What happens when God comes to town
A video that describes the transforming effect of Christian activity in communities on four continents is gaining a lot of positive attention in Canada. And a few critics are emerging as well.
"Transformations" is a compelling video from the Colorado-based Sentinel Group, a Christian research and information agency led by George Otis, Jr., author of several books including The Last of the Giants, The Twilight Labyrinth and, most recently, Informed Intercession.
The video features Otis, Jr. reporting remarkable stories from cities in Colombia, Kenya, Guatemala and the United States. In interviews with a wide range of leaders and grassroots Christians, he shows how dramatic and positive change–economic, social, political–is occurring as a direct result of spiritual intervention.
Each community he profiles was experiencing serious problems with crime, violence, drunkenness and drug abuse when a small group of spiritual leaders began to pray against the powers of darkness and to work for unity among the churches. Their efforts were rewarded.
Less than a decade later, spiritual breakthroughs have set those same communities on an entirely different trajectory. Cali, Colombia, for example, was a haven for drug lords; murder an everyday occurrence. That has changed. Now as many as 70,000 people will cram the city's soccer stadiums for all-night prayer vigils every 90 days.
The video's basic teaching–that spiritual unity and intercessory prayer can alter the spiritual DNA of entire communities–is being promoted by an Evangelical Fellowship of Canada committee (the City/Community Transformation track of Vision Canada 2000 and Beyond) coordinated by Denys Blackmore of Every Home for Christ Int., Canada.
As well, the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada distributed the video to PAOC churches and missionaries. And a "Road to Community Transformations" conference featuring several from the video–Otis, Jr., Ruth Ruibal of Cali, and Bob Beckett of Hemet, California–along with Canadians including Blackmore and spiritual mapping proponent Alistair Petrie will be held July 6-8 in London, Ontario.
Well grounded?
But not everyone is willing to accept the video at face value. When a couple of pastors in one B.C. community contacted missionaries in Colombia and Kenya about the material in the videos, the responses were less than affirming. "I am not aware of a unique outpouring of the Spirit in Kiambu," wrote a missionary from Kenya.
"The fact of the matter is the people of Cali are just as hardened to the gospel as most others in Colombia and there is no great turning to God in that city more than any other city in Colombia," responded a Christian and Missionary Alliance missionary from Cali.
In a lengthy email message to concerned Canadian leaders, Otis Jr. stands foursquare behind the authenticity of the stories presented in the video and invites doubters to view the hours of interview footage he collected. "There is certainly no intent to deceive anyone," he says. "Indeed, we fully expect, and hope, that people will visit the profiled communities and learn from them firsthand."
Part of the problem, he observes, may have to do with differing understanding of what a "transformed community" is. "Spiritual transformation is not a total absence of sin, but rather a fresh trajectory with acknowledged fruit. Communities that have been so touched should be measured not by what they still lack, but by what they once were," he says.
According to Otis, Jr., more than 80,000 copies of the video are circulating in more than 120 countries. It has also been televised in several nations, and he is aware of more than 800 community showings. "God's hand has been on this simple video," he says. "I don't think this would have been the case if falsehood was at its core."
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