First, the studio’s micro-budget features like “Fireproof” and “Facing the Giants” earned millions without traditional marketing muscle or star power.

Now, its latest film, “Courageous,” debuted at the top of the DVD sales charts, surpassing such mainstream fare as “Moneyball,” “The Ides of March” and “Abduction.”

“Courageous” follows four police officers who must overcome tragedy while vowing to strengthen their bonds with their families. The film opened in the number four spot late last year and hung in the top 10 for four weeks despite opening on just over 1,100 screens, about a third of what major film releases receive.

“It’s been remarkable to witness our church-made films do well head to head with Hollywood movies.  When we heard the ‘Courageous’ DVD was number one in the nation, our Sherwood family rejoiced about how many families may be touched and how many dads may find something in the film that helps them be better fathers. That’s our first measure of success,” said “Courageous director, co-writer and star Alex Kendrick in a statement.

Thus, it’s with pleasure that Big Hollywood presents this exclusive clip from “Courageous,” the latest film by director Alex Kendrick, available now on DVD and Blu-ray. Have a look at some of the bloopers, flubs, and just plain fun had on set during the film’s lighter moments:

“Courageous” is available at Amazon.com.

But Kendrick couldn’t predict the impact his Albany, Ga. church would make on a film industry indifferent to matters of faith.

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Kendrick rallied his 3,000-member congregation to fund the 2003 film “Flywheel.” The movie, which followed a sketchy car salesman who finds Jesus Christ, ended up playing six consecutive weeks at a Georgia movie house despite featuring an all-volunteer crew. The film’s shock success helped fuel “Facing the Giants” and “Fireproof,” two faith-based indies which proved more profitable than many Hollywood features.

“Fireproof,” budgeted at $500,000, hauled in $33 million with no bankable stars and a tiny marketing push.

By the church’s own standards, Kendrick‘s latest film represents a quantum leap in both budget and outreach.

“Courageous” tracks four police officers whose lives are changed after tragedy strikes close to home. It’s a tale of grief and healing, one that emphasizes the profound influence fathers have on their children.

The film cost $1 million to produce and will be shown in nearly 1,000 screens nationwide as well as in Canada starting Sept. 30.

Kendrick and crew researched the role fathers play in the family structure before making “Courageous,“ uncovering some alarming statistics along the way. They learned more than 90 percent of gang members come from fatherless homes.

“They’re looking for that belonging to a male group,” says Kendrick, who typically writes, produces and directs his church’s films as well as appears in front of the camera.

Children who grow up without a strong, positive male figure are also less likely to believe in a higher power.

“Those who didn’t think dad was proud of them struggle to believe God was there for them,” he says. “There’s such a close correlation.”

Kendrick can point to his own family history to show how faith can break patterns which might otherwise linger for generations. His grandfather’s alcoholism could have shaken his father’s ability to raise a family.

“When my dad was college age he made up his mind … this junk wasn’t going to go to his kids,” he says. “My two brothers and I didn’t grow up in a family with all that junk there. We saw a conviction in him to guard himself and his family. My dad broke the chain.”

Today’s young, fatherless men don’t even have pop culture examples to follow.

“There are very few shows now where the dad is an honorable man,” says Kendrick, who pines for a modern version of “The Cosby Show.“

Police officers proved a fitting metaphor for the church’s latest project. Fathers must protect their families, and that’s similar to the function of law enforcement, he says.

Kendrick’s film productions don’t begin without an extended amount of prayer.

“We want God to bless it. Our first desire is to make Him happy,“ he says. “We spend close to a year asking, ‘Lord, what do you want us to do?’“

That doesn’t involve fancy trailers, bloated entourages or Pilates instructors.

When “Fireproof” star Kirk Cameron was on set he noticed the difference between the church’s brand of movie making and the Hollywood model.

“This is like being at summer camp and there happens to be a movie camera here,“ Kendrick recalls the actor telling him. “When you’re on set making movies you’re not dealing with egos and trying to pamper people‘ … I enjoyed hearing that.”

It’s safe to say Hollywood-style success hasn’t gone to Kendrick’s head.

“We’re the first to admit we’re a South Georgia church in a fairly rural area,” he says. Church volunteers still help flesh out the cast and crew. “We didn’t go to school for this, We’re learning by trial and error. We want to continue improving the craft of filmmaking.”

That learning curve may impact the next generation of faith-based filmmakers.

“We’ve had dozens and dozens of conversations with young filmmakers. We want to help them in any way possible,” he says. “Don’t go through the speed bumps we went through.”

“I’m not impressed with Hollywood in general. They don’t make a lot of movies that lift our standards and morality.” That’s what director Alex Kendrick told me in a telephone interview on the Monday after his new movie Fireproof generated a downright shocking $6.5 million opening weekend. Despite never being on more than 839 screens, the little Christian-themed indie released on September 26 finished its theatrical run with a stunning $33.4M in ticket sales. Los Angeles and New York are filled with talented film professionals, who spend countless hours and millions upon millions of dollars making movies. The cost of development, production, a director, actors and marketing make the craft of filmmaking prohibitive. So how did a little church in Georgia score a legitimate box office hit?

Director Alex Kendrick with his FIREPROOF co-stars Erin Bethea and Kirk Cameron

The answer, according to director Kendrick, is prayer. “Before we shot a tough scene, we prayed. This movie was bathed in prayer.” He is serious. Although Alex and his brother, co-writer and producer Stephen Kendrick, “grew up making silly movies in the backyard with a video camera,” they have no formal training in the business. They are both associate pastors at Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Ga., three hours south of Atlanta. They are in “the prayer business” full-time.

About seven years ago, the Kendrick brothers approached Sherwood senior pastor Michael Catt with the idea that making movies should be part of the church’s ministry. Their church has about 3,000 members, with about 1,500-1,700 attending services on the average Sunday, so Sherwood is not one of the so-called mega-churches, but Catt agreed to let the brothers try their hand at filmmaking.

Their first effort was the 2003 movie Flywheel about a car salesman with a crisis of conscience. The movie was made for $20,000 and shot on a Canon XL1 digital camera with a cast and crew made up entirely of church volunteers. The Kendricks intended to sell the DVD online with the proceeds being pushed back into the church’s ministries. “We thought it’d be neat to show the movie at the local movie theatre,” Kendrick told me, and Carmike’s Wynnsong 16 Theatres in Albany agreed to a limited four-day engagement. The movie proved to be very popular playing for six weeks and expanding to two other Carmike locations. The newly-minted, nonprofit Sherwood Studios hoped to sell 10,000 copies of Flywheel on DVD, and, to date, the movie has sold 200,000 units.

Based on that relatively modest success, the Kendricks proposed a movie called Facing the Giants about a Christian high school football coach. They raised the stakes with a budget of $100,000, mostly to pay for a five-person professional crew from Orlando and the equipment necessary to shoot a “real” movie. Still, there were no paid actors and the bulk of the crew was untrained volunteers from the Sherwood Baptist Church congregation.

When the Kendrick brothers finished a rough cut, they approached a Christian record label called Provident Music Group in order to license some music for Facing the Giants. When the record people saw the movie, they got parent company Sony involved, and, faster than you can say an “Our Father,” the movie had a distribution deal with IDP Films/Samuel Goldwyn. The picture rolled out on 441 screens in September of 2006 and delivered $1.34M on opening weekend for a $3,046 Per Theater Average. Giants showed great playability and finished with $10.17M domestic.

What did the church do with the profit from Facing the Giants? No perks for these mini-moguls. It was funneled into the building of an 82-acre sports park for the Albany community with baseball and softball diamonds and soccer fields.

Emboldened by box-office success, the two associate pastors began working on their third movie. They chose marriage as a subject. Alex told me, “We saw so many marriages struggling. Fifty percent of marriages end in divorce, 70 percent of second marriages end in divorce, and first responders, like firefighters, police officers and military men and women, have an even higher divorce rate than everyday Americans.” So, their movie Fireproof is about a firefighter who is working to save his struggling marriage.

Shot on just a $500,000 budget, with that same crew from Orlando (slightly expanded), and plenty of help from their congregation, they made their movie. This time they had a star. “Kirk Cameron saw Facing the Giants and called us and said, ‘I gotta help you guys do this,’ ” said Kendrick, but Cameron auditioned like everyone else. Ultimately, he was cast as the lead, and in Sherwood Studios tradition, he was not paid anything. No salary. No residuals. Nothing. They paid his travel and hotel and made a donation to his Camp Firefly charity.

I was curious about what Alex had up his sleeve next, but he says that his flock needs his attention. “The movie business can’t take the place of what we do in church. We would never want to do these movies at the expense of our members.” The plan is for Sherwood Studios to make a movie every two years, and they have not even started thinking about the next one, but when Alex and his brother make movies in the future, he told me that they “will tell stories that middle America can relate to. America has two cultures. There’s New York City and California — and there’s the way the rest of the country lives.”

Steve Mason is on Facebook and now also on Twitter.