A Primer on “The Chosen” — the Most-Watched Faith Series in History
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We’ve spent years in conversation with many hundreds of Christian thought leaders, asking them questions. Among these questions is this: What resources have made the biggest difference in your spiritual life? Their answers have been remarkably consistent. This is one of the ten most recommended.
We know the names. Peter, Matthew, Mary Magdalene. We have heard their stories since childhood, seen them flattened into stained glass and flannel graphs. But what were they like before they met Jesus? What did they fear? What did they carry?
“The Chosen” dares to imagine. And millions of viewers have discovered that watching the Gospels come to life — with all the dust, awkwardness, and longing of real human experience — can change how they read the text itself.
A Filmmaker’s Unlikely Gamble
Dallas Jenkins had been making faith-based films for years, but nothing prepared him for what “The Chosen” would become. The concept was ambitious: a multi-season series exploring the life of Jesus not through his eyes alone, but through the eyes of those who followed him. The fishermen. The tax collector. The women others overlooked.
No studio would fund it. So Jenkins and his team turned to the crowd. What followed was the largest crowdfunding campaign for a media project in history — tens of thousands of believers investing in a show they had never seen, betting that this time, someone might get it right.
They were not disappointed.
“Profoundly moving and life-changing.”
Why It Works
“The Chosen” succeeds because it does something most biblical adaptations avoid: it takes the disciples’ humanity seriously. These are not plaster saints. They are flawed, anxious, sometimes petty people — which is exactly what the Gospels suggest they were. Peter is impulsive and insecure. Matthew is awkward and brilliant. Nicodemus is caught between curiosity and caution.
And Jesus? He laughs. He teases. He weeps. The portrayal is reverent without being distant — a rabbi who clearly enjoys the company of his friends, even as he carries the weight of what is coming.
The production quality rivals anything on streaming television today. But what draws viewers back, season after season, is not the cinematography. It is the strange experience of watching people they thought they knew become, for the first time, recognizable.
An Invitation Back to the Gospels
Viewers often report the same thing: after watching “The Chosen,” they return to the Gospels with new eyes. Scenes they had skimmed for years suddenly have weight. The disciples feel less like names on a page and more like people they have met. The show does not replace Scripture — but for many, it has rekindled a desire to read it.
Whether you are a lifelong believer or someone curious about the man at the center of the Christian story, “The Chosen” offers something rare: a portrayal of Jesus that is both faithful to the text and alive to the imagination. It is, as one viewer put it, the Jesus film we did not know we were waiting for.
The Chosen is free to stream on The Chosen app (iOS and Android) and available on many streaming services. Find out more at thechosen.tv.