Cape Cod churches have united to provide an engaging evening of evangelistic video. Falmouth Baptist Church, Evangelical Free Church of East Dennis and Covenant Community Church of Sandwich are pleased to announce a screening of Create International's most recent evangelistic drama “Retaliate with Love.” This is the Cape Cod premiere of the film in the Shan language, featuring Shan actors, and subtitled in English. It was shot in 2009 in Northern Thailand and the Sh*n State of Burm*/My*nm*r.
"Retaliate with Love"is an exciting evangelistic drama made for a specific group of people in Southeast Asia and used by ministries there to share the gospel with these historically oppressed people. The story centers on a young man who undergoes a hazardous journey from Northern Thailand into Brma to discover the whereabouts of his missing older brother.
Sunday, January 23rd at 6 p.m. at Falmouth Baptist Church, 60 Central Park Avenue, Falmouth, MA 02540 (www.falmouthbaptist.com)
Filmmakers Steve & Allyson B*ldwin now serve with a YWAM ministry called Create International in Chi*ng M*i, Th*iland producing evangelistic films in the language and culture of unreached peoples worldwide. Most recently they were producing a film in Indi*.
This engaging presentation will demonstrate how film and videos are being used to reach illiterate and unreached peoples with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. A short documentary in English about the Southeast Asian people will also be presented.A Q&A about the film, process and the ministry behind it will follow the presentation.
Please help us spread the word about this event using the link to this blog post. Thanks!
We felt extraordinarily blessed at Christmas time this year and so thankful and grateful for the many blessings God showered us in this season of joy. Now that we turn our attention to returning to Thailand later this year, while you join us in prayer for our return? Here are our prayer concerns at present.
Please pray that we will:
* finish strong with our ongoing video editing projects for Vietn*m and the M*rwari people of India
* have favor with many upcoming church appointments and Sh*n film screenings
* find 46 new families or individuals and 10 more churches to partner with us in the next 5 months
* continue to meet our monthly expenses during our deputation on a limited income
* be able to return to India for a teaching tour this Spring as the Lord leads
* see Samuel provided with a good living arrangement and his own support network to help him while we are out of reach overseas later this year
* continue to serve our Lord right here and now as He leads.
"Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” - Matthew 2:2
"When they saw the star they were overjoyed." - Matthew 2:10
"I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star." - Revelations 22:16
Peace + Love in Christ this Christmas season to you and yours!
(Christmas Star graphic & fancy Photoshop editing work by Abby)
“To humans belong the plans of the heart, but from the Lord comes the proper answer of the tongue.” (Prov. 3:1) This fall was an exercise in turning over our plans to the Lord and letting him change them. Steve did not return to Thailand for an outreach with the Create team nor travel to the Lausanne Conference in Cape Town, South Africa as we expected. Last year at this time Steve was often quoted on outreach for enthusiastically saying “This is what I signed up for!”Sitting on the sidelines warming the beach is most definitely not what Steve had planned for this fall. Nevertheless, as we commit to the Lord whatever we do, he has established our plans and directed our attention to other worthy pursuits.Until all have heard the good news, there will be more many more outreach opportunities for us ahead.
Instead, Steve is concentrating his efforts on contacting churches that may be willing and able to support our ongoing ministry. This season of support raising has resulted in a few offers to present the work of Create International to Cape Cod and Connecticut churches. We truly enjoy the immense privilege of sharing about the ministry of Create International. Please pray that we will find favor with these churches and see many more open doors and invitations to speak about our work in the months ahead.On that note, we would be delighted to come and speak at your church, home group, or ministry event. Would you like us to come and deliver an engaging presentation on media ministry for missions work focused on the least reached peoples of the world? We estimate we will need another 12 churches to join our team if we are to reach our full level of support and return to Create next summer.
Gratefully, we did receive some special funding this fall to attend the YWAM conference in Florida in early November. God used this event to speak powerfully to all four of us about our calling. We were especially grateful to see the impact of this event on Rachel and Abigail. Abby says “It was eye-opening to the way God has been moving in the nations of the world.” And Rachel said “I was really energized about our family's future work with YWAM.”
In other news, Allyson has been diligently editing material for the World Christian Chronology for the Center for the Study of Global Christianity and editing video from Vietnam. Samuel has successfully aced his first few months at UMASS Amherst and seems to be settling in well. His housing crisis earlier this semester was remedied recently and he is getting ready for finals and Christmas break. Rachel and Abigail are working hard at school and both made the honor roll again. We also just enjoyed a visit from the Montoya's, a missionary family we meet in Perth, Australia.
Our focus is now on returning to Thailand as our next step with Create International. We are currently at 74% of the overall funding level we need to return.We estimate that we will need 12 more churches and as many as 48 new families or individuals to provide the support required for our ministry. The opportunity to partner with us has never been more needed or urgent.
Please Pray that we:
- fend off discouragement during our fundraising time
- would have favor with upcoming church appointments
- would find 48 new families or individuals to partner with us in the next 4 months
- meet our monthly expenses during our deputation
- will finish strong with our video editing projects for Vietnam and the Marwari people of India
- can see Samuel provided with a good living arrangement and his own support network to help him while we are out of reach overseas next year.
In April and May of 2011, our fearless leaders,Calvin and Carol, the International directors of Create International, will be traveling throughout the US in order to equip YWAM bases, churches and other ministries with Create's audio-visual resources.They are uniquely gifted to meet the needs of short and long-term frontier ministries by providing films and storybooks in the language and culture of the people and seminars on evangelistic media production for the unreached world. Our heart is to see the body equipped for the task of reaching the unreached. We will be assisting in this effort next Spring. If you know of anyone in the mid-west or west coast that would be interested in a visit by Calvin and Carol and a presentation to your church, staff or students, just let us know.
"Retaliate with Love" is an exciting evangelistic drama made for a specific group of people in Southeast Asia and used by ministries there to share the gospel with these historically oppressed people. The story centers on a young man who undergoes a hazardous journey from Northern Thailand into Brma to discover the whereabouts of his missing older brother. The film has been subtitled in English.
Create International in Thailand produces evangelistic films in the language and culture of unreached peoples worldwide. This engaging presentation will demonstrate how film and videos are being used to reach illiterate, unreached peoples with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. A short documentary in English about the Southeast Asian people will also be presented.
A short Q&A about the film, process and ministry will follow the presentation.
Thursday, November 18 Cinema Salem, Salem www.cinemasalem.com 7 or 8 pm (Time to be determined)
We are trying to determine which screening room we can use on the 18th, which effects the time of our event that evening. Therefore, please R.S.V.P so we can get a proper headcount. That would be greatly appreciated.
For more information and to R.S.V.P. please contact Steve or Allyson at sevenlampstands at gmail dot com
Lord willing, in about a week and a half Steve will be on a plane to Cape Town to attend the Third Lausanne Conference on World Evangelization. Cape Town 2010. Held in collaboration with the World Evangelical Alliance, this conference brings together 4,000 leaders from more than 200 countries to confront the critical issues of our time—other world faiths, poverty, HIV/AIDS, persecution, among others—as they relate to the future of the Church and world evangelization. Steve still hopes to attend this conference, yet still requires the funds to purchase the round-trip airfare. Please join us in prayer for this financial release.
Chair Doug Birdsall says “Our theme for Cape Town 2010 will be “God in Christ, reconciling the world to himself” (2 Corinthians 5:19). I believe that Cape Town 2010 will help the Church of this generation to understand our times and become more effective in world evangelization.” In that spirit, Steve has been enlisted as a representative of frontier media missions to share how technology can be more effectively used to advance the gospel worldwide. With only 4000 leaders from 200 countries invited, Steve literally pinched himself when he got the last-minute invitation this summer. Expenses for this important conference event are estimated at $3500 and immediate sponsorship of this event is appreciated.
Cape Town 2010: "The Whole Church taking the Whole Gospel to the Whole World"
The story of Lausanne begins with Rev. Billy Graham. A powerful preacher, Graham quickly rose to prominence in the 1940’s and 50’s to become America’s foremost evangelist. As he began preaching internationally, Graham developed a passion to “unite all evangelicals in the common task of the total evangelization of the world.”
At the urging of evangelical leaders worldwide, the Lausanne Movement will hold the Third Congress on World Evangelisation in Cape Town, South Africa, 16-25 October 2010. The goal of Cape Town 2010 is to re-stimulate the spirit of Lausanne represented in the Lausanne Covenant: to promote unity, humbleness in service, and a call to action for global evangelization.
It is anticipated that over 4,000 leaders from 200 countries will attend onsite in Cape Town...The Participant Selection Team, consisting of leaders worldwide, has established criteria to ensure that the Congress will include men and women who represent a broad diversity of nationalities, ethnicities, ages, occupations and denominational affiliations.
In the few years leading up to this event, Lausanne Working Groups and Lausanne International Deputy Directors are engaging leadership teams to determine the relevant issues of the day pertaining to the church and worldwide evangelization and holistic ministry. (Learn more about the global conversations on the issues leading up to Cape Town 2010.) These issues will be discussed before and during and after Cape Town 2010 with the hope that new strategies and new collaborative efforts will be started so that many more men, women and young people will be able to hear and respond to the message of Christ presented in a relevant and culturally appropriate manner. http://www.lausanne.org/about.html
Thailand is a beautiful place and we especially remember the people there fondly. It was not much of a hardship to be there last year and, Lord willing, we are eager to return as a family next year. In the meantime, it's important to remember the great spiritual need among the Thai people. With God's strategic placement of Create International's ministry in Northern Thailand, as a ministry we have proximity to millions of unreached peoples in Asia, and responsibility to bring the gospel to these people "right in our backyard."
A Thai Christian friend who grew up in Chiang Rai tells us, "Many foreign missionaries have gone to the hill tribes for many, many years. But not many go to the Northern Thai people. Only less than 1% of the Northern Thai people know the gospel...I wish for more workers to go to them, and now also I want to go to share with my Northern Thai people."
In October, Create teams are going to produce gospel resources for the least reached peoples of Northern Thailand: the 7 million Tai Yuan, otherwise known as Lanna Thai or Northern Thai. Create staff persons in Thailand have already been in meetings with project partners and are diligently working on treatments, scripts, and identifying the right story lines that would be specific and relevant to the people in their language and culture. They have asked me (Steve) to come to Thailand and join the team from Sept.27 to Oct.15, where we will be on the field filming in this region! In October through December we will be editing the films as well as producing animated resources for the Northern Thai.
"We were lacking good evangelism tools to reach our people group, the Northern Thai. When Create approached us to make these films to reach the Northern Thai, we were very excited because it was something we see a huge need for. The Northern Thai don't generally like to read tracts and books, but they do watch a lot of television shows and movies—so we think it would be a tool that would be very effective with our people group." - Greg, Field Worker, OMF
We will not simply translate a Western gospel story. Instead, with the help of our project partners, Create Thailand staff and students will produce "contextual films" using Northern Thai analogies, indigenous elements, and cultural bridges. "Contextual" describes a way of introducing Jesus in a personal way, as a God who is their Maker intimately acquainted with who they are as a people, who speaks their language, and loves their music and art.
A word from our Project Partner(s):
We have several organizations and denominations coming together to put this video together. We need people across the world really praying for this project; that we'll have unity and we'll be able to move forward in consensus. We need prayer for wisdom on how to really present the gospel in a way that will communicate to the Northern Thai people—right to their hearts, right into their families, so that they really understand what the true love is that Jesus Christ came to present. They need to be able to not only just understand it, but accept it as their own and see their lives changed because of it.
Please pray for:
1. God to anoint and guide us in unity as we work together as a partnership of missions agencies in the Body of Christ.
2. all the script preparations, cultural advisors, actors, and participants for the films, viral videos, and animation projects that Create International is producing for the Northern Thai peoples.
3. safety, wisdom and creativity for the Create International staff and students participating in this field production.
4. full provision of finances and resources to complete the work.
My current need towards participating on this outreach is still $1800at this time, basically a round-trip flight to Thailand. The funds I need for the outreach itself (food, accommodation, and transport over the duration of our field production) have gratefully already been provided.
If you would like to give, please contact me immediately. Donations can also be sent:
