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Chelsea Road Productions: reaching kids for Christ with quality family entertainment

Sandra Reimer
Special to ChristianWeek

In his book Transforming Children into Spiritual Champions, George Barna reports that people are most open to Christ between the ages of five and 12. “The greatest myth in modern ministry is that adults are where the kingdom action is,” says Bruce Stacey, president and creative force behind Chelsea Road Productions.

This Canadian-based company creates quality family entertainment products “that convey positive values and life-building themes to today’s kids.”

Before starting Chelsea Road in 1994, Stacey was vice president of special projects with Crossroads Christian Communications Inc. In the mid 80s, when his own children were between four and six, Stacey was looking for a positive alternative to mainstream kids television programming and found very little.

Stacey’s first television show for kids, “Kingdom Adventure™,” was created at this time. It won many awards and was licensed in more than 50 countries including Russia. Just under a million Russian children sent letters to “Kingdom Adventure” in response to the show. Each of them received Christian literature.

Over the years, Stacey and his talented creative team have produced theme songs for television shows, music for vacation Bible school, films and more. Their products are distributed in more than 30 countries and are popular in the U.S. One of their most recent projects is God Rocks!®, which started as a half-hour animated video series and now includes live family concerts, God Rocks! Bible Toons™ DVDs, CDs, companion books and other related products.

Stacey was inspired to create God Rocks! in 1997 when he read Luke 19:40, where Jesus says that the stones will cry out if people stop praising Him. He imagined the eyewitness accounts that rocks would give—like the stone that David lobbed at Goliath or the rock rolled from Christ’s tomb.

If rocks could talk

“If rocks could talk, would they keep quiet about the miracles they witnessed in Bible times? No way!” says Stacey.

The main God Rocks! Characters—Chip, Gem, Splinter and Carb—live in the town of Rocky Ridge and belong to a “rock band,” of course. Each episode presents Scripture-based songs and an entertaining story that draws life lessons from Bible truth.

As a parent and grandparent, Stacey is passionate about the work of Chelsea Road Productions.

“I think it’s so important to plant the seeds of Bible truth in kids when they are young. We are not the only voices speaking to kids. Commercial media will fill their hearts and minds with other stories if we don’t tell them stories from the Bible,” he says.

• There are 17 episodes in the God Rocks! series, which is distributed through Integrity Music and Standard Publishing in the U.S. and Christian Marketing Canada (CMC) and Foundation Distribution in Canada.
• It costs $250,000 to $400,000 to produce each episode and can take up to six months. To maintain creative control, Stacey uses in-house animators.
• The creative team writes and rewrites the script and then constructs a storyboard version of the show. Next they record the character voices and then the lengthy animation process begins.
• One animator completes between 15 to 45 seconds of animation per 40 hour-week as they work alongside a production team of up to 30 individuals.
• God Rocks! awards include: 2004 and 2005 Vibe Awards for Children’s Album of the Year, three Angel Awards and two Telly Awards for God Rocks! episodes. God Rocks! was also awarded a 2006 Gospel Music Association Canada award for Children’s Song of the Year and DVD of the Year: “Rez—The Rock That Rolled.”