Do you ever imagine your life as a movie? Yeah, okay, it’s kinda weird. But you should try it sometime; it’s also kinda fun…
BLACKOUT – SCROLLING TRAPEZOIDAL TEXT
A long time ago (well, okay, seven years) in a galaxy far, far away (yes, Wheaton, Illinois definitely counts) a young lady from California and a young man from Indiana were dating, and talking about ministry, and mission, and life. Possibly together. How did they get from there to Chicago to London?
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EXT. WHEATON COLLEGE – LATE AFTERNOON
Sophomore year. Missions Week. Or Global Urban Perspectives Week. Or some conference thing. (Wheaton has a lot of those….we’ll chalk some of this up to artistic license/memory haze.) All the organizations have a booth set up in the student center; representatives are standing around and greeting people.
WIDE SHOT: John Hayes, founder of InnerCHANGE, and Tim Lockie, San Francisco partner in crime, arriving on campus.
CLOSEUP ON: InnerCHANGE booth. A few stacks of brochures, a banner. No rep manning the booth in sight.
CUT TO: A little hand-made sign that says, “We’re in the Stupe. Come hang out.”
CUT TO: Shot of Tim in a booth at the Stupe, the campus ice cream shop, with a coffee. A large coffee.
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INT. EDMAN CHAPEL – A MONDAY, OR A WEDNESDAY, OR A FRIDAY – 10:35 AM. Global Urban Perspectives Chapel.
WIDE SHOT: Liz, alone on stage, in baggy jeans and a black top, dancing to Jason Upton’s song “Poverty:”
“There’s a power in poverty that breaks principality; that brings the authorities down to their knees….Where will we turn when our world falls apart, and all of the treasures we’ve stored in our barns can’t buy the Kingdom of God?”
CLOSEUP: Tim Lockie, sitting in the back row of chapel, watching intently.
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INT. PIERCE CHAPEL – SUNDAY NIGHT. World Christian Fellowship. Globally focused worship service.
WIDE SHOT: Peter and Liz coming in, sitting in the back pew. Sophomore year we used to go to this service every week together. No, that’s not nearly as adorable as it sounds.
CLOSE UP: On the speaker of the night, John Hayes. He starts talking about how InnerCHANGE got started almost 20 years ago. He was living in Los Angeles, working in the inner city with churches, and was tired of seeing people drive in, “do ministry”, and drive away. How was deep, lasting change going to happen if no one was on the ground full time?
JOHN: What if, following Jesus’ model, there was a a holistic ministry not TO the poor but AMONG them? So I decided to move into the neighborhood. I moved onto Minnie Street. Now, Minnie Street at the time was the poorest, most overcrowded, dead end, crack-dealing-five-gang-turf-war problems, a mix of Latinos and Cambodians…
CLOSE UP: On Peter, looking pensive. Last year he was in Wheaton’s Army ROTC. This fall, he’s not. God rearranged things. His whole life he thought the Army would be a career. Now that God has told him otherwise, he’s a little bit unanchored. Looking for the next direction.
JOHN: If you want to come talk to us and find out more what we’re about, you can go talk to Tim in the back and find a time to come hang out in the Stupe with us.
CLOSE UP: Peter and Liz look at each other.
WIDE SHOT: The service dismisses into little knots of people talking. Liz joins the crowd of anthropology majors in the row in front of her discussing this all intently. Peter comes up from the back of the room to find Liz.
PETER: I just set a time to go hang out with Tim tomorrow.
LIZ: Funny, I was just about to go do the same thing.
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INT. THE STUPE, IN A BOOTH – NEXT DAY. Tim has a coffee. A large coffee.
TIM: So, Peter, what resonated with you last night?
PETER: Have you ever thought that missionaries are sort of like God’s Special Forces team?
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INT. THE STUPE, SAME BOOTH – FOUR HOURS LATER
TIM: Hey, you’re the girl who was dancing in chapel!
LIZ: Oh! Yeah...
half an hour later…
TIM: Well, next time you go to visit your family in California, you guys should come check out what we’re doing in San Francisco!
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EXT. OUTSIDE A PLANE – FOUR MONTHS LATER
WIDE SHOT: Peter and Liz looking out a plane window at the Golden Gate Bridge. Christmas break; Peter is coming out to California to meet Liz’s family for the first time. We fly through San Francisco.
WIDE SHOT: Following a car driving through Haight-Ashbury and stopping in the Mission district, pulling up in front of a row of brownstone houses.
CLOSE UP: Liz’s hand ringing doorbell.
CUT TO: Tim, handing us a digital camera. He asks us to spend some time prayerwalking the neighborhood and taking pictures of what we see. (This is before Peter knew he was a photographer…) We wander through the Mission and spend the afternoon hanging out, talking about what we saw through the lens.
We like these people. We like the way InnerCHANGE talks about ministry as personal, relational. We like the way they talk about following Jesus. They are not trying to cram anything down anyone’s throat. They want people to see God’s possibilities—in neighborhoods, in people’s lives, in our own lives.
CLOSE UP: Tim’s printer, outputting a little booklet of the photos we shot for us to take home.
TIM: So, what are you guys doing next summer?
TO BE CONTINUED… (see Part II here)
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