July 7, 2025 • 14 mins
As the offical show of record when it comes to documentaries, we had on Nathan Apffel and Chris Ayoub, the makers of The Religion Business. You can check out the 7 part docu-series at TheReligionBusiness.com
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, there is a new seven part docuseries that's
(00:03):
set to premiere July tenth that's called The Religion Business.
Joining us now in studio, or the two gentlemen behind this.
Emmy winning filmmaker Nathan Appfel and serial entrepreneur veteran Chris
Ayoub both joining us in studio. Thank you guys for
being here with us. Let's just get right into it.
What is this project you guys have here?
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Yeah, The Religion Business is a seven part docu series
and it explores the one point four two trillion dollars
a year that's given by individual donors to churches and
the nonprofits. And yeah, we unpack thirty five hundred years
of religious history and two hundred years of American history
to understand how we have a complex bigger than the military.
(00:47):
And so where does the money go? And are there
good actors? Are they're bad actors? Who's taking all this money?
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Okay?
Speaker 4 (00:53):
I'm the documentary nerd on this show? So how does
one get involved in something like this?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
I was raised in the megachurch scene in Los Angeles,
and you know, saying choir went to every camp you
could imagine and gave to my church, and and then
had some experiences that really rubbed me the wrong way
from you know, there's some horrible stories going around in
the news right now, and experienced all of that, and
so I started asking questions and I raised my hand,
(01:20):
just real simple questions about hey, what you know, what's
your safety measures here? And where? Does you know? What
is your salary? Or where's your housing allowance? And they
could never answer it. So I just kind of poked
the bear a little more, stuck my head down the
rabbit hole a little further, And thirteen years later, we've
got six hours and thirty five minutes of content that
(01:41):
unpacks a trillion dollar a year industry.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
Wow.
Speaker 5 (01:44):
Oh, lots of bread crumbs along the way.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Yeah, yeah, How dangerous is it for you guys to
poke this particular bear.
Speaker 5 (01:49):
It's definitely a dangerous beare to poke. We've dealt with
quite a bit.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
Can you give us any like small insight as to
how that might have manifested itself?
Speaker 5 (02:00):
We've like one time we got contacted by uh, certain
pastors of someone who was affiliated with them and said, uh,
you need to get security and and that that they
hired a due diligence firm to dig up as much
dirt on Nathan and I as possible, and and that
there was a discussion about uh about a hit.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
So oh very righteous gymstones.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Oh righteous righteous gemstones is reality?
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Yeah right now? So wait, you're over the course of
putting together this project. Your lives were in danger?
Speaker 5 (02:32):
Absolutely? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (02:34):
Did it did terry you in any way?
Speaker 5 (02:36):
Absolutely?
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Not?
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Really?
Speaker 5 (02:37):
Why?
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Why not?
Speaker 5 (02:38):
Because I live by faith? And there was a very
inspirational line that Nathan got in this journey. He was
in Uganda and a and a woman by the name
of Sister Rosemary that works with a lot of orphans
in in Uganda said that God is the unknown and
you have to step out into the unknown. And that
unknown is very scary. It is it not relying on
(03:01):
another man, another institution, It's relying on the unknown God
and that in itself is scary. And Jesus said that
the world's gonna hate us if we if we follow them,
and that was the truth.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
That's that's incredible. I mean I think about I mean,
once once you throw your life into something, right, which
spending thirteen years on this, you're going to see it through.
But that's pretty intense to have to deal with that
kind of bullying, I guess I should say when you
say the hit was put out on you, like.
Speaker 5 (03:36):
There was discussion of it, I don't know whether or
not it was. I know that I've been followed. I
know that for sure.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
The security firm I think was paid one hundred thousand
dollars to dig up dirt and do that research, and
due diligence, they actually quit. They said, we dug up,
we dug up enough dirt and we saw that. You know,
Chris is a war veteran, and they're like, we're backing
off of this, Like these guys are actually asking the
right questions and wow, and if this is your response,
then we're backing off. And so we're both cowboys in
(04:01):
that sense. And so we're here to ask questions and
find answers.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Chris, where did you serve and how did you serve?
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (04:08):
So I graduated the Air Force Academy Surfact to duty
Air Force. I'm an Operation Iraqi Freedom veteran, had sixty
four combat missions in Iraq and then I cross commission
into the Army.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
We thank you for your service.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
MO.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
I do want to say this like this is when
I'm reading about this number one, you guys encourage faith.
You're nember not disencouraging. You are encouraging faith. And number two,
you also encourage giving to the church. But you just
want transparency, correct. Okay, all right, let's keep this conversation going.
Coming up next part two. You don't want to miss this.
It's just three minutes away. Part two of this conversation,
(04:43):
the religion Business. Let's talk about it next. Bet It's
Agains Show ninety seven point one The Eagle. We're talking
about the Religion Business, a new seven part docu series
set to premiere July tenth. We have the guys responsible
for this work here with us Emmy winning filmmaker Nathan
app Fell and the man behind this entire thing as well,
Chris Ajubin. And Chris, I want to ask you, we
(05:05):
got a few more minutes here to talk about this.
If somebody's listening to this and they're like, wow, you
know you guys are going pretty fast. This is you know,
this particular radio station whatnot. There's a wealth of depth here.
Let's just help people with regard to the premiere and
somebody drive around, go okay, I want to know more.
What do people need to know about this.
Speaker 5 (05:23):
So you can pre purchase it now at the Religion
Business dot com and July tenth, the seven part docu
series will be available for streaming. And then July eighth,
tomorrow at Alamo Drafthouse Cedars near the Convention Center, we'll
be hosting a premiere and it's one of the episodes.
It's episode five, and the times for those will be
(05:47):
nine and ten thirty. We'll do two showings there and
we love for anyone to come out. Nathan and I
will be there. We'd love to meet with you, take
a photo with you. We'll have a red carpet, a
step and repeat, and we'd love to get to get
to know you. So police, police come out, and we've
got about seventy five tickets for each each showing that
will be given out there.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Oh wow, okay, great, okay. So you guys are both
Christian men, you're encouraging faith. We talked about this, but
you also want transparency. How bad is the lack of transparency.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
It's horrific. So any for profit business, you know, files
tax documents with the IRS and the state. Secular nonprofits
file what's called a Form nine ninety with the IRS,
and it's an informational sheet. They pay no taxes, but
it just shows, you know, top line expenses, revenue salaries,
kind of a snapshot of where your generous donor dollars go.
(06:40):
Churches file nothing. They have no obligation to file any
legal document with either the state or the IRS that
shows where their money goes. If there's no legal document
that you're held to account to, that means there's nothing
that anybody could ever point to on the ground or
on the table to say, hey, what do you mean
by this number? So it's all smoke and mirrors. There's
(07:01):
four hundred thousand churches in the US, all run with
almost no accountability or transparency outside of denominational structure. And
as denominationalism dies and non denominationalism rises, the non denominational
side is literally the wild West. It's hey, you can
build a bigger church than me, or I can build
a bigger church than you. It's called we call it
(07:23):
religious economic theory. So we outspend each other to grab
each other's Christian consumers. And so it's a race for growth,
which means it's an exponential race for the cost to
actually produce this Sunday event, so to speak. So Christianity
is just becoming a more and more expensive game, and
(07:43):
as it becomes more and more expensive, there's less and
less accountability or transparency from the state or the Fed.
And so we're saying, well, if there's no accountability, it's
basically the perfect playground for wolves. And so that's the
religion business for you.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
How did you guys meet because the all the work
on this for a long time, this is investigative journalism,
really like, how did you guys meet each other?
Speaker 5 (08:04):
So I was the president of a large real estate
management firm for about eight years, and I met a
gentleman who was a software entrepreneur in that in that industry,
and I was I had exited from that from the
day to day side of things, and I was like,
I really want to do something good for humanity, not
just kind of like the corporate let's go, let's go,
let's go. And I looked in the mental health space.
(08:28):
That space is pretty corrupt as well too. And then
this individual came up to me and it was like, Hey,
a friend of mine's a two time Emmy Award winning
filmmaker and he's making this this docu series called The
Religion Business. And at that time, Nathan had been at
it by himself for a good while and had put
together a small trailer. I took a look at it,
(08:49):
and when I saw the numbers and the statistics, I
had so many aha moments when I watched this ninety
second clip and I was like, I definitely want to
meet this guy. And I met him, and like we
say are our relationship got tested day one with trust
and brotherhood and transparency, and we did the right things
the whole time, and I've never never looked back at it.
This is my brother right here.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
The Religion Business new seven part docu series getting ready
to come out July tenth, and so you guys get
into the rise of the modern megachurch, and you get
into the celebrity pastor culture. And so I want to
ask you about I'm a Christian and I love my church,
and my church is getting bigger and bigger and bigger,
but I feel like it's super authentic growth. And I
(09:32):
know with my pastor, who I love, which is what
attracted me to my church more than anything, I felt
like I could connect with him. I feel like he's
reluctant with regard to all that. So he's not trying
to make it about him at all, and so I
think it's how would you recommend? I mean, I feel
like my church is doing it the right way. Excuse me.
I'm sure everybody feels that way, But I want to
(09:54):
be clear about this. You're not saying any church that's
growing is bad, right, Like, if you're doing it the
right way and you are growing and it's all for
the right reasons, that's gonna happen. So I'm sure you've
encountered throughout this. Okay, this church is actually really doing
it the right way right one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Yeah. We Episode three is called Sinners and Saints. You know,
we do show the individuals all around the world doing
it right or doing it as good as they can.
We always just say, you know, we always need accountability.
I need accountability. You need accountability, Chris does. And so
it's what are those accountability systems in this unique space
(10:30):
that we call the religious sector in America? Because of
separation in church and state, the government has carved out
this very unique sector for religious institutions. And so it's
a totally dark sector. So it relies and it sounds
like your pastor's an awesome guy. It relies on the
morality of leadership. Most people, I am one of them,
(10:53):
I need accountability. And so when you give people carte
blanche rain of hundreds of thousands or millions or tens
of millions of dollars, a lot of times that money
and that celebrity status, so to speak, just slowly eats
at you to where you wake up and you don't
recognize yourself.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
In the mirror.
Speaker 5 (11:09):
Humans were human, That's what that's that's one of our
mottos in the religion business.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
Yeah, and when you work on something like this for
over a decade, I can imagine that the editing bay
was pretty busy. So how much how long could this
have been? I mean, how did you guys end up on?
This needs to be seven episodes.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
We have four hundred and like twenty seven terabytes of
footage and that's that's It's a ton. And I would say,
it's God, it's a breadcrumb. You know. I'm a documentary guy,
and so I'm used to making one ninety minute to
one hundred twenty minute movie. But the stories just kept
getting bigger and bigger, and you know, you look at
(11:45):
creation and seven days, you know, seven's a very sacred number,
and I had sketched out six, and I'm like, man,
I think we could. There's enough here for a seventh,
and now there's enough for you know, twenty thirty forty episodes.
But I think over the process, we've simplified the message
a lot too in the show because there's just so
much material, and so we gut it a lot over
(12:07):
the last year to really hammer these ten loopholes where
about two hundred billion just disappears every year. And so
it's like, hey, if we can help close these ten,
the Christian Church has the resources to radically transform the world.
It doesn't need more money. So I'll throw some fun
stats out for you. Fifty three billion with a B
is stolen internally by church staff every year. So that's
(12:31):
what's taken in on a Sunday and deposited on a Monday.
That's the delta. That doesn't include the private airplanes, the
flashy cars, the rolexes that some guys have. This is
just what straight stolen. That fifty three billion. If we
just solve for the theft, could solve the top twenty
global social issues. So every no church would change pastors
salaries wouldn't change. Just if we brought accountability in the
(12:53):
Christian Church could be the light of the world tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Unbelievabow yeah wow, Okay, so we got one more minute here.
Let's tell everybody listening in Dallas Fort Worth what do
they need to know? Just reset exactly what the docu
series is all about and how they can engage with it.
Speaker 5 (13:09):
Go ahead, Broly.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
So The Religion Business, seven part docuseries explores all religions,
not just Christianity. But I was raised a Christian, so
I hold my faith to the highest standards. And so
tomorrow July eighth, nine o'clock, nine pm and ten thirty
pm at Alamo Draft House Cedars, we're going to be
screening episode five, which shows a lovely Dallas local, and
(13:31):
we'd love to see you there. We've got about one
hundred and sixty tickets. It's a free screening. We want
to meet fans, We want to meet people that are
not really stoked on us. I love discussion and Chris
loves discussion. So if you're interested just to talk about
anything that's related to the nonprofit sector or religious sector,
come and join us. We're going to sit outside. We're
gonna be chatting with you as we're waiting for screenings
to end and whatnot. And then July tenth, you can
(13:54):
pre order the docu series right now or wait till
July tenth and purchase it at the Religion Business dot
com and you'll be able to You'll be able to
binge watch all seven.
Speaker 5 (14:03):
Episodes and follow us on Instagram. We'll be giving people
updates all the way to the launch and then life
after the Religion Business will commence and our handles at
Religion Business.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Awesome, guys, thank you so much for your time, good
luck with the new seven part docu series, The Religion Business.
All right. Coming up next, the Business of the Dallas
Cowboys back in the news. Why is that? We'll discuss
All right, there is a new seven part docuseries that's
(00:03):
set to premiere July tenth that's called The Religion Business.
Joining us now in studio, or the two gentlemen behind this.
Emmy winning filmmaker Nathan Appfel and serial entrepreneur veteran Chris
Ayoub both joining us in studio. Thank you guys for
being here with us. Let's just get right into it.
What is this project you guys have here?
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Yeah, The Religion Business is a seven part docu series
and it explores the one point four two trillion dollars
a year that's given by individual donors to churches and
the nonprofits. And yeah, we unpack thirty five hundred years
of religious history and two hundred years of American history
to understand how we have a complex bigger than the military.
(00:47):
And so where does the money go? And are there
good actors? Are they're bad actors? Who's taking all this money?
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Okay?
Speaker 4 (00:53):
I'm the documentary nerd on this show? So how does
one get involved in something like this?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
I was raised in the megachurch scene in Los Angeles,
and you know, saying choir went to every camp you
could imagine and gave to my church, and and then
had some experiences that really rubbed me the wrong way
from you know, there's some horrible stories going around in
the news right now, and experienced all of that, and
so I started asking questions and I raised my hand,
(01:20):
just real simple questions about hey, what you know, what's
your safety measures here? And where? Does you know? What
is your salary? Or where's your housing allowance? And they
could never answer it. So I just kind of poked
the bear a little more, stuck my head down the
rabbit hole a little further, And thirteen years later, we've
got six hours and thirty five minutes of content that
(01:41):
unpacks a trillion dollar a year industry.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
Wow.
Speaker 5 (01:44):
Oh, lots of bread crumbs along the way.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Yeah, yeah, How dangerous is it for you guys to
poke this particular bear.
Speaker 5 (01:49):
It's definitely a dangerous beare to poke. We've dealt with
quite a bit.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
Can you give us any like small insight as to
how that might have manifested itself?
Speaker 5 (02:00):
We've like one time we got contacted by uh, certain
pastors of someone who was affiliated with them and said, uh,
you need to get security and and that that they
hired a due diligence firm to dig up as much
dirt on Nathan and I as possible, and and that
there was a discussion about uh about a hit.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
So oh very righteous gymstones.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Oh righteous righteous gemstones is reality?
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Yeah right now? So wait, you're over the course of
putting together this project. Your lives were in danger?
Speaker 5 (02:32):
Absolutely? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (02:34):
Did it did terry you in any way?
Speaker 5 (02:36):
Absolutely?
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Not?
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Really?
Speaker 5 (02:37):
Why?
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Why not?
Speaker 5 (02:38):
Because I live by faith? And there was a very
inspirational line that Nathan got in this journey. He was
in Uganda and a and a woman by the name
of Sister Rosemary that works with a lot of orphans
in in Uganda said that God is the unknown and
you have to step out into the unknown. And that
unknown is very scary. It is it not relying on
(03:01):
another man, another institution, It's relying on the unknown God
and that in itself is scary. And Jesus said that
the world's gonna hate us if we if we follow them,
and that was the truth.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
That's that's incredible. I mean I think about I mean,
once once you throw your life into something, right, which
spending thirteen years on this, you're going to see it through.
But that's pretty intense to have to deal with that
kind of bullying, I guess I should say when you
say the hit was put out on you, like.
Speaker 5 (03:36):
There was discussion of it, I don't know whether or
not it was. I know that I've been followed. I
know that for sure.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
The security firm I think was paid one hundred thousand
dollars to dig up dirt and do that research, and
due diligence, they actually quit. They said, we dug up,
we dug up enough dirt and we saw that. You know,
Chris is a war veteran, and they're like, we're backing
off of this, Like these guys are actually asking the
right questions and wow, and if this is your response,
then we're backing off. And so we're both cowboys in
(04:01):
that sense. And so we're here to ask questions and
find answers.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Chris, where did you serve and how did you serve?
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (04:08):
So I graduated the Air Force Academy Surfact to duty
Air Force. I'm an Operation Iraqi Freedom veteran, had sixty
four combat missions in Iraq and then I cross commission
into the Army.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
We thank you for your service.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
MO.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
I do want to say this like this is when
I'm reading about this number one, you guys encourage faith.
You're nember not disencouraging. You are encouraging faith. And number two,
you also encourage giving to the church. But you just
want transparency, correct. Okay, all right, let's keep this conversation going.
Coming up next part two. You don't want to miss this.
It's just three minutes away. Part two of this conversation,
(04:43):
the religion Business. Let's talk about it next. Bet It's
Agains Show ninety seven point one The Eagle. We're talking
about the Religion Business, a new seven part docu series
set to premiere July tenth. We have the guys responsible
for this work here with us Emmy winning filmmaker Nathan
app Fell and the man behind this entire thing as well,
Chris Ajubin. And Chris, I want to ask you, we
(05:05):
got a few more minutes here to talk about this.
If somebody's listening to this and they're like, wow, you
know you guys are going pretty fast. This is you know,
this particular radio station whatnot. There's a wealth of depth here.
Let's just help people with regard to the premiere and
somebody drive around, go okay, I want to know more.
What do people need to know about this.
Speaker 5 (05:23):
So you can pre purchase it now at the Religion
Business dot com and July tenth, the seven part docu
series will be available for streaming. And then July eighth,
tomorrow at Alamo Drafthouse Cedars near the Convention Center, we'll
be hosting a premiere and it's one of the episodes.
It's episode five, and the times for those will be
(05:47):
nine and ten thirty. We'll do two showings there and
we love for anyone to come out. Nathan and I
will be there. We'd love to meet with you, take
a photo with you. We'll have a red carpet, a
step and repeat, and we'd love to get to get
to know you. So police, police come out, and we've
got about seventy five tickets for each each showing that
will be given out there.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Oh wow, okay, great, okay. So you guys are both
Christian men, you're encouraging faith. We talked about this, but
you also want transparency. How bad is the lack of transparency.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
It's horrific. So any for profit business, you know, files
tax documents with the IRS and the state. Secular nonprofits
file what's called a Form nine ninety with the IRS,
and it's an informational sheet. They pay no taxes, but
it just shows, you know, top line expenses, revenue salaries,
kind of a snapshot of where your generous donor dollars go.
(06:40):
Churches file nothing. They have no obligation to file any
legal document with either the state or the IRS that
shows where their money goes. If there's no legal document
that you're held to account to, that means there's nothing
that anybody could ever point to on the ground or
on the table to say, hey, what do you mean
by this number? So it's all smoke and mirrors. There's
(07:01):
four hundred thousand churches in the US, all run with
almost no accountability or transparency outside of denominational structure. And
as denominationalism dies and non denominationalism rises, the non denominational
side is literally the wild West. It's hey, you can
build a bigger church than me, or I can build
a bigger church than you. It's called we call it
(07:23):
religious economic theory. So we outspend each other to grab
each other's Christian consumers. And so it's a race for growth,
which means it's an exponential race for the cost to
actually produce this Sunday event, so to speak. So Christianity
is just becoming a more and more expensive game, and
(07:43):
as it becomes more and more expensive, there's less and
less accountability or transparency from the state or the Fed.
And so we're saying, well, if there's no accountability, it's
basically the perfect playground for wolves. And so that's the
religion business for you.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
How did you guys meet because the all the work
on this for a long time, this is investigative journalism,
really like, how did you guys meet each other?
Speaker 5 (08:04):
So I was the president of a large real estate
management firm for about eight years, and I met a
gentleman who was a software entrepreneur in that in that industry,
and I was I had exited from that from the
day to day side of things, and I was like,
I really want to do something good for humanity, not
just kind of like the corporate let's go, let's go,
let's go. And I looked in the mental health space.
(08:28):
That space is pretty corrupt as well too. And then
this individual came up to me and it was like, Hey,
a friend of mine's a two time Emmy Award winning
filmmaker and he's making this this docu series called The
Religion Business. And at that time, Nathan had been at
it by himself for a good while and had put
together a small trailer. I took a look at it,
(08:49):
and when I saw the numbers and the statistics, I
had so many aha moments when I watched this ninety
second clip and I was like, I definitely want to
meet this guy. And I met him, and like we
say are our relationship got tested day one with trust
and brotherhood and transparency, and we did the right things
the whole time, and I've never never looked back at it.
This is my brother right here.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
The Religion Business new seven part docu series getting ready
to come out July tenth, and so you guys get
into the rise of the modern megachurch, and you get
into the celebrity pastor culture. And so I want to
ask you about I'm a Christian and I love my church,
and my church is getting bigger and bigger and bigger,
but I feel like it's super authentic growth. And I
(09:32):
know with my pastor, who I love, which is what
attracted me to my church more than anything, I felt
like I could connect with him. I feel like he's
reluctant with regard to all that. So he's not trying
to make it about him at all, and so I
think it's how would you recommend? I mean, I feel
like my church is doing it the right way. Excuse me.
I'm sure everybody feels that way, But I want to
(09:54):
be clear about this. You're not saying any church that's
growing is bad, right, Like, if you're doing it the
right way and you are growing and it's all for
the right reasons, that's gonna happen. So I'm sure you've
encountered throughout this. Okay, this church is actually really doing
it the right way right one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Yeah. We Episode three is called Sinners and Saints. You know,
we do show the individuals all around the world doing
it right or doing it as good as they can.
We always just say, you know, we always need accountability.
I need accountability. You need accountability, Chris does. And so
it's what are those accountability systems in this unique space
(10:30):
that we call the religious sector in America? Because of
separation in church and state, the government has carved out
this very unique sector for religious institutions. And so it's
a totally dark sector. So it relies and it sounds
like your pastor's an awesome guy. It relies on the
morality of leadership. Most people, I am one of them,
(10:53):
I need accountability. And so when you give people carte
blanche rain of hundreds of thousands or millions or tens
of millions of dollars, a lot of times that money
and that celebrity status, so to speak, just slowly eats
at you to where you wake up and you don't
recognize yourself.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
In the mirror.
Speaker 5 (11:09):
Humans were human, That's what that's that's one of our
mottos in the religion business.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
Yeah, and when you work on something like this for
over a decade, I can imagine that the editing bay
was pretty busy. So how much how long could this
have been? I mean, how did you guys end up on?
This needs to be seven episodes.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
We have four hundred and like twenty seven terabytes of
footage and that's that's It's a ton. And I would say,
it's God, it's a breadcrumb. You know. I'm a documentary guy,
and so I'm used to making one ninety minute to
one hundred twenty minute movie. But the stories just kept
getting bigger and bigger, and you know, you look at
(11:45):
creation and seven days, you know, seven's a very sacred number,
and I had sketched out six, and I'm like, man,
I think we could. There's enough here for a seventh,
and now there's enough for you know, twenty thirty forty episodes.
But I think over the process, we've simplified the message
a lot too in the show because there's just so
much material, and so we gut it a lot over
(12:07):
the last year to really hammer these ten loopholes where
about two hundred billion just disappears every year. And so
it's like, hey, if we can help close these ten,
the Christian Church has the resources to radically transform the world.
It doesn't need more money. So I'll throw some fun
stats out for you. Fifty three billion with a B
is stolen internally by church staff every year. So that's
(12:31):
what's taken in on a Sunday and deposited on a Monday.
That's the delta. That doesn't include the private airplanes, the
flashy cars, the rolexes that some guys have. This is
just what straight stolen. That fifty three billion. If we
just solve for the theft, could solve the top twenty
global social issues. So every no church would change pastors
salaries wouldn't change. Just if we brought accountability in the
(12:53):
Christian Church could be the light of the world tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Unbelievabow yeah wow, Okay, so we got one more minute here.
Let's tell everybody listening in Dallas Fort Worth what do
they need to know? Just reset exactly what the docu
series is all about and how they can engage with it.
Speaker 5 (13:09):
Go ahead, Broly.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
So The Religion Business, seven part docuseries explores all religions,
not just Christianity. But I was raised a Christian, so
I hold my faith to the highest standards. And so
tomorrow July eighth, nine o'clock, nine pm and ten thirty
pm at Alamo Draft House Cedars, we're going to be
screening episode five, which shows a lovely Dallas local, and
(13:31):
we'd love to see you there. We've got about one
hundred and sixty tickets. It's a free screening. We want
to meet fans, We want to meet people that are
not really stoked on us. I love discussion and Chris
loves discussion. So if you're interested just to talk about
anything that's related to the nonprofit sector or religious sector,
come and join us. We're going to sit outside. We're
gonna be chatting with you as we're waiting for screenings
to end and whatnot. And then July tenth, you can
(13:54):
pre order the docu series right now or wait till
July tenth and purchase it at the Religion Business dot
com and you'll be able to You'll be able to
binge watch all seven.
Speaker 5 (14:03):
Episodes and follow us on Instagram. We'll be giving people
updates all the way to the launch and then life
after the Religion Business will commence and our handles at
Religion Business.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Awesome, guys, thank you so much for your time, good
luck with the new seven part docu series, The Religion Business.
All right. Coming up next, the Business of the Dallas
Cowboys back in the news. Why is that? We'll discuss
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