Happy Birthday, Sight & Sound!

Celebrating five decades since its inception, Sight & Sound ® (S&S) is a ministry that “brings powerful stories from the pages of Scripture and history to life on stage and screen,” as described on its website. The ministry’s world-class presentations of the gospel began when Glenn Eshelman, a dairy farmer in rural Pennsylvania, decided to start producing live entertainment with a purpose.
From the beginning, nothing was ordinary about this unique ministry, which opened its first theater in 1976 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The ministry expanded to Branson, Missouri, in 2008.
Today, each of its theater stages stretches 300 feet – the length of a football field. Ceiling heights accommodate sets 40 feet tall. The massive settings and structures are used to reenact biblical accounts, bringing to life the stories of Joshua, Jonah, David, Daniel, and Esther, among others.

A growing reach
For its first 30 years, S&S’s work was only accessible to those who could attend its live stage productions in person. But as S&S’s Katie Miller told The Stand, “We knew that not everyone [could] travel to our theater locations, [so] the Lord prompted us to begin to take our ministry out [beyond the theaters]. We began recording our shows for DVD [distribution] in 2005.”
Then, when COVID-19 hit in 2020, and the theaters’ doors had to close, “the Lord provided for our productions to be shared in a brand-new way. In partnership with Trinity Broadcasting Network, millions of families experienced our production of Jesus on Easter weekend that first year of COVID,” explained Miller, S&S vice president of brand development and granddaughter of founders Glenn and Shirley Eshelman.
That exposure led to the launch of Sight & Sound TV, its own streaming platform. A subscription rotates a mix of free content along with selected paid options. It reaches countless viewers in more than 200 countries and territories.
In 2022, S&S entered the portal to yet another media mainstay – feature film. Its feature I Heard the Bells is based on the carol “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day,” which came from American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1863 poem titled “Christmas Bells.” The poet was a broken man, his life marked by tragedy and lost hope. Once in his December despair, he heard Christmas church bells that sparked his faith back to life.
The movie premiered at No. 2 opening weekend in
December 2022.
A Great Awakening, S&S’s second feature film, debuted in April 2026 to superlative reviews. This one explores the unlikely friendship between Christian skeptic Benjamin Franklin and British evangelist George Whitefield in the time leading up to the Revolutionary War.

A gospel focus
S&S film producer Josh Enck told American Family Radio that as a young man, he planned to “go to Hollywood or New York and be a filmmaker or an actor.” But coming to faith in Christ at age 19 changed his priorities, although the Lord would one day bring the desires of his heart full circle.
When Enck, as a young adult, walked into Lancaster’s S&S theater for the first time, he was stunned. He immediately turned to his mother and exclaimed, “I want to work here!”
Before long, he was an S&S stage technician. Although films were not on S&S’s radar at the time, Enck is now an S&S filmmaker for the Lord, living out his dream with a gospel focus while looking forward to the ministry’s next 50 years.
For more information, visit sight-sound.com.