Priscilla Shirer on Spiritual Accountability, the Power of Prayer, and 'The Forge'

Priscilla Shirer is an accidental actress of sorts. Well established in her calling as an author and  Bible teacher, she has ministered to thousands at her conferences and through her Bible study resources. In fact, she is a New York Times Bestselling author with more than two dozen inspirational books to her credit.

But when filmmakers Alex and Stephen Kendrick came calling in 2014 with an invitation for her to act in a new movie they were making about prayer, Shirer did not hesitate. She jumped at the chance, not because she had a tremendous desire to act but because she was in complete accord with what the Kendricks stood for: an unwavering dedication to evangelism, discipleship, and the power of prayer.

Since that breakthrough acting role in War Room in 2015, the Texas native has also had featured roles in I Can Only Imagine (2018), Overcomer (2019), and now a turn in the forthcoming Kendrick Brother’s movie, The Forge, opening on August 23rd in theaters nationwide.

While she is quick to tell you acting is fun and rewarding, first and foremost Shirer is devoted to sharing the Word of God with as many people as she can in a practical, tangible way. 

I recently sat down with Shirer to discuss the new movie, the vital importance of prayer in our lives, and how Christ-based mentorship can positively impact someone to affect future generations.

For every actor, there always seems to be a trigger, a tipping point, a moment where you say to yourself, “I have to be part of this project!” For you, what was that moment with The Forge?

There are two things. Number one, my husband and I are very endeared to the Kendrick Brothers in the sense that we have so admired their integrity, their character, their refusal to sugarcoat Scripture or the Gospel, or the name of Jesus for the sake of entertainment. They just won't do it. So, when I got another script, and I knew that it was written, produced, and directed by them, well, that's the first thing that draws me in, because I know that their goal's going to be the same as my goal, which is ministry. And so,  I knew that would be the heart of it going in. And then, when I saw that the role they were asking me to play was that of a single mother of a 20-year-old young man, I have to tell you, my first thought was, I think your casting is off! (laughs)

I don't think that I'll be able to portray a mother of a 20-year-old. Surely I don't look like I could be old enough for that. And then I sobered up real quick when I realized, oh, I actually have a 20-year-old in real life, which means I probably do look like that. But this single mother in The Forge, she's mothering a son and trying to help him get into adulthood, man up, and show up for his life in terms of responsibility and character, and stick-to- itness, all the things that really we want to see formed in the lives of young men in particular. I have three sons. And so, a lot of the ways that I saw her speaking in the script to her child is exactly what I would say to my sons and how I would want to encourage them and challenge them and get up in their face about a few things.

This movie seems to be a reunion of sorts for Kendrick Brothers movie alumni including yourself, Cameron Arnett (Overcomer), T.C. Stallings (Courageous, War Room), Ken Bevel (Fireproof, Courageous), and Karen Abercrombie (War Room) just to name a few. Does that create a sense of added pressure to perform or does it become like old home week for the cast?

Oh, totally like old home week. There's no pressure. If we did feel pressure, seeing each other made us all relax and just remember that we could enjoy the ride by catching up with one another. A few of us hadn't even seen each other since we filmed War Room, which, believe it or not, has been 10 years since we filmed that. And so it actually is very relaxing. You really do build a family atmosphere when you're doing a film. I'm not immersed in the film industry, but now I totally get it when people that are in the film industry tell me how much of a bond they build with the people around them, where for three, four, or six months, for 13 hours every day, you're in all kinds of sticky, hot, uncomfortable environments, trying your best to get this scene to be at optimum strength. One hundred people having to work together to make one scene actually work in a film. Well, I get it now. So, you build these relationships with people because you're sharing an important thing in your life and you're doing it for a long period of time. So, to see each other again really does make everybody relax, feel at home, and look forward to the journey.

How did this experience acting in The Forge differ from War Room? Were there any similarities to the past?

That's a good question. There were many similarities in the sense that the Kendrick Brothers run their film sets very intentionally. We're going to all gather together. And when I say all, I don't just mean the people that are in front of the camera, where there may be five or six of us that meet that criteria. There are literally 100 other people that are equally, if not more necessary to the film actually functioning. And all 100 of us are going to have devotions together every morning before we all go to our different posts and start getting ready for those scenes we're going to shoot that day. I loved seeing the consistency in the Kendrick Brothers from 10 years ago with War Room. They had done films before that, but for me, War Room was the first one I did with them, and I was blindsided by it.

And it's still just as meaningful to me now, that they would prioritize prayer and the study of God's Word at the beginning of each day, and then throughout the day as we're filming. Everybody is hot and sweaty and concentrating on doing what they've got to do next. If we're filming a scene where they know this could be one where someone in a theater could come to know Jesus Christ as Lord right here, the Kendrick Brothers are going to call everybody down from their ladders, or holding lights, and the makeup people are out of their trailers, and they're going to say, “Hey, can we just stop right now and ask God's anointing to be on this particular scene?” And so, that's one of the things that didn't change, and I'm so grateful that it didn't. It just makes all the difference in the world.

Let’s dig into the movie a bit. This is a story that is seemingly becoming very common in our world … a young person sort of drifting through life with no plan or purpose. Why do you think this generation seems to be representative of this?

I think that some of it has to do with what is also a gift to their generation. What social media and entrepreneurship has done has caused people to have opportunities that we didn't have when we were 19 or 20 years old. But it's the appearance of it is that you can do everything quickly. That if I plant a seed today, whether it's in a career, business endeavor, or whatever, I'm going to get a harvest out of that next week. By next week, I should be able to build the brand, build the platform, have the followers, and be able to launch into it. My brother (Jonathan Evans) was preaching a message recently and he said, “You know, we just live in a day and age where everybody has an air fryer mentality, whereas our grandmothers had a crockpot mentality.”

Everything is fast now. Everything is quick. We want everything right now, and we want it at the click of a button. Whereas back in the day, it was a crockpot method for everything, everything was marinated and cooked slowly. People recognized it was going to take time. So, they had some consistency and stick-to-itness, perseverance, and endurance that was part and parcel with the game of life. So, I do think now, that with all of the benefits that have come to the younger generation, and of course to us as well, being able to have access to so much so quickly, the negative side of that could be that we have not built into this next generation the endurance that is actually required to sustain something over the course of time. This means they can get very deflated very quickly when things don't manifest into what they expected right off the bat. We've got to encourage them to stay with it and not to be discouraged, to keep their eyes focused on where they're headed, and to understand there's going to be stops and starts in that process, and that it's okay.

A highly vital component in this movie is the power of prayer. As we saw in the movie War Room, prayer is a game changer. Could you talk about the importance of prayer in the movie as well as in your own life?

In the film, you see the importance of prayer throughout in many ways. But my character, she's praying that the Lord will help her son, and she's praying that the Lord will send some men into his life strategically, that can be that accountability for him, encourage him, and challenge him. And you see that prayer answered as well as many others. One example of this in my own life, I have been encouraged to prioritize prayer because I've seen this truth in the legacy of prayer in my life. Like my grandmother, I remember her writing down prayers well before there was a War Room and everybody thought it was a thing to write down your prayer. Grandma was writing down not necessarily whole prayers, but she was writing down the names of the people she was praying for and what those requests were.

Then, she would put dates beside them when they were answered. And so now, in those little spiral notebooks, we have a track record of grandma's prayers, and of course, our names and great-grandchildren she didn't even know about yet. She was already praying for those people. And so, now that I get to see as a grown woman that I'm living underneath the banner of a grandmother's prayers, who's long been with the Lord, but the ripple effect of her commitment to prayer is still strong. I'm still living under the benefit of that. That's what encourages me and my own life to be consistent in prayer. And I'm certainly not perfect at it. I’ve got a whole long way to grow in that regard. But I'm hopeful and expectant that just like I'm a beneficiary of grandma's prayers, that there will be grandchildren that will come along in my legacy, they won't even know it, that they're living underneath the blessing and benefit of a woman who loved them in advance and who prayed for them and asked the Lord to dispense favor on them.

After people have had a chance to see The Forge what would you like to see audiences get out of that experience? What is your greatest hope for the film?

My greatest hope is that the theme of it catches on in the same way the theme of War Room caught on. I met so many people and continue to meet so many people who actually tell me the practical ways their prayer life was completely changed after “War Room”. That they actually did start being intentional about their prayers, writing them down, or putting post-it notes up on walls so that they could be reminded about the focus of what it was they were praying on. Or, they looked in the Bible to actually see what are the promises of God that match up with what they are praying? They were intentional and strategic about prayer. This movie's about discipleship, and I think sometimes when we think about making disciples, we relegate that to people who are in vocational ministry. That's what the pastors do, that's what the women's ministry leader does. Not me.

But in this movie, it's a successful businessman (Cameron Arnett). He is not in full-time ministry. He's in the marketplace. But you find out as the movie goes on that the undercurrent of everything he's doing is asking the Lord to keep his eyes open, to see what employees working for him that he's supposed to be investing in their life in another way. He is to do this in a disciple-making way to help somebody see who Christ is, to know what character is, to know how to have integrity. And as the story goes on, you find out why this businessman is so tuned in to the young, in particular young men that come to work for him. I'm hoping that a movie viewer will see that and it will occur to them, ‘Oh, I'm a lawyer, but I'm supposed to be a disciple maker while I'm in the Bar Association, or I'm a physician, or I'm an entrepreneur, or I'm an actor, or I'm a filmmaker. But right here in the context of the industry that the Lord has entrusted to me, that hasn't absolved me of the responsibility of pouring into the life of somebody else. Instead, right here in this field, Lord, open up my eyes and show me who you are entrusting to me that I'm supposed to impact for your kingdom and for your glory.’

The Forge opens in theaters across the nation on August 23rd.

WATCH A TRAILER FOR THE FORGE: