ABOUT
WordBoard is a whiteboard animation project created to teach the Bible in a fun, simple way. It focuses on explaining books or passages in the Bible itself, rather than theological or doctrinal principles. It is designed to help Christians learn more about the Bible they love so much and think through it the way God intended.
HOW DID WORDBOARD
GET STARTED?
MEET JAMES,
THE CREATOR OF WORDBOARD
HOW DID WORDBOARD GET STARTED?
Back in the Fall of 2013, I was a pastoral intern in a junior high ministry at Grace Community Church located in Sun Valley, CA. At the time, our junior high pastor, Andrew Curry, launched a sermon series called Route 66 where he began to preach one sermon for every book of the Bible. For each sermon, Pastor Andrew showed a YouTube video made by the Vine Project that used whiteboard sketches to summarize the book he was preaching. After he made his way through the first five books, he graciously extended to me the opportunity to preach the next book, Joshua. But when I went to YouTube to find the Vine Project's video on Joshua, I discovered there was no video for it; they had only made videos for Genesis through Deuteronomy. So now, I was stuck. I could just forgo the video altogether; I didn't need it to preach my sermon. But I didn’t want to be “that guy” who would disappoint our students, because there wasn’t a fun video. They had become accustomed to watching a video with every sermon in our series. How could I deny them? That’s when I came up with the “bright” idea to make my own whiteboard video, instead. I figured, “How hard could it be?”
Well, if you’ve ever had the “distinct privilege” of watching my first video on Joshua (not the new and improved one but the one in the picture above), you can tell by the poor quality how hard it can be. And yet despite how pathetic it looked, it was so well received by my youth group and others around church that I continued to make a whiteboard video for nearly every sermon I preached during the Route 66 series. Obadiah, Matthew, 2 Corinthians, and 1 Peter followed. I also threw in two bonus videos, a summary of the Old Testament and a summary of the New Testament, when our series reached each successive milestone. During that time, I continued to learn how to make better whiteboard videos. I tweaked the lighting, changed the position of the camera, adjusted the voiceover. I learned to do the best I could with limited skills and resources. But by Christmas 2014, Route 66 came to an end, and six months later I got a job as a youth pastor at another church nearby. So I hung up my whiteboard marker and moved on with other responsibilities in my life, thinking I would never make another video again.
Yet a recent downturn in my health forced me to step down from youth ministry. But as God would have it, it also opened the door for me to spend some time reviving the WordBoard project. Many of my friends encouraged me to continue making these videos and I’ve seen how valuable they can be. So, in the Summer of 2017, I began taking what little energy I had and started producing more videos. At first, I planned to continue summaries of each book of the Bible, like I had been doing, but my heart also began to be drawn toward misunderstood or hard to understand verses in the Bible. For this reason, I started a new series called Boardies, addressing those confusing or poorly applied verses, like the famous Jeremiah 29:11. Today, WordBoard contains many Summaries, Boardies, and even Snapboards!
WordBoard is such a joy for me to put together! I really want to inspire a love for God’s Word in Christians today. By God’s grace, I hope to continue this project for as long as I can!
ABOUT ME
My name is James Street. I was formerly a youth pastor at Grace Bible Church in Bakersfield, California until chronic fatigue forced me to step down. I am currently unemployed and on disability, but I’m working hard to get back into normal life. I graduated from the Master’s University in 2010 with a Bachelor of Arts in Biblical Counseling and Biblical Languages and from the Master’s Seminary in 2014 and 2015 with a Master of Divinity and a Master of Theology in Old Testament studies. I currently live in Santa Clarita, California with my dear parents, who took me in while I’ve been ill. I have a passion to know God’s Word and to make it known, and I enjoy combining it with my fascination of video and graphic design! I love spending time with my family and spoiling my nieces and nephews. I like college football (Go Buckeyes!), biking, amusement parks, movies, some video games, and coffee (if I can get it to sit well with me).
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