ALLENTOWN (BRN)– Pastor Joe Velarde of Riverbend Community Church in Allentown hosted an interview with “Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin” associate producer Seth Parks during his January 26 sermon focused on how Jesus disrupts lives, based on the series, “Live Sent.”

The movie features the true-life story of pastor-turned-spy Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who preached love while plotting the assassination of Adolf Hitler. “What I love about Bonhoeffer’s story, and Seth’s going to tell us more about who he is and what happens, is that Bonhoeffer truly was disrupted by Jesus in his ways,” Velarde said.

Parks, a former student whom Velarde has discipled since age 11, related how Velarde made an impact on him 20 years ago, noting, “And the older that I get, the less I take that for granted, that a man of God stays a man of God.”

The associate producer shared he works with screenwriter and producer Todd Komarnicki, who is known for his work on the movies “Sully” and “Elf” as well as many pilots he has written for ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, TNT, and Netflix.

Parks described one of his first meetings with Komarnicki and others involved in entertainment and ministry. “We just sat in a circle and prayed. And I had the craziest chills. Just the Holy Spirit!” He said he felt God tell him, “Don’t limit me, ever.”

He added, “And I feel like ‘Bonhoeffer’ came out of that because we want to tell great stories, and we want to live out our faith.”

To him, Bonhoeffer, author of the critically acclaimed “Cost of Discipleship” and “Life Together” books, was “a German hero during World War II.”

He told how Bonhoeffer came to New York at age 24 (around 1930-1931) to study at Union Theological Seminary. While he was there, he had a Black classmate who brought him to church, where he was confronted with the struggle of black people in America—and also “the absolute life of their faith, the way that they truly live it and breathe it and need it.”

Bonhoeffer joined the church and taught Sunday school, all while working on his doctorate in theology. Bonhoeffer later said he met Jesus and “truly came to faith” in that Harlem church.

But in 1931, the theologian returned to his homeland Germany at a time when the Nazis first started winning the seats, Parks recounted. “And all of a sudden, [Bonhoeffer] hears this way of talking, this dehumanizing language that he recognizes, because his eyes have been opened. And he says, ‘No, this isn’t a political movement. This isn’t talk. And it’s certainly not talk that I’m going to sit by and allow to happen.’”

One of the things he confronted were the Nazis’ attempts to cut sections of the Bible that talked about Jews. Parks demanded, “But … that’s not possible! Jesus was Jewish! … He was a real person that lived!”

Without giving away too much of the story, Parks told how Bonhoeffer died in 1945, two weeks before his camp where he was later imprisoned was liberated. Even though Parks already knew about his death, he said, “I still was so heartbroken at the end because you just get to know him and love him. And you say, that’s not fair!”

He added, “We had so much stolen from us in that life. But over the course of those 15 years, it was ‘a daily being disrupted’ and following Jesus.”

Velarde agreed, “I see that in Bonhoeffer’s life where he’s confronted by Jesus, changed by Jesus, and commissioned by Jesus.”

The pastor added, “But as we journey with Jesus and all that He has for us, we want to continue to let Him deepen who we are and what we’re becoming and what we’re giving ourselves to, which leads us to this question: What can we learn about ‘living sent’ from Bonhoeffer?”

“’Living sent’ is seeing how Jesus disrupts the other six days of the week,” Parks answered, pointing to how Bonhoeffer’s great preaching and prolific writing about the importance of church in the world still touches people today.

“How does that affect the way you’re out in the world? How does that affect your relationship with your families, with your friends, with the people in your town, politically, right?” Parks said. “We should not see Jesus through our politics, but we should see our politics through Jesus.”

He continued, “And I think that’s such a beautiful way to keep us from fully conforming to either party, either end of the spectrum, because you cannot fully conform to either end and perfectly conform to the Kingdom. It’s just not possible, because those things are of the world. And I think Dietrich recognized that in such a massive way that it did not allow him to fall in line.”

The movie, which was released this past Thanksgiving by Angel Studios, is now available for purchase and will be available to stream beginning Feb. 21. View trailer below. Visit Riverbend Community Church’s podcast channel to listen to the entire sermon, “Live Sent – Jesus Disrupts (Acts 9), Jan 27, 2025.”