Telling His Story
Guest Post by John Bolin
Co-Founder of The Thorn
While working as youth pastors in Colorado Springs, John and Sarah Bolin created The Thorn as a way to communicate to students their value to God. Today, The Thorn amazes crowds of 20,000+ with a dynamic theatrical portrayal of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ
How it Started
God loves it when we tell His story. That’s the theme of my life and real reason for any success of The Thorn. The history of Jesus takes us back thousands of years, but the history of The Thorn, its live show and the upcoming movie theater event, takes us back to 1997.
More than twenty years ago, my wife Sarah and I moved to Colorado to open a small outdoor retail store. We sold backpacks and tents and sleeping bags to outdoor adventurers. We had planned to settle into our lives, run our business and raise a few mountain kids. But God had other plans for us.
As recent ORU grads, we understood the importance of good friends during the sometimes turbulent college years so we volunteered to run a small group for a local church. On Friday nights, we’d close the front door of the store, open the back door and let college kids in for a Bible study. That small group grew and before long we were running out of space. When the youth pastor of the church left, we were asked to step in until they could find a real one.
As a new youth pastor, I wasn’t a great preacher. But I grew up in a creative family and decided that if I was bored of hearing me speak, the kids in our youth group certainly were, too. So instead of a lot of preaching, we’d host what we called “impact nights” — special outreach events featuring music, drama, videos and anything we could think of to draw attention and then share the love of God.
Scene from today’s production of The Thorn
After youth meeting one night, a teenage girl sat down on the edge of the stage next to me. I could see tears streaming down her face. She held out her arms and I could see where she’d been cutting herself. I looked at her and told her she didn’t need to do that because 2,000 years ago, Jesus had taken all of her pain on Himself.
I decided that the next week we’d do a drama to illustrate what Jesus endured to demonstrate His love for us. I also wanted to remind young people of the spiritual battle for their destiny, calling and identity.
The next Wednesday night was the very first Thorn performance. A group of volunteer youth ministry leaders took on the roles of Jesus, the disciples, centurions, angels and demons. The first Thorn presentation wasn’t amazing — the props weren’t good, the makeup was embarrassing, the costumes were, um, thrown together and the lighting was non-existent. But it worked…because God loves it when we tell His story. That night, scores of young people decided to follow Jesus. And when the Senior Pastor heard about it, he asked us to perform The Thorn the next year for Easter weekend.
The Early Years
That next Easter season, we improved the production, added a few new scenes and built a basic set made of painted, styrofoam panels. We even added special lighting and pyrotechnics! We didn’t know much about how live theater was supposed to work but we did our best and God filled in the gaps. And the word got out. By Easter Sunday, there was a line of cars that couldn’t get into the parking lot. People were parking on the field and jumping the fence to get into church. Something special was happening.
For the next ten years, The Thorn continued to grow, drawing tens of thousands of people to Colorado Springs. Every year, hundreds of people came to faith in Jesus. People found freedom from addiction, restoration in marriages and even physical and emotional healing. One year, we built a waterfall into the set for Jesus’ baptism scene. That year, we hosted a special baptism service after the theatrical run and hundreds of people were baptized by walking through the waterfall.
Depicting Heaven
Miracle Worker
Over the years, the production got bigger and more spectacular. We added a 30’ rotating platform, a hydraulic lift and even live Indonesian tigers. After having seen Cirque du Soleil, we were inspired to add performance arts to the show, telling the story of Jesus with music, drama and movement rather than speaking parts. We added dance, gymnastics, aerial acrobatics and even martial art scenes with angels and demons battling while Jesus was praying in the Garden. From the beginning, we’d created The Thorn for young people and we worked to keep the show appealing to teenagers. Through it all, we kept our eyes on the main thing: communicating a clear Gospel message. All the trappings were just to get people into the room and to keep them engaged in the Story.
It was hard work for everyone on the team, but the endless stories of people experiencing life transformation fueled it all. And the word about The Thorn continued to spread. Soon, churches around the country were asking if we’d bring The Thorn to them.
The Flagellation of Christ
The Crucifixion
Going on Tour
In 2010, Sarah and I began to consider what it might look like to take The Thorn on the road. We had no idea how to tour and had no idea if people would show up outside of our hometown. But we stepped out of our comfort zone, formed an official production company and somehow managed to travel with a caravan of trucks and a team of cast and crew to four different cities. That year, thousands of people showed up and became followers of Jesus and fans of The Thorn.
The Thorn began to attract world-class performers. Olympic-quality athletes. Dancers from the Joffrey School. Former Cirque performers. Part of the mission of The Thorn became to disciple these young artists so they could go back into their world and be salt and light for the Kingdom.
During the early touring years, we partnered with some of the largest and fastest growing churches in the country. We’d team up with volunteers from the local church, combining them with our national touring team in crazy “crash rehearsals” the week of the show. Before long, we had added hundreds of new members to the Thorn family. Every year, these volunteers waited, prepared and planned for their annual involvement in the show. We affectionately called them “Thorniacs.”
As The Thorn began to tour, we realized that there were two primary audiences that came to the show — Christians and spiritual seekers. We knew that The Thorn was perfect for people who had never heard the Gospel or had drifted away from their faith. But what about believers who came and were jolted back into a passionate relationship with Jesus? We wanted to find a way for people to not simply “go to the cross” and find hope and forgiveness. We also wanted to find a way for people to take the cross to the world.
Mary, the Mother of Jesus
We formed a partnership with Compassion International and encouraged Jesus-followers that one way they spread God’s love was to sponsor a child out of poverty in Jesus’ name. Over the years, nearly 15,000 kids have found hope through Compassion and The Thorn.
Covid & The Dark Year
The Thorn tour had become an annual tour and in 2020 we had half a dozen cities lined up for the tour. As the cast and crew started in California, we began to hear rumors of a flu bug that was spreading across the globe. By the time the team arrived in Colorado for the shows, the news about Covid19 was everywhere. People were afraid. Events were getting cancelled. But the Thorn team pressed on, setting up for a week of shows in Colorado Spings. Then on Friday afternoon, merely a few hours before curtain, the Governor or Colorado canceled all events larger than 200 people. That included The Thorn. In a whirlwind of emotion, the 2020 tour was canceled, the team all flew home and Sarah and I were left alone, wondering what the future of The Thorn would be.
In 2021, The Thorn was dark. No tour. No trucks or buses or waiting in lines at the airport. No cast or crew. Nothing. I had pivoted to writing and consulting. The Thorn, it seemed, was over. A season of our lives that had ended. But, like the story of Jesus, just when all hope seems to be lost, that’s when God shows up. Maybe its to remind us that He’s in charge. Maybe it’s to help us remember that it’s all about Him and not about us. Or maybe it’s because He loves it when we tell His story.
Light in the Darkness
I remember hearing about The Chosen Christmas special in movie theaters. When I did, I thought to myself, “I wonder if the Thorn could work in theaters, too?” What if we could film The Thorn as a way to extend the story and the reach of the production beyond just a live show? What if people all over the world could experience the Story of Jesus through The Thorn as a movie?
We contacted a distributor, Fathom Events, and they loved the idea. In 2022, we captured The Thorn on cinema cameras at a special showing of The Thorn in Denver, CO. Premier dates were set at March 6 & 7, 2023 on nearly 1,000 movie screens across the country. Sarah and I were humbled and excited at all the God was doing with His Story. But it didn’t end there.
The Public Square
In the summer of 2022, Covid19 was beginning to fade and the world was starting to come back online. Sporting events were filled. Concerts were sold-out. The Thorn limited engagement shows that we’d produced just to capture the film were standing room only. The world was ready for a comeback. Sarah and I began to feel like The Thorn tour might be ready for a comeback, too. And so, in addition to the Thorn film premier, we began to plan for the 2023 Thorn live tour as well. But this time, we felt like God was doing something new with the live tour. Instead of bringing the Thorn to church venues, we began to explore the possibility of playing in major market performing arts centers and arenas. Maybe God was calling us to bring His Story to the public square rather than just preaching to the choir. Without a doubt, the story of God deserves to told in the same place as Hamilton, Les Mis and Phantom of the Opera. And so it is! In 2023, The Thorn live tour will be twice as big as it’s ever been, going exclusively to cultural venues with a crystal clear message of the Gospel.
Fire of Heaven
Christ the Redeemer
Over the years, over a million people have experienced The Thorn live, in-person. Certainly in the year ahead, a lot more will see the show on video and in performance halls around the country. What’s next? We can only imagine. But we know by now that nothing can stop God’s story from being told. When He gets behind something, it simply works. We plan to expand The Thorn live tour to every major city in the United States. Will we stop there? Not likely.
We have already performed The Thorn entirely in Spanish and could easily launch a Latin American tour. Because of the way we do the show with limited speaking parts, we can deliver a tour in Mandarin, Hindi or Italian as easily as in English. There are no superstars in The Thorn, which means we can replicate it. We can have multiple teams spread out across the world, telling the same story at the same time, in multiple languages. Last week, we received calls from film distributors in Africa and Latin America about bringing the Thorn Film to movie theaters across both of those regions.
All of this is more than we could ever think, dream or imagine. But that’s what happens when you do something like this.
God loves it when we tell His story!
