MICHÈLE MARR:

While growing up, the Kendrick brothers were constantly making films with a camera they borrowed from a neighbor. In college, instead of writing papers, Alex and Stephen turned in films.

As adults, they became members of the staff of Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Ga. Both are associate pastors there. Alex is the associate pastor of Media Ministries, which includes Sherwood Pictures.

After reading a study by the Barna Group that said the best way to reach an audience was through film, Alex convinced Sherwood’s Senior Pastor, Michael Catt, that the church should start making movies.

Sherwood Pictures’ second full-length motion picture, “Facing the Giants,” will open Friday in 400 theaters, seven of them in Orange County.

Its first film, “Flywheel,” the story of the transformation of a dishonest used-car salesman who is caught and faced with returning money to the customers he has deceived, aired on TV networks such as TBN, Family Net, INSP, Faith TV and Cornerstone TV, and, to date, has sold more than 10,000 copies through Blockbuster and Netflix. It won several independent film awards.

“Facing the Giants,” written, directed and produced by Alex and Stephen, is a film about faith and is an act of faith itself.

The film has no investors. It was shot with one camera on a budget of $100,000 — every cent donated by members of Sherwood Baptist Church. But it is hardly amateur hour: Sony and Samuel Goldwyn Films — having said they were impressed with the film’s high production values, its professional camera work and its storyline — snatched it up.

The film has no stars; with one exception, every actor is a volunteer from the church. Mark Richt, head football coach for the University of Georgia, plays himself in a cameo appearance. He agreed to the role because he had seen “Flywheel.”

Alex Kendrick was cast in the lead as Coach Grant Taylorbecause he was the only volunteer actor right for the part who could also spend six weeks on the set.

The film has no nudity, no sex, no violence. It has no four-letter words. Not a single character says so much as “dadgumit” or “fiddlesticks.”

All the same, the film was given a PG rating — which has been a matter of much speculation and debate.

Scripps Howard News Service columnist Terry Mattingly has quoted Kris Fuhr, vice president of marketing at Provident Films, which is distributing the movie, as saying the Motion Picture Association of America told her “Facing the Giants” was given the rating because the board decided “the movie was heavily laden with messages from one religion, and that this might offend people from other religions.”

Fuhr said the association used the word “proselytizing” when speaking with her.

The MPAA website explains a film with a PG rating “clearly needs to be examined by parents before they let their children attend” because they may consider “some material unsuitable for their children.” That material might be mild profanity or violence, brief nudity in a nonsexual context, or the theme of a film itself.

The website acknowledges: “In our pluralistic society, it is not easy to make judgments without incurring some disagreement.”

In a call to the Catholic League, reported on its website, Joan Graves, chairman of the MPAA ratings board, is on record as having said she is the person who talked to Fuhr. She says she told Fuhr that “Facing the Giants” was given a PG rating because of its treatment of “mature issues,” such as “depression, matters relating to pregnancy and sports-related violence, not for being overtly religious.”

The Catholic League has accepted her statement, saying its president, Bill Donahue, “is satisfied with this response, and is delighted to know that the MPAA has no policy of giving a PG rating to movies dubbed ‘too religious.’ ”

I’ve seen the film, and I still have to wonder. Yes, the film portrays a very depressed man in the character of Grant Taylor. He’s been coaching the football team of a Christian high school for six years without a single winning season. He discovers the players’ fathers are planning to mutiny and have him fired.

He drives a beat-up sedan that needs a paint job and has an engine that often dies or doesn’t start. His home stinks, literally, and he can’t figure out why. He and his wife can’t seem to make financial ends meet on his $26,000-a-year salary, and he’s about to lose his job. Then, he and his wife find out they can’t have children.

He’s got the giants of fear and failure hovering over him. Under their shadow, the view is bleak, but Taylor doesn’t lash out at others in blame or ponder suicide. He prays. And he prays. And he prays.

Taylor and his winsome and witty wife, Brooke — well played by Shannen Fields, the real-life wife of the head coach of Sherwood Christian Academy — do talk about their inability to conceive. The content of most feminine hygiene commercials shown on prime time television are more explicit than their conversations, though.

Then there’s the football. It can be a bone-crunching, violent sport. While the football in “Facing the Giants” is realistic, we don’t see heads cracking or compound fractures on the field.

The most skin we see is in the retreating hairline of the beleaguered coach.

I may not put it in quite the words the film’s producers would, but I’d say that the theme runs along the lines of this: There is a God we are called to honor in our thoughts, our words and in what we do; there is a God to whom we are called to give our all; there is a God we can depend on and call on through prayer; there is a God who hears us, a God who answers our prayers.

I’m always waiting for a film that remains inspirational, even when everyone’s — or no one’s — prayers are answered as they’d like. There are times and places when that happens and the faithful are still expected to keep their faith.

But is the theme of a God we can have faith in really something we need to protect our children from? Having seen “Facing the Giants,” it seems to me in the collective mind of the MPAA that would depend on whether one of the names for God happens to be Jesus.

It would be a shame to let that stop you from seeing this film. Low-budget, Christian and squeaky-clean, “Facing the Giants” is an entertaining story about a bunch of rather ordinary people making an extraordinary effort to live out their faith in the course of their everyday lives — lives very much like our own.