California pastor and Harvest Crusades founder Greg Laurie plans to release a new cartoon series in which he described as both “entertaining and evangelistic."
On social media, Laurie announced that he will release the first episode of his new series, entitled The Adventures of Ben Born Again & Yellow Dog soon in a video post.
“I am excited to announce that my cartoon character, Ben Born Again and his buddy, Yellow Dog, are now animated and our first cartoon is coming very soon!” Laurie wrote on X on Tuesday. “The first one is titled, ‘The Bridge Is Out.’ These cartoons will be both entertaining and evangelistic. I think you are going to like them.”
According to Church Leaders, the post included a sneak peek of the series, which showed the main characters Ben Born Again talking to his friend, Yellow Dog, near a beachfront. Ben Born Again, who is holding a skateboard, tells Yellow Dog that he has been born again, as described in John 3, but Yellow Dog has no idea what that means. In response, Ben Born Again tells viewers that Yellow Dog will have to “wait for our next adventure” to find out, concluding the video.
Laurie, who leads Harvest Fellowship Church in Riverside, first announced the series in July last year on the Harvest website.
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“I don’t know if you know my story or not, but my mother was married and divorced seven times. She was a raging alcoholic, so I was really lonely as a kid. Drawing and art played a huge role in my development—it was a place for me to escape to!,” he shared at the time. “It helped me get away from the crazy life that was happening around me and to connect with something bigger than myself and my circumstances. That’s why I’m excited to announce a new project that’s really close to my heart. It’s an animated program called The Adventures of Ben Born Again & Yellow Dog.”
He explained that Ben Born Again was originally made from a faith-cartoon strip he made called “Living Water,” adding that the character is “probably a caricature of me” and wanted to “tell my stories through him.”
The pastor hopes that his cartoon series that people “of all ages,” not just children, will like it.
“I want to tell these little stories, but they have a heavenly meaning. I want to reach people with humor, but then have something bigger to say.
“Through The Adventures of Ben Born Again & Yellow Dog, we feel like we can take animation and sort of turn it on its head with something not seen before: an animated cartoon that has a wholesome, good, family oriented message—but even more, the message of the gospel,” Laurie concluded.
Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/Skynesher
Milton Quintanilla is a freelance writer and content creator. He is a contributing writer for CrosswalkHeadlines and the host of the For Your Soul Podcast, a podcast devoted to sound doctrine and biblical truth. He holds a Masters of Divinity from Alliance Theological Seminary.
