been particularly focusing on Spanish. This past year, have another amazing colleague called Mac who has been working on our Spanish translations, and they’re receiving millions and millions of views in Spanish and and on our Spanish platforms. So that’s been incredibly encouraging to see. And I’m really excited to see where God takes it in a multilingual sense, and all around the world.

Jeff Nichols 23:22
You have mentioned over and over. You want to keep it completely free, but it does cost something to produce. Costs a lot of money to produce yours on your site, at Go Chatter studios.org, I love the way that you’re tracking the giving for the specific videos. That’s a great way to do it just for people to be able to see what percent of each video is being paid for so far, that’s a great visual for people to be able to give to it. Tell us how we can better pray for you, support you, or even partner with your ministry if individuals want to do that.

Josh Whitehouse 23:55
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, at the moment, there’s, there’s a few things that we’d really appreciate prayer for we’re coming up to the Christmas period, which, as anyone in Christian ministry will know, it’s a busy period. So you can be praying. You can be praying for that. As I mentioned a couple times on this podcast already, we’ve got Jesus walking on water, releasing in about a week. So that’s another thing to be praying for, that the release of that would go smoothly, and the people around the world would be impacted by that animation. And then in in the broader sense, in the longer term, just be praying for this ministry. Be praying that God would use it, that that God’s will would be done through what we’re doing. Be praying for growth and and be praying that along with that, because to grow as a ministry, we do need funding. We’re not about making money, which is why it’s all completely for free. But the reality of this world is we do need money to make what we’re doing. We do need donations to be able to continue. And so that’s that’s one of the best ways to support this ministry. Is, as you were saying on on our website, you can donate towards the creation of each one that. Animations. We’re currently in season three of our animations. Jesus walking on water is the first of season first episode of season three. And you can see all the animations that are coming in season three. We’ve got a lot of exciting ones coming over over the next year, including Exodus, for those, for those watching and See, see some of the Exodus characters here. We got we got Pharaoh and some Egyptians, very exciting animation coming next year, but we’ll be funding these one at a time. So So we’re currently funding Gideon, which will hopefully be released in January, and then we’ll start to to fund Exodus after that. But that’s that’s one of the best ways that you can you can support this ministry. Is going to our website, gotaf studios.org, and donating towards the creation of the next animation.

Jeff Nichols 25:45
I love it. For our listeners who want to tune in again, access your videos. Tell us one more time, the best way to get to to watch them and to even to pay for some of those videos, to contribute and pray for you. Yes, what’s the best way to get in touch with you?

Josh Whitehouse 25:59
Best way to get in touch is, is to go to our website. There’s plenty of, plenty of contact forms on our website, so Go ChatterStudios.org if you want our direct email, then that’s info at Go Chatter studios.org and you can get in touch with us there, but yeah, Go Chatter studios.org you can find out everything about the projects there.

Jeff Nichols 26:18
And you can find all these, all these videos on YouTube and Go Chatter studios there. Thank you, Josh. Thank you for joining us today, but thank you so much for what you’re doing, for the kingdom and for the kids of the kingdom. This is amazing what you’re doing. I love seeing young people like you that live out their passion, and God is using you in a great way to expand his kingdom. Thanks for everything you’re doing.

Josh Whitehouse 26:41
Thank you, Jeff. I’m excited to see what God does in the future. All right. Thanks a lot. Bye, bye.