Getting a Bigger Vision.
Last September, I had the chance to sit in on a World Vision presentation about a new outreach they were putting together for churches. I had already heard about their other church-related outreaches, like the Experience: AIDS exhibit (a huge interactive display, recreating an entire village and walking people through a guided tour of a young woman’s life as she’s affected by HIV).
From what I’ve heard (I’ve never gone through it), it’s a very powerful experience… but it’s also very impractical. The exhibit takes up something like 7,500 sq ft, so only about 5% of churches in the US can host it.
As a result, they created an all-new event: Journey to Jamaa.
For Journey to Jamaa, World Vision has taken the Experience: AIDS event and condensed it into a film-based presentation (with other media included: African sunrise videos, images of Africa, etc), keeping the cost MUCH lower, and letting the individual churches tailor the event to their community.
We hosted our Jamaa experience at CrossPoint yesterday, complete with djembe-led worship and a special Jamaa-themed children’s church (the kids even had a Skype video chat with Luke & Tiffany Wessler, a missionary couple from CrossPoint in Zambia).
In general, we had a pretty simple production: I wasn’t decked out in African garb, we didn’t have a lion skin draped across the stage, and we didn’t recreate an outdoor African market in our parking lot. As cool as those things would have been, we decided to focus on a few simple things like lighting, media elements and new arrangements for familiar worship songs.
And in spite of having a simple setup, people responded really well to the film and message. We intentionally tied everything back to the work our church missionaries Luke & Tiffany Wessler are doing in Zambia, and concluded with a strong push for people to get involved by sponsoring a child through World Vision.
Yesterday afternoon when I got home, I read an article that really affirmed the entire morning: Terry Virgo, the founder of Newfrontiers, wrote this about Jonah’s missionary journey to lands outside of his home in Israel…
Jonah’s experience illustrates the breadth of God’s plan to bring salvation to every corner of the world… “It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob … I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6)
Today God might say, “It is too small a thing for you to give yourself only to the restoration of the church in your small corner of the world. I call you to be a light to the nations, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth. Don’t be so preoccupied with the 10% when the 90% outside need to hear my word…
There will always be something not quite perfect at home that will need your attention. But what about the world? The restoration of the church has consumed you, but now a new day is dawning. Where the word ‘church’ has stirred you, let the word ‘nations’ burn in your heart — because it’s time to look at the harvest fields and it’s time to go.
Overall, it was a fantastic experience, and I would recommend it to any church looking for a unique and cost-effective way to get people thinking about missions.
