By Rick Vacek
GCU News Bureau
The Traveling Team is on a mission. "Every university, every two years," its website promises, and at the moment there are three teams from the Christian organization touring the country on what it likes to call “mission conferences on wheels.”
But when a member of The Traveling Team spoke at Chapel Monday morning at Grand Canyon University (their identities are kept confidential for their safety when traveling abroad), he was more concerned about God's mission and what it means for our lives.
"If God is on a mission," he said, "we should change the way we live."
He pointed to what is known as the "10/40 window," an area that stretches from Africa to Asia and includes more than three-quarters of the world's population but has 2.9 billion people who have never known Jesus Christ.
"How is it that there are so many people with so little access?" he asked. "It should provoke us to do something."
The speaker told the story of how the only thing he felt provoked to do when he was teenager was play the "World of Warcraft" video game. He would play for six hours every weeknight and 12 hours every weekend day, but then before his senior year in high school he said he felt "empty."
"I had given my whole life to a video game," he said. "I needed a sense of purpose."
A friend challenged him to read the Bible 10 minutes a day for a year, and he agreed to try it — and after those 365 days he was hooked on something very different.
"I began to see that God was living. He was active. He was bigger than anything I had ever imagined," he said.
Fast forward to Monday morning, when he was pointing out that those all-encompassing words to the effect of "all the nations of the earth" are used 1,500 times in that Bible he once didn't know at all. Genesis 12:1-3, 26:4 and 28:14 ... 1 Samuel 17:46 and Psalm 46:10 ... Matthew 28:19 and Acts 1:8 ... Revelation 7:9 — they all are along the same worldwide lines.
But acting on those words is what The Traveling Team is all about. Of course, for many students the speaker was preaching to the choir. GCU has an extremely active mission program. But if he convinced more of their peers to get involved, his visit will have been a success.
We have two ways we can become involved, he said. We can go on missions ourselves, or we can send someone else. Either way, it can be transformational.
"God is going to complete His mission with or without us," he said.
But He certainly could use a little help.
● Next week's Chapel speaker: Nicole Cottrell, writer and speaker
Contact Rick Vacek at (602) 639-8203 or [email protected].
