BibleProject Motion Director Greg Stewart ’13 reflects on a calling with eternal impact

A video plays on YouTube: A geometric mountain created from layered colors of green, peach, and pale blue is centered on the screen. The camera moves past the foreground, floating by simplified foliage and rounded bushes, toward the horizon. 

Everything is moving—animated.

This BibleProject video, one of hundreds for the ministry, is the handiwork of many, but Motion Director Greg Stewart ’13 plays a special role in bringing Scripture to life for millions of people around the world.

Behind the scenes

“I love doing things like making grass grow or move in the wind, even if it's in the background. Those are the details that are felt but not seen,” Stewart says. 

When someone hits play, they see the final layer—subtle, intentional movements they may not notice directly but still experience, elevating BibleProject’s videos.

“It’s a hard balance to strike though. Think about a snowy landscape. It’s both still and not still. The trees would be moving slightly in the wind, or maybe there’s a little bit of snow. Everything is happening at once, but none of this animation should draw your attention,” he says.

The same is true for rain, water, and grass—Stewart’s favorite. 

The key to animation is understanding how things work. “If you’re animating a car for example, it’s actually helpful to understand the physics of movement,” he says. “You start with a speed of zero then gently accelerate, but when you stop, because of how mass works, it’s not just going to stop. You would, as we call it in animation, overshoot a little bit—when you hit the brakes but still feel like you are moving.”

This is especially hard with more abstract design animations like shapes. However, even shapes follow the basic rules of how humans and things move and interact. 

“You know a circle is a bouncy ball, bowling ball, or golf ball depending on how much it squashes when it hits a surface,” Stewart says. With the same understanding of human behavior, you could even make the circle sad. 

“You really have to study how the world works and how people move. The more you understand that, the more you can exaggerate the nuances of movement that are helpful for communicating,” he says. 

Details like these happen much later in the production process for a BibleProject video. Before Stewart ever steps into a project, the creation of a video has undergone extensive work. BibleProject theologians gather to write a script. “But a script written by theologians is not necessarily a script that works for an animated video,” Stewart says. There is some reworking done during the creative process. 

An illustration team then begins storyboarding characters and scenes. “Sometimes we're trying to animate test art, which will then inform the art itself,” Stewart says. The animation team also goes through multiple explorations ranging from mood boards and motion tests to the visual and physical identity of characters and defining the dimensionality of the world. 

As motion director, Stewart isn’t just moving shapes across a screen; he helps shape the emotional and visual language of an entire BibleProject video.

“How do we want people to feel?” Stewart says of the early creative conversations. “What feeling do we want people to associate with this or that? And then how do we pull that into details?” Everything from movement style to frame rates, spatial depth, and color palettes are at the center of Stewart’s work.

Those high-level discussions eventually become practical animation decisions. “I help determine what sort of ‘rules’ the world of an animated piece have and how we insert that into every detail of the video,” he says. “It’s all very intentional.”

Early sketches at Bethel

Animation was not part of Stewart’s original plan at Bethel. He entered college unsure of his career direction and declared a double major in psychology and Spanish.

However, Stewart soon realized that he wasn’t interested in learning the science of psychology. It took one semester to set his eyes on a different interest: “I wanted to study the Bible,” he says. Stewart decided to pursue a biblical and theological studies major with a double minor in Spanish and ancient Greek. 

Little did he know that his passion for Scripture and translating Greek would eventually impact people around the world in over 50 different languages and dialects. 

“I can actually draw a straight line from film production and animation to Greek translation,” Stewart says. 

For Stewart, both disciplines require studying nuance and understanding how small details shape meaning.

“If I understand the nuances of Greek grammar and what this little mark or this article means, I can create a translation that will get the intent across a bit more clearly,” he says. 

That same mindset now shapes the way he approaches animation.

“If I'm going to translate something for a reader or viewer, I really have to understand the original text or script,” he says. “It forces me to sit with it, study it, read it over and over again, and meditate on it until I conclude the best way to express it for the audience.” Tiny adjustments can completely change how people understand what they are seeing—or reading.

During his studies at Bethel, Stewart picked up a new hobby: film—or as close to ‘film’ as you can get when you are an RA making rap videos to invite students to a residence hall grillout. 

“I realized a lot of what excited me about psychology and pastoral ministry was understanding deep things and figuring out how to communicate them in a way that genuinely helps people,” Stewart says. “I could actually do that through filmmaking.”

His favorite part about creating his memorable rap videos was post-production work, and after graduation he settled into his first job as a video producer at a church. 

Stewart found he had a lot of time to learn on the job. “I’m basically a self-taught animator, but Bethel taught me how to learn,” he says.

Stewart’s favorite projects were intro videos for sermon series.

“It was enjoyable to think about how to usher people into a sermon, to prepare them for what they were about to hear,” he says. By the end of that job, he was almost exclusively working on animation.

Rendering meaning

What once seemed like two separate paths—Scripture and animation—are now inseparable for Stewart. 

But bringing theology to life visually carries a unique weight. Every artistic decision becomes an interpretive one.

“How does the Holy Spirit look and move?” Stewart says with a laugh. “Oh my gosh, are you kidding me?”

For Stewart and BibleProject’s team, animating Scripture is not simply about creating beautiful visuals. It’s about communicating theological truth as faithfully and clearly as possible—while acknowledging the limits of art itself.

“We’re not trying to propose, ‘This is exactly what the Spirit looks like,’” Stewart says. “But we still have to try and be accurate.”

“We talk about God’s Spirit breathing life into Adam, and obviously that’s different from the Holy Spirit indwelling somebody at Pentecost,” he says. “Those moments have to look different because they’re not the same thing happening—but they also have to look similar enough that people understand it’s God’s Spirit working in both ways.”

Even small artistic choices can carry unexpected theological implications. In the Royal Priesthood video series, characters were designed without facial features simply to reduce animation workload and fit the visual style. Some viewers, however, interpreted the decision literally.

“Someone commented, ‘How could you not have facial details? Part of the imago Dei is having a face,’” Stewart says. “You can’t please everybody.” So he stays away from the YouTube comments, partly for humility and so that he isn’t discouraged.

Stewart and his team are constantly making decisions about clarity versus theological precision and accuracy. 

“When you're talking about He who is above all, we're never going to get it all right,” he says. 

That responsibility though is exactly what drew Stewart to BibleProject in the first place.

“My previous job was essentially my dream job working at one of the best animation studios in the world,” he says. 

A major turning point in Stewart’s career came when he helped found Ordinary Folk alongside acclaimed animator Jorge R. Canedo in Vancouver where he worked on projects for major corporate clients. Stewart worked on animating conference visuals for Google, the announcement video for Gemini, and various other projects for clients like Webflow, Elastic, SAP, and Procreate. 

Ordinary Folk also supported BibleProject, and long before officially joining the organization, Stewart helped direct and animate many of its videos. 

Despite the prestige and creative opportunities, Stewart felt drawn toward BibleProject’s mission.

“At some point I’ll have to give an account of my days and how I spent my time. This is work that’s going to live long past me” Stewart says. 

Every BibleProject video, he says, is an opportunity to help people engage Scripture more deeply around the globe.

“It’s sobering to think about being on my deathbed and looking back,” Stewart says. “But I’m going to be really glad that I spent a good chunk of my working life on things that have eternal impact.”

Pursue your calling

Learn to study Scripture faithfully, think deeply, and communicate truth clearly through Bethel’s Department of Biblical and Theological Studies.

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