Why do I teach?

In Create International, Feelings, filmmaking, School of Frontier Media by Keegan

I’ve recently been musing about why exactly do I do what I do?

Maybe a wee bit of why Create (place where I work) actually even has training programmes. It’s a pretty simple explanation. Create seeks to see the world’s most unreached people groups receive a Gospel presentation that they can understand, appreciate, and connect with. We do this by creating culturally relevant media productions. Kind of like this one:

But then, there was a slight hitch in the plan, a great big God-sized hitch. Not many people had, simultaneously, a vision to produce culturally relevant media productions, cross-cultural experiences, cross-cultural know-how, filmmaking expertise, and other relevant skills or knowledge. Plus, even though these people would exist somewhere the challenge would be finding them. So what to do if you want your ministry to become more effective by creating more, and better, films?

Well, you train them up.

So then that’s how training got started. And how did I get here? I got here because God has called me here, He has prepared me for this, and He has set me in this place.

Yeah, but see, sometimes I really, if I’m honest, don’t believe that last part.

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The school this year has been wonderful, the students are great, the projects have gone well enough, we’ve had some wonderful teachers. It’s been lovely. But I haven’t. I’ve mucked up a lot, my students, and staff have got upset, or disappointed with me. Recently, this made a final impact that got me thinking. If I’m running this programme to train up people to make an impact in unreached nations, but the students in the programme either don’t like me, aren’t enjoying it, or are struggling to even “get it”, then why am I even doing this? What’s the point?

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I went through a good week or so thinking about that question. Why am I even bothering? It was then that God really spoke to me. That initial assumption, is wrong. I’m not running this programme to train up people to reach the unreached, I’m running it because the Lord has called me to do so. I hadn’t believed that, or I’d forgotten, and I had started to think that I was doing it because I had thought of it, I had come up with the idea.

What a load of bollocks.

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Thank God that He reminded me of why I’m here. I am here to serve Him, because He has made a way for me to be here. I didn’t do this, He did. Phew.