An outsider's perspective on a church struggle

The Overnighters is a documentary about the fracking boom in Williston, N.D., and a Lutheran church that helps the influx of men seeking work, many of them with rough backgrounds. The church starts the Overnighters program, giving men a place to sleep on cots and pews until they can find work. WORLD wrote about the film earlier this year. It premiered in early 2014 at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won an award and critical acclaim, and is now playing in select theaters around the country. Thanks to a unique distribution strategy from Drafthouse Films, where communities can request the film, The Overnighters is not just playing in New York and Los Angeles, but in places like Kalamazoo, Mich. and Omaha, Neb.

The film treats the Christians at the center of the story well, but it is also painfully realistic about churches and ministries facing needs that are greater than their resources. The Lutheran pastor at the center of the film, Jay Reinke, is a small town hero—taking in those rejected by the rest of the community—but he also has plenty of what he calls “brokenness” to deal with himself.

Director Jesse Moss does not consider himself religious but he described the filming process as a “religious education.” He developed a close relationship with Reinke and even slept in the church for much of the filming. We talked between screenings of his film at the Tribeca Film Festival, where he explained more in-depth his approach to portraying a devout Christian on film.

Why focus on a church for the story of an oil boomtown? There’s this giant river of men pouring into Williston and there’s this tiny town being ripped apart by the oil business. They’re converging, and Jay [Reinke] is at the pinch point of these tremendous forces. He’s the man mediating between the community and the men. So I stumbled into him and his place in the story. I thought, "This is a perfect way, an emotional way, to get inside this huge story."

Was it difficult to present a devout religious subject to film festival audiences in places like Manhattan? I came to this story as a secular person, I wasn’t raised in the church. I have a very limited religious education, which I think is a deficit. I think if you had asked me three years ago, could I ever imagine making a film about a Lutheran pastor in a church, I’d say no. But what I found—first of all it’s a world I don’t know anything about. And that’s always interesting to me to suddenly enter a world that is totally foreign. But furthermore a world, a church, a denomination that was struggling with this profound question, of what is the expression of their Christian faith, their Christian ethic. How to live it, not just preach it. … That’s a universal question that I think people at Tribeca, in churches across America, can relate to. How do we help the less fortunate, and what are the costs of those choices? We live in this country of extraordinary inequality. Every day we look around and we, some of us, have much more than other people. And Jay looked around and he helped some people. But that’s not an easy choice. And it’s not just a Christian choice, it’s a human question.

If you ask my wife, my producer, could Jesse Moss make a movie about this congregational split, she would have said that’s crazy, Jesse is not a religious person. But I also like to make documentaries that challenge my own understanding of the world and that bring me into lives and communities that are different from my own. This was illuminating and I know much more about the church and about these human experiences.

Was the Christian community in Williston hesitant to have you as a filmmaker in their world? There were people in the church who felt that this debate [about helping the men coming to town] … was congregational business, and I can see the argument for that. But these were also deliberations that were conducted across the whole congregation. They would have church meetings and struggle with this question of the Overnighters program. So they weren’t all conducted behind closed doors but they were a little wary of the camera’s presence.

I saw it as humanity’s business. I’m not judging you because you’re reluctant to find thousands of men places to sleep. I mean, we can all relate to that. A homeless shelter across the street from my house—would I want that at my home in San Francisco? Honestly, probably not. That’s Jay's struggle. It’s hard that the church was fearful of not just these men but of me, of the change they were going through. Change is hard. The way of life, this conservative small town is changing. I’m grateful to the church and to Jay for letting me in.

I was just by myself, I wasn’t a big crew with a fuzzy microphone that said Channel 7 on it, you know. So I just worked by myself. I don’t pretend to know more than I do. Also, it wasn’t like I was asking a lot of questions. The style of the film is cinema verité so we’re just a fly on the wall for the most part.

Did you and Reinke get into theological issues? Well, he’s a pastor. He’s preaching the Word to these men and to his congregants. … But it was a debate about what the church should be doing, and that debate was interesting to me.

He’s Missouri Synod Lutheran which is quite conservative, and I come from where I come from. We’re extremely close, and yet we understood that we were very different from each other.

Initially he talked about preaching a broken God and His compassion for men who are broken, many of whom have criminal records and are looking for a second chance. And I thought, well, this is partly an expression of faith, of the Christian ethic, to welcome these men in their brokenness, who most of us would turn away from. But I thought, is there more? What’s inside him? The film unlocks that. It’s not just theological, it’s personal. When he talks about brokenness, he’s not speaking abstractly.

I think all of us would be hard pressed—look, Jay is an exception. He’s brave, and he’s also reckless. What I came to understand is that certain people in history, be they saints or heroes, are just people who are willing to take risks that most of us don’t take in our lives. I mean, the church has good, legitimate arguments. Like, is this our job? Should the city of Williston be helping these people? Is this space where we worship the space where men should sleep, every day? Are these men creating an unsafe environment? Is this tithe better spent helping them or helping the congregation? I can’t judge the answer to these questions, and the congregation wrestles with them. I do think Jay is a hero, and a flawed hero.

There’s a point Jay made to me, and it’s not in the film but I wish we had found a way to include it. He said, many people in this congregation wouldn’t think twice about donating for a mission abroad. But when the mission comes here to their doorstep, no big deal. That’s a problem, right? But it's a problem I can relate to. You know what, sure, here’s my hundred bucks for the shelter downtown. Am I going to put you up in my garage? Jay did that. He put people up in his car, in his driveway, he went to his neighbors when the city was closing the program and said, please, take men in. The city couldn’t provide a solution. Maybe these men didn’t need help and the market should just take care of them. And I think that’s a hard question to answer too. What is the right amount of charity, when do we draw the line? Who do we help and not help? … It’s an issue that every community in America struggles with.