Over my last couple articles, we've explored why Epic the Musical has captured Gen Z's imagination and how it forms its audience through musical beauty. But there's one final, urgent question left to ask: What does Epic's success reveal about the Church's failure to tell the best story ever written?
If TikTok can be charmed by Homer’s ancient poetry, what might happen if we as Christians told the story that is still living and active?
Let's be clear: Jorge Rivera-Herrans has crafted something remarkable in Epic. Through melody and myth, he's delivered a tale that resonates across generational divides. He's tapped into the deep structures of story—the kind that echo in every heart—the hero’s journey, the descent into darkness, the longing for redemption, and the fight to return home.
But Epic, for all its beauty, stops short. It’s reaching for something it can’t quite name. It holds the pieces, but not the pattern that makes them whole.
This isn’t a critique of Epic—it’s a recognition. Jorge told the best story he could with the tools he had. The real tragedy isn’t that Epic doesn’t proclaim the Gospel. It’s that the church, which does have the whole story, keeps telling it like it’s not worth the effort.
Somewhere in history, Christians swapped the glorious for the G-rated. We’re told to make disciples—even of those who despise us—but instead of trusting God to work through raw, unfiltered truth, we’ve tried to tidy it up. Dress it up. Tone it down.
We saw the world sneer at truth and backed away. We feared rejection. We feared not being liked. And instead of praying for boldness, we made the Gospel less bold to match our attitude. We smoothed its edges until there was nothing left to hold onto.
The result? PureFlix. Cotton-candy films that say the right things but don’t say them well. They soothe when they should stir. They’re safe. Polished. Predictable.
Meanwhile, secular creators are out here showing us up—portraying brokenness, desire, even glimpses of redemption with more honesty and artistry than we dare. Not all of them. But enough to make the point.
Yeah, some of their work includes things we cannot and should not condone. But give me a Marvel movie over The Chosen any day—not because I hate the Gospel, but because I hate lazy storytelling. No matter how good your message is, if your delivery tastes like cucumber lime Gatorade, nobody’s going to stick around for the rest.
We’ve taken the most shocking, soul-shaking story ever told—the Creator dying for His creation, the tomb cracked open, the cosmos realigned—and somehow made it boring. And we did it because we were scared.
Christians shouldn’t be chasing culture’s tail—we should be shaping it. This isn’t about slapping a Bible verse on a secular script. It’s about creating something so beautiful, so gripping, so real, that it can’t help but turn heads.
The Gospel deserves stories with teeth. Stories that risk something. Stories that stare sin in the face and still sing about grace. And that takes work—painful, patient, intentional work. Writers. Musicians. Animators. Filmmakers. Poets. Builders of worlds. Craftsmen who sweat the details because truth deserves excellence.
What if Christian animators made films that hit like Miyazaki? What if our songwriters built a following like Jorge—not by compromising, but by caring deeply about craft? What if our storytellers loved their characters the way Stan Lee or Phil Lord did?
Truth doesn’t need beauty to be true. But we need beauty to see it.
Miracles didn’t make the prophets’ words true—but God gave them anyway. Not for Himself, but for the weary and the doubtful. A sea split open. Fire from the sky. A stone rolled away. Each one a divine Amen.
In the same way, He wrote beauty into the world—not because He had to, but because He knew we would need it. The heavens don’t just tell us. They show us. And the way they draw us in is with beauty and awesomeness in the realest sense.
The church was told to go and make disciples. But along the way, we dropped our sharpest tool.
We know the Hero who walked into death and came back with keys in hand. We know the price of grace, the pain behind glory, the home waiting for the prodigal.
Epic the Musical shows us that even a story that hints at truth—if it’s told well—can stir something up inside of some of the most broken people. Give them a real hero, a real villain, and a story that actually goes somewhere, and they’ll lean in.
They’re already longing for redemption. We just need to show them what it really looks like.
So let’s stop making noise and start making beauty.
Let our art match our message. Let our excellence exceed the trends. And let’s quit watering down the Gospel to make it easier to swallow. It's not our job to make it safe. It's our job to make it clear—and to make it sing.
The ancient myths were reaching. Epic is reaching. But we know Who they’re reaching for.
We have access to the One who is the pattern, the pulse, the hero. He wrote Himself into the story—once, for all.
So here’s the real question:
Do we have the guts to be rejected, the fire to tell it straight, and the skill to tell it well?
Or will we keep sanding down the very story that was meant to split the world wide open?
