Someone’s Imagination Is Being Discipled
Television doesn’t ask for much of your attention at once. An episode. Forty-five minutes, maybe an hour. Nothing that feels like a commitment. But television rarely asks for one episode — it asks for another, and another, week after week, season after season, until a show has spent more hours forming how you see the world than most sermons, classrooms, or conversations ever will.
That’s what the Emmys are actually celebrating on September 14. Not just performances and writing and production value — though there’s real craft worth honoring there. The Emmys celebrate the shows that succeeded at the thing television does better than almost any other medium: getting invited back into people’s lives, again and again, until it shapes what they believe is normal, admirable, funny, true, and worth wanting.
That’s not a complaint about television. It’s a description of discipleship — the ordinary, repeated, formational process of becoming like whatever you keep giving your attention to. Television has been quietly discipling audiences for decades. The only real question is who’s doing the discipling, and toward what.
Why this matters for AXL creatives specifically: a number of AXL creatives are pursuing careers in film and television — writing, acting, producing, directing, working crew. It’s worth naming plainly what that calling actually is, beyond “working in the industry.” Someone who tells stories for television isn’t just building a career. They’re being handed one of culture’s most effective discipleship tools.
That’s a weighty thing to carry, and it cuts two ways. It means the industry’s current output — a lot of what will be honored on September 14 — is genuinely shaping the imagination and moral instincts of enormous audiences, for better and for worse. It also means a Kingdom creative working faithfully inside that industry isn’t doing something adjacent to ministry. Depending on the assignment, it may be one.
Watching with that in view: none of this requires treating the Emmys as an enemy or refusing to watch. It does mean watching with a specific question in mind, alongside whatever else you’re already paying attention to — what is this story discipling its audience toward?
A few ways to actually ask that while watching: Notice what a nominated show assumes is normal — about relationships, ambition, faith, morality, meaning — and ask whether that assumption is true. Pay attention to what earns your emotional investment. Great craft can make almost anything feel true. That’s exactly why craft deserves discernment, not just admiration. If you write, act, direct, or produce, let what moves you also inform what you want to make — what do you want your own work to disciple people toward, given the same tools? Pray specifically for the writers’ rooms, not just the actors on stage — rooms are where a show’s actual imagination gets formed, long before a camera runs.
Television is going to keep discipling its audiences whether or not AXL creatives are in the room shaping it. The Emmys are a yearly reminder of how much cultural weight that medium actually carries, dressed up as an awards show. Kingdom creatives called into that industry aren’t just chasing a credit or a statue. They’re being given one of the more consequential rooms available for shaping what an entire culture comes to believe is true — and that’s worth taking seriously long before any nomination ever does.