Twelve years ago, Bryan Coley had season tickets to two Atlanta theater companies. The plays he saw glorified postmodernism and dysfunctional lives by depicting a "bunch of screwed-up people." But, he says, God tapped him on the shoulder and said, "You're just criticizing. You need to create."

A Christian all his life, Bryan started to feel guilty; the nonbelievers around him didn't have truth or hope. "Here I am, holding the truth. How can I not express that?" So in 1995 Bryan, a graduate of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, started a writers' group. At first Art Within worked in the theater world, allowing Christian writers to grow artistically by getting their work on stage. Now it commissions screenplays, too. Its mission is to develop, produce, and distribute scripts relevant to contemporary culture that also explore hope and truth.

To that end, Bryan and his team developed Art Within Labs; a yearlong fellowship that allows a handful of writers to complete their screenplays. The program culminates with staged readings at the annual Showcase and Symposium, a conference that brings together faith-based screenwriters, playwrights, and producers.

Sowing seeds in Hollywood means telling compelling stories with skill and artistry, rather than trying to evangelize through poorly written work that gives Christ a bad name. To reach nonbelievers, Bryan and his colleagues believe Hollywood needs good stories that express dysfunction—a condition our culture knows well—but with Christ's grace, hope, and truth. "If you show beige against white, there's no contrast," says Bryan. "The Bible is all about showing red against white. It shows the Rahabs, the tax collectors, the sin. God didn't call us to be safe. He called us to share the Good News." With this in mind, the five writers in the Labs are creating stories that offer mainstream appeal without holding back on the truth.

And Hollywood is watching. The success of films like The Passion of the Christ and The Chronicles of Narnia and the recent launch of FoxFaith Films have awakened Hollywood to the commercial power of the Christian market, but studios have no idea how to tap into this market. So, Bryan pitched them the stories from the Labs, and studio executives plan to travel to Atlanta to hear the readings of those screenplays.

Bryan says the harvest is now. "God keeps telling me, 'Step up.' Every time I do, the doors fly open. At least for a time, he has given us the ear of the influential."