Being made ready
Ripened Harvest
Formation and study: Scripture, seminary and degree paths, certificates, catechesis, free courses, reading plans, biblical languages, apologetics, podcasts, worship music, books, and devotionals. The ripening that precedes usefulness.
Jesus also said, “The Kingdom of God is like a farmer who scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, while he’s asleep or awake, the seed sprouts and grows, but he does not understand how it happens. The earth produces the crops on its own. First a leaf blade pushes through, then the heads of wheat are formed, and finally the grain ripens. And as soon as the grain is ready, the farmer comes and harvests it with a sickle, for the harvest time has come.”And he said, So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground; And should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how. For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear. But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come.And he said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”He also said, “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.”And He said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground, and should sleep by night and rise by day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he himself does not know how. For the earth yields crops by itself: first the blade, then the head, after that the full grain in the head. But when the grain ripens, immediately he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”“The kingdom of God is like this,” he said. “A man scatters seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day; the seed sprouts and grows, although he doesn’t know how. The soil produces a crop by itself—first the blade, then the head, and then the full grain on the head. As soon as the crop is ready, he sends for the sickle, because the harvest has come.”And He was saying, “The kingdom of God is like a man who casts seed upon the soil; and he goes to bed at night and gets up daily, and the seed sprouts and grows—how, he himself does not know. The soil produces crops by itself; first the stalk, then the head, then the mature grain in the head. Now when the crop permits, he immediately puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”He said, “God’s Kingdom is as if a man should cast seed on the earth, and should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should spring up and grow, though he doesn’t know how. For the earth bears fruit by itself: first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the fruit is ripe, immediately he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”Jesus also said, “The kingdom of God is like a man who scatters seed on the ground. Night and day he sleeps and wakes, and the seed sprouts and grows, though he knows not how. All by itself the earth produces a crop—first the stalk, then the head, then grain that ripens within. And as soon as the grain is ripe, he swings the sickle, because the harvest has come.”
Study here is formation for service, not self-improvement. The field ripens before it is useful; so does a person. How we choose.
- What it is
- A hand-checked list of ways to be formed — Scripture study, seminary and degree paths, certificates, free courses, reading plans, biblical languages, apologetics, podcasts, worship music, books, devotionals, and watched film. Each carries its format, level, cost, and a note on why it is here.
- What it’s not
- Not a school and not a substitute for the local church. Study here is formation for service, never a private asset. A listing is not an endorsement of every position a school or teacher holds.
- How to use it
- Filter by format, subject, level, cost, and time. Open a listing for the real starting point and, for anything you watch, what to know before you press play. Free routes are marked.
- Film & seriesVerified
The Chosen
The Chosen, Inc.
A multi-season drama about Jesus told mostly from the disciples' side, with each of them given a life, a temper and a backstory before they are called. Released free, and by a wide margin the most-watched thing in this section.
- Cost
- Free
- Time
- Weeks
- Where
- Online
- Who for
- Adults · Series
Last verified September 8, 2026
- Film & seriesVerified
The Bible's Buried Secrets
NOVA / WGBH and Providence Pictures
A two-hour NOVA special on the archaeology of ancient Israel: where the Israelites came from, when the Hebrew Bible was written, and what has and has not been found in the ground. Filmed on site across the Middle East with excavation footage and digital reconstruction.
- Cost
- Free
- Time
- A few hours
- Where
- Online
- Who for
- Adults · Documentary
Last verified September 8, 2026
- Film & seriesVerified
Bonhoeffer
Journey Films
Martin Doblmeier's documentary on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, built from archival footage, his own letters and papers, and interviews with people who knew him and with theologians who have argued about him since. Ninety minutes, from the Confessing Church to Flossenburg.
- Cost
- Varies
- Time
- A few hours
- Where
- Online
- Who for
- Adults · Documentary
Last verified September 8, 2026
- Family & childrenVerified
Buck Denver Asks… What's in the Bible?
Jellyfish Labs (Phil Vischer)
Thirteen volumes of puppets, songs and a host walking children through every book of the Bible in order — nine on the Old Testament, four on the New. It teaches the shape of the canon rather than retelling the stories: covenant, exile, why there are two testaments, where the books came from.
- Cost
- Paid
- Time
- Weeks
- Where
- Online
- Who for
- Young children · Series
Last verified September 8, 2026
- Film & seriesVerified
From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians
FRONTLINE / WGBH
A four-hour Frontline series on how a Galilean movement became the church of the Roman empire, told through archaeology, the letters, and a large panel of New Testament scholars. No reenactment: sites, texts and talking heads.
- Cost
- Free
- Time
- A few hours
- Where
- Online
- Who for
- Adults · Documentary
Last verified September 8, 2026
- Film & seriesVerified
The Miracle Maker
Christmas Films, S4C and BBC Wales
The life of Jesus in stop-motion puppetry, drawn mainly from Luke, with the parables and visions switched to flat two-dimensional animation so you can always tell a story-inside-the-story from the story. Ralph Fiennes voices Jesus; the Welsh and Russian animation teams give it a texture nothing else in this section has.
- Cost
- Varies
- Time
- A few hours
- Where
- Online
- Who for
- All ages · Film
Last verified September 8, 2026
- Family & childrenVerified
The Story of Jesus for Children
Jesus Film Project
The 1979 JESUS film recut for children, with newly shot framing scenes of first-century children who watch Jesus and then argue about what they have seen. Just over an hour, and free in a very large number of languages.
- Cost
- Free
- Time
- A few hours
- Where
- Online
- Who for
- Older children · Film
Last verified September 8, 2026
- Family & childrenVerified
Superbook
The Christian Broadcasting Network
Two children and a robot are pulled into Bible stories by a flying book, one story an episode, from Genesis through Revelation. Five seasons of computer-animated half-hours, each framed by a problem in the children's own lives that the passage then answers.
- Cost
- Free
- Time
- Ongoing
- Where
- Online
- Who for
- Young children · Series
Last verified September 8, 2026
- Family & childrenVerified
The Torchlighters: Heroes of the Faith
Christian History Institute
Half-hour animated biographies of real Christians — Tyndale, Perpetua, John Bunyan, Corrie ten Boom, Richard Wurmbrand, Jim Elliot, Harriet Tubman, Adoniram and Ann Judson. Each episode takes one life, one crisis, and one decision, and is aimed squarely at eight- to twelve-year-olds.
- Cost
- Varies
- Time
- Weeks
- Where
- Online
- Who for
- Older children · Series
Last verified September 8, 2026
- ApologeticsProvisional
The Case for Christ
Pure Flix Entertainment
A 2017 drama about Lee Strobel, the atheist legal editor at the Chicago Tribune who set out to disprove Christianity after his wife's conversion and ended up believing it. Based on his book of the same name, it follows the evidence he weighed for the resurrection.
- Cost
- Paid
- Time
- One-off
- Where
- Online
- Who for
- Teens · Film
Last verified October 24, 2026
- Film & seriesProvisional
Chariots of Fire
Enigma Productions
Two runners go to the 1924 Paris Olympics: Harold Abrahams, running against the antisemitism of Cambridge, and Eric Liddell, a Scottish missionary's son who will not run on a Sunday. It won Best Picture and is quieter and slower than its reputation suggests.
- Cost
- Paid
- Time
- A few hours
- Where
- Online
- Who for
- All ages · Film
Last verified September 8, 2026
- Family & childrenProvisional
A Charlie Brown Christmas
Lee Mendelson Film Productions
Twenty-five minutes in which Charlie Brown cannot work out why Christmas depresses him, directs a disastrous school play, and buys a dying tree. Linus then walks to the centre of an empty stage and recites Luke 2 from memory.
- Cost
- Varies
- Time
- Under an hour
- Where
- Online
- Who for
- All ages · Film
Last verified September 8, 2026
- Church historyProvisional
The Cross: Jesus in China
China Soul for Christ Foundation
A documentary on fifty years of Chinese Christianity, with a focus on the house-church movement, in four parts: The Spring of Life, Seeds of Blood, The Bitter Cup and The Canaan Hymns. Made by Chinese Christian filmmakers led by Yuan Zhiming, who came to faith after leaving China in 1989.
- Cost
- Free
- Time
- A few hours
- Where
- Online
- Who for
- Adults · Documentary
Last verified October 24, 2026
- Film & seriesProvisional
Dispatches from the Front
Frontline Missions International
A documentary series in journal form that follows gospel work in hard places: Southeast Asia, the Balkans, West Africa, India, Ethiopia and South Sudan, North Africa, China, Indochina and the Middle East. Each episode visits believers and churches on the ground rather than reporting from a studio.
- Cost
- Low cost
- Time
- Weeks
- Where
- Online
- Who for
- Adults · Documentary
Last verified October 24, 2026
- Film & seriesProvisional
End of the Spear
Every Tribe Entertainment
A 2006 feature film telling the story of the five missionaries killed by the Waodani in Ecuador in 1956, and of what happened afterward when the families of the dead went to live among the tribe. It is told largely from the point of view of Mincayani, one of the men who did the killing.
- Cost
- Paid
- Time
- One-off
- Where
- Online
- Who for
- Adults · Film
Last verified October 24, 2026
- Film & seriesProvisional
The Forge
Kendrick Brothers / Affirm Films
A 2024 drama from the Kendrick Brothers about Isaiah Wright, a year out of high school with no plan, whose single mother and a Christian businessman push him toward discipleship and a different course for his life. A companion story to War Room, with Priscilla Shirer returning.
- Cost
- Paid
- Time
- One-off
- Where
- Online
- Who for
- Teens · Film
Last verified October 24, 2026
- Film & seriesProvisional
The Hiding Place
World Wide Pictures
Corrie ten Boom and her family hide Jews above their Haarlem watch shop, are betrayed, and are sent to Ravensbrück. Adapted from Corrie's own book and made by Billy Graham's film company in 1975.
- Cost
- Paid
- Time
- A few hours
- Where
- Online
- Who for
- Teens · Film
Last verified September 8, 2026
- Film & seriesProvisional
I Can Only Imagine
Lionsgate / Roadside Attractions (Erwin Brothers)
The story behind the MercyMe song: Bart Millard grows up in Greenville, Texas, under an abusive father who is changed by faith when he becomes terminally ill. Their reconciliation becomes the song that made the band known.
- Cost
- Varies
- Time
- One-off
- Where
- Online
- Who for
- Teens · Film
Last verified October 24, 2026
- Film & seriesProvisional
The Insanity of God
Nik Ripken Ministries
A documentary following missionaries Nik and Ruth Ripken, who after the death of their son in Africa travelled through the persecuted church asking whether Jesus is worth it. It draws on hundreds of interviews with believers in Russia, China and the Muslim world.
- Cost
- Low cost
- Time
- One-off
- Where
- Online
- Who for
- Adults · Documentary
Last verified October 24, 2026
- Film & seriesProvisional
JESUS (the Jesus Film)
Jesus Film Project
A 1979 life of Christ taken almost entirely from Luke's Gospel, shot in Israel with Brian Deacon as Jesus. It has since been dubbed into well over a thousand languages and is, by most counts, the most-watched film ever made.
- Cost
- Free
- Time
- A few hours
- Where
- Online
- Who for
- Adults · Film
Last verified September 8, 2026
- Film & seriesProvisional
Joseph: King of Dreams
DreamWorks Animation
The Genesis account of Joseph — the coat, the pit, Potiphar's house, the prison, the famine and the reunion — made as a direct-to-video companion to The Prince of Egypt. Joseph's dreams are rendered as a swirling Van Gogh-styled sequence that sets them visibly apart from the waking story.
- Cost
- Paid
- Time
- A few hours
- Where
- Online
- Who for
- Older children · Film
Last verified September 8, 2026
- Church historyProvisional
A documentary on the Welsh physician who left medicine to pastor in Aberavon and then Westminster Chapel, London. It covers his home life, influences and two pastorates, and his conviction that preaching should be logic on fire.
- Cost
- Low cost
- Time
- One-off
- Where
- Online
- Who for
- Adults · Documentary
Last verified October 24, 2026
- Bible studyProvisional
The Lumo Project Gospel films
Lumo Project / Bible Media Group
Four feature-length films of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in which the complete Gospel text is the script, narrated word for word over a dramatised, unscripted visual retelling filmed in the Middle East and North Africa. English narration is available in the NIV, KJV and ESV.
- Cost
- Free
- Time
- A few hours
- Where
- Online
- Who for
- Teens · Series
Last verified October 24, 2026
- Church historyProvisional
Luther (2003)
Eikon Film / Thrivent Financial for Lutherans
A feature-length biographical drama with Joseph Fiennes as Martin Luther, from his early crisis of conscience as a monk through the Ninety-five Theses, Worms and the Peasants' War. It was partly funded by Thrivent Financial for Lutherans and released in US cinemas in 2003.
- Cost
- Paid
- Time
- One-off
- Where
- Online
- Who for
- Adults · Film
Last verified October 24, 2026
- Film & seriesProvisional
Martin Luther: The Idea That Changed the World
Boettcher + Trinklein Television for PBS
A feature-length documentary on Luther built from dramatic reenactments and interviews with church historians, narrated by Hugh Bonneville. It runs from the thunderstorm and the monastery through Wittenberg, Worms and the German Bible.
- Cost
- Varies
- Time
- A few hours
- Where
- Online
- Who for
- Adults · Documentary
Last verified September 8, 2026
- Family & childrenProvisional
Owlegories
Owlegories (the Boto family)
An animated series in which student owls learn about God from things in nature: the sun, seeds, water, butterflies. Built on Psalm 19, each episode closes with a short message from a guest teacher such as Tony Evans or Jen Wilkin.
- Cost
- Varies
- Time
- A few hours
- Where
- Online
- Who for
- Young children · Series
Last verified October 24, 2026
- Family & childrenProvisional
The Pilgrim's Progress (animated)
RevelationMedia
A computer-animated feature film of John Bunyan's allegory, following Christian from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City. Made for family viewing and translated into many languages for use overseas.
- Cost
- Varies
- Time
- One-off
- Where
- Online
- Who for
- Older children · Film
Last verified October 24, 2026
- Film & seriesProvisional
The Prince of Egypt
DreamWorks Animation
The Exodus story told as animation, following Moses from the Nile basket to the parting of the sea. The plagues and the final night in Egypt are played with real weight rather than softened, and the score carries much of the storytelling.
- Cost
- Paid
- Time
- A few hours
- Where
- Online
- Who for
- Older children · Film
Last verified September 8, 2026
- Bible studyProvisional
Spoken Gospel
Spoken Gospel
Free video introductions of about ten minutes to each book of the Bible, plus short devotionals on every chapter and a podcast, all aimed at showing how each passage points to Jesus. The library is arranged book by book and is still being completed.
- Cost
- Free
- Time
- Ongoing
- Where
- Online
- Who for
- Adults · Series
Last verified October 24, 2026
- Family & childrenProvisional
Testament: The Bible in Animation
S4C and Christmas Films
Nine half-hour Bible stories — Creation and the Flood, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Ruth, David and Saul, Elijah, Jonah, Daniel — each made in a different animation technique by a Welsh and Russian co-production. Puppets, paint-on-glass and cel animation, one style per story.
- Cost
- Varies
- Time
- A few hours
- Where
- Online
- Who for
- Older children · Series
Last verified September 8, 2026
- Family & childrenProvisional
Theo Presents
Whitestone Media
A short-episode animated series in which an elderly English theologian named Theo, with two mice, teaches children one doctrine per episode: God's love, grace, heart, truth and desire. Each volume ties the teaching to Scripture rather than to a moral lesson.
- Cost
- Paid
- Time
- A few hours
- Where
- Online
- Who for
- Young children · Series
Last verified October 24, 2026
- Church historyProvisional
This Changed Everything: 500 Years of the Reformation
Christian History Institute
A three-part documentary series on the history and legacy of the Protestant Reformation, narrated by David Suchet. Church historians trace the story from the late medieval church through Luther, Zwingli and Calvin and ask what the divisions mean for the church today.
- Cost
- Free
- Time
- A few hours
- Where
- Online
- Who for
- Adults · Documentary
Last verified October 24, 2026
- Church historyProvisional
Through the Eyes of Spurgeon
Stephen McCaskell
A feature-length documentary on the life and ministry of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the Baptist preacher of London's Metropolitan Tabernacle. Filmed on location in England with historians and pastors who have studied him.
- Cost
- Low cost
- Time
- One-off
- Where
- Online
- Who for
- Adults · Documentary
Last verified October 24, 2026
- Film & seriesProvisional
Tortured for Christ: The Movie
The Voice of the Martyrs
A cinematic retelling of the testimony of Richard Wurmbrand, the Romanian pastor imprisoned for fourteen years under communism, and of his wife Sabina's three years in prison and forced labour. Based on his book of the same name.
- Cost
- Free
- Time
- One-off
- Where
- Online
- Who for
- Adults · Film
Last verified October 24, 2026
- Family & childrenProvisional
VeggieTales
Big Idea Entertainment
Computer-animated vegetables retell Bible stories and original fables, with a silly song in the middle and a moral at the end. It ran for decades in several forms and is the default Christian children's video in a great many homes.
- Cost
- Varies
- Time
- Ongoing
- Where
- Online
- Who for
- Young children · Series
Last verified September 8, 2026
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