And view the contest trailer here: http://youtu.be/xe2zFAgLgjU
Simon Rivera of Moseley, Virginia, won last year’s Grand Prize with his film Common Thread.
“Storytelling through videography allows me to express my creativity in a way that captures emotions and feelings that words alone sometimes fail to convey,” Rivera said. “The Faith Counts video contest appealed to me because it provided a platform to not only exercise this creativity, but to do so on the subject of faith, which is the foundation of my worldview and personal beliefs.”
See the 2017 Grand Prize and Honorable Mention films here.
The Faith Counts Story
In 2014, several faith leaders came together to address a trend of declining church attendance and declining religiosity. They saw how an increasingly secular culture left too many people in a spiritual void that excludes them from meaningful, deep connections to the people and world around them.
Online, they saw how young people were willing to share quite literally every personal, intimate detail of their lives—except the detail of their faith. There was and is a growing sense that faith should somehow be kept private. Many are reluctant or even embarrassed to share how their faith makes them who they are.
While each of their respective denominations were doing their own outreach to combat these issues, the faith leaders knew they would be more effective working together. And so, Faith Counts was launched in October 2014 as an attempt to positively influence the culture and to gently remind people that faith is a good thing.
FaithCounts.com encourages people of all faiths to share their personal faith stories and thoughts by posting to the website, sharing on social media with #FaithCounts or creating a video for the site.
Faith Counts has nearly 600,000 followers and has become the leading, fastest-growing multi-faith online platform with an engagement rate three times the industry standard.
Partner organization supporting FaithCounts.com include 1st Amendment Partnership, Episcopal Migration Ministries, Franciscan University of Steubenville, Hillel International, Hindu American Foundation, Orthodox Union, Seventh-Day Adventist Church, Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, The Salvation Army and United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Faith Counts, LLC is a nonprofit, non-denominational organization comprised of faith communities representing nearly 100 million Americans. We’ve come together to share a simple message that “faith counts.”
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