I used to think that the whole Christian life was to be lived through sermons & messages given behind a podium. Through going to church 4 days a week. Reading my bible for over an hour a day. Listening & singing to the lastest worship CD. All these things are good and beneficial, but I used to think that was it. That living that was was the life I was to live for God. But I was shown there was more beyond that.
There's this book in the Old Testament of the Bible, Jeremiah. In it you find these messages that God told the Prophet Jeremiah to tell the people of Israel. And in these messages you read time & time again how God called the people of Israel, His people, to be a people of justice & righteousness. To help the needy, to care for the oppressed, the orphaned & the widowed. But they don't listen.
At the start of the Gospel of Luke, Jesus goes into the Synagoge in Nazareth, His hometown, & begins to read from the scroll of Isaiah,
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives, & recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor...."
Now it's recorded in the Gospels that Jesus only reads these two verses, but Isaiah continues....."to grant those who mourn in Zion to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit. That they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified."
If you look throughout the scriptures you'll see that God is a god who hears the cry of the oppressed. The poor! The orphaned! The widowed!
Imagine a group of people who did the same thing. Who took hold of what isaiah wrote. Who did what Jesus came to do.
James127 Studios gets its name from the Bible. James 1:27 says, "Religion that is pure & undefiled before God, the Father is this: to visit orphanes & widows in their affliction."
The vision for James127 was given to me while I attened a missions outreach to Cairo, Egypt in June of 2006.
A small group of three from my missions team, went out one morning with a local church memeber to visit the poorest of Cairo. During those 3 hours I came to understand what Jesus meant when He said, "As you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me."
That morning we visited the widowed, the orphaned, the paralyzed, the blind, Christian & Muslim.
And it was amongst these people that I met Jesus in a way I'd never experienced before. As I stood in the same room and talked with these people, I could see the joy and love and peace of Jesus Christ in their eyes. It was there God showed me, that my life would be lived among people. Spending time with & loving people. Those were the beginning moments of James127 Studios.
So again, imagine a group of people who didn't just go visit the poor, but instead lived with them. That's what we want to do.
For 3 to 5 months at a time, we will go to people groups all over the world & live with them. Share, laugh, cry with & love these people in their environment, & in their communities; with the hope of sharing the love of Jesus Christ with them, through that life together.
And then.........we'll capture that life on film.
I was reading this verse from the Bible in the book of Isaiah. And in it it talks about how the prophet Isaiah saw these Angels & how they were saying, "Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord Almighty. The whole Earth is filled with His glory." The hebrew word for glory is "kavod", which means wieght & significance. So what this verse is saying is that, this world, the one we live in now, today, is FULL of God's wieght & significance. His splender. His glory. According to ancient Jewish worldview, God is present everywhere. It's His world. He made it. He owns it & is right here right now. We just don't realized it alll the time. Jacob even says after waking up from a dream in Genesis, "Surely the Lord is in this place, & I was not aware of it."
You see James127 doesn't just want to reach out to the poor & the widowed. We want to reach everyone . Poor and rich. Surfer and Backpacker. Christian and Muslim. God's glory surrounds it all.
Over the past year God has been doing a lot with James127 as far as the vision. It is continually being refined, but not getting away from it's original purpose which is; loving people with the hopes of projecting JESUS CHRIST to those we reach out to.
Last October I came across a verse from the Gospel of Matthew, & as I heard it read out loud I knew that there was more to James127 than what was originally given.
Matthew 23:15
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel land and sea to win one proselyte, and when he is won, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves."
As Christians, we don't want to travel to an area as the "Great White Hope". We don't want to point people to us. We want to point them to Jesus. As we live in these communities, it our desire to work through and with the local churches; as well as train pastors and leaders. We want support those already at work in these communities, so that as we leave, the people there will be founded within their local churches. We don't want people to be founded in us. We want them to be founded in the body of Christ in the places they live.
So from community & family celebration times to mourning the lose of a loved one, we want to capture every aspect of life on film, because God's glory is in it all. It's what holds each moment together. Once we've returned home, we will try to help everyone around the world experience life lived with these people, & to share God's glory with the world, through photo journals & DVD's. And all the money gain from those journals & DVD's will go right back to the people group they're about.
We don't just want to send money to people around the world. We want to help change thier lives by being the example of Jesus Christ we're called to be to them.
And then continue to love & support them after we're gone.
Thanks for reading.
God Bless
Geoff P. Matero
YOU CAN SEE THE INITIAL JAMES127 PICTURES ON: www.flickr.com/photos/james127photo
