Flashmobs, Prayer, and Encouragement!
The Sacramento Impact Week was a catalytic moment for the Steiger MVMT in Northern California!
The regional team arrived in Sacramento and spent a full week mobilizing local pastors, leaders, and other young adults to reach out to their own city in preparation for an Impact Day that Saturday.
On Tuesday, they spoke to the Young Adults group at Real Life Church. The momentum continued to grow on Wednesday, when they had a ‘Steiger Takeover’ of Jessup University’s chapel. The team led worship and then spoke to 400 students, and invited them to come to the Saturday event as well.
Thursday morning, they had a pastor’s training with about 30 pastors and church leaders at Jessup, and spent the rest of the day scouting out popular locations for the weekend outreach. Much of Friday was spent prayer walking in the places where they’d be doing evangelism the next day, praying for the people and the city.
The morning of the Impact Day, the team showed up early to set up and sound check. About 100 people came to the event at Jessup and after a time of worship and prayer, the team went through training on creative evangelism…including flashmobs.
When they went out to a popular corner in Old Town Sacramento, the first thing they performed was the flashmob: Dozens of people all had black eye coverings on. They did some crazy dancing with loud music to get people’s attention. Suddenly, Filipe yelled out and everyone put their hands over their ears and dropped their heads forward as if they were robots who had just shut down. Then he shared the gospel. There was a crowd gathered by that point, who got to hear it.
Later they split off into groups of 2 and 3 and had conversations and prayed for people all over the city.
One of the teams had a booth with a big board where they invited people to write their “Message to the World” (If you could write one thing to the entire world, what would you say?) Josef saw their sign and wrote his own message. His was “don’t give up.” He wanted to give hope to young people and mentor them away from the type of upbringing he went through, having trouble with the law.
At the end, he asked, “What are you guys doing?” They told him about how they believe in Jesus and His power, and would love to pray for him. He said, “I’m not religious, but sure.” After they prayed, he gave them a big hug and thanked them for being there.
At the end of the day, all the teams came back together, shared dinner, and debriefed the day. As a result of their experiences that day, many of the young people signed up for the Steiger Missions School this summer!
On Sunday, the team went to two different churches: Jesus Culture in the morning, and Bridgeway in the evening, building relationships and connecting people who are all part of the same movement–sharing the gospel in the city of Sacramento!