Following the recent announcement that the General Conference was scrapping the much-anticipated release of the web series The Record Keeper, a set of guidelines for acceptable creative expression has been released. To avoid future confusion, new creative evangelism projects will only be funded and approved by the GC if they take the form of PowerPoint slides.
The announcement comes against the backdrop of massive outrage over the suspension of the 11-part steampunk series which was based on The Great Controversy by Ellen G. White. The series had already received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Church and clearance from numerous GC committees. The Record Keeper had garnered rave reviews from screening audiences and won film festival awards but had not yet been released for the general public.
“We are still big proponents of creative outreach,” said GC spokesperson Greg Hansel in a press conference scheduled to address the uproar. “Some might be discouraged that we had to suspend The Record Keeper due to theological inaccuracies. But we aren’t going to leave our creative members high and dry. As of today we are releasing a pre-approved database of hundreds of PowerPoint templates available for free download.”
Hansel went on to explain that each PowerPoint template features attractive color schemes “but nothing too racy.” He said that the GC had declared the following as acceptable fonts: Arial, Times New Roman and (on a case by case basis) Comic Sans.
“Feel free to go crazy with slide transitions, though. Fade-aways, spinners, bouncing cubes — flip those bad boys any which way your heart desires. I mean, there’s a reason we call it creative license!” said Hansel.
Responding to the critique that the church had just gotten rid of what many saw as its first promising foray into modern filmmaking, Hansel called on those present to remember that “just because we have the Present Truth doesn’t mean we have to be current. We are fine with using contemporary methods of outreach as long as they have first been scrutinized for 20 years.”
