The Cultivation Project Has Launched!
GOD IS GOOD.
Some of you may still be confused with what "The Cultivation Project" is. To further explain, I'll just tell the whole story of how it was started...
Spring 2014
About one year ago, I was eating lunch at a middle eastern restaurant with two brothers from my small group, Zach and Albert. We were talking about our futures and different ways to serve God after college. The week leading up to that talk, my mind kept on getting flooded with thoughts and visions of starting a new organization that would somehow glorify God through filmmaking. I pitched this conviction to Zach and Albert, and they were immediately excited and supportive of it. However, I had no clue what to do and how to go about it. We started coming up with silly names for the potential organization including, "The Great Cammission," which was suppose to symbolize "Camera + Mission". Unfortunately, my name is Cameron, and to use this name would make this organization conceited sounding and borderline blasphemous. So we didn't.
After that lunch, I didn't know what to do. I prayed about it, but I didn't receive a clear direction on where to go next. I ended up pushing the idea off to the side.
Early 2015
Fast forward to the beginning of 2015... After attending an awesome World Mandate Conference, Zach suddenly messaged me saying that he was ready to start the filmmaking missions organization with me. I was pretty shocked. I honestly forgot that we even talked about that idea when he brought it up. However, I became very excited. Zach and I met up a couple days later and started brainstorming and visioning ideas. We prayed that God would lead us and point us into the right direction to make something happen.
Zach and I knew that we would need a lot of support and even a partnership with our church in order to really get started. Our original goal was to create a missions organization that would raise up missionaries and send them out with film crews in order to create documentaries of God's work. We started asking fellow brothers and sisters if they were willing to join, and to our surprise, there were a few who wanted to. We also made it a goal to find a way to partner with the missions committee at our church. However, God had His own plans.
A couple of weeks after Zach and I met up, I ran into Pastor Steven, the pastor of Chinese Evangelical Church, which is also the church that I attend and serve in. I gave him a two minute pitch of what God has convicted Zach and me of, and right away, he offered to meet up and discuss these plans in more detail. We ended up scheduling a day to meet up for the following week.
The week leading up to my meeting with Pastor Steven, I prayed earnestly for a name for the organization. No matter how hard Zach and I thought, we couldn't come up with anything. However, during one of my film classes, I was suddenly hit with the word, "cultivation". God started racing thoughts through my head and I stopped taking notes in class and started writing down ideas onto my notebook. The word, "cultivation" fit our theme, vision, and ideas on so many levels. It was the perfect word to symbolize what our organization was for. Now, the next big step was to meet up with Pastor Steven and win his heart over.
When I met up with Pastor Steven, I started off by explaining the purpose, vision and goals of the missions organization. He listened very attentively and I could tell that he had some excitement on his heart. Once I ended my explanation, he responded with a very wise question. Pastor Steven asked me, "why make a new missions organization when you can focus on enhancing the ones that are already out there?". I didn't really have a response, but I realized that a small part of my heart wanted to start my own missions organization because I wanted to be seen as a modern day version of Hudson Taylor. Pastor Steven made it clear that God has already set up a lot of very solid missions organizations that have been sending out missionaries for decades. To top that off, he told me how CEC's missions committee and pastoral staff had been praying for a new and reenergized way of promoting missions at our church. God's timing is always so perfect.
After a good hour of encouraging advice and thought provoking rhetorical questions, Pastor Steven brought up the idea of pitching the newly revised idea to Chinese Evangelical Church's missions committee. I was excited because this would be a huge opportunity to turn the ideas into something official.
March 2015
In the beginning of March, I met with the missions committee to pitch the revised missions support organization idea that Pastor Steven and I discussed. To be honest, I didn't prepare that well and I was all over the place when trying to explain the whole vision and idea. However, the missions committee ended up loving the idea and decided that they would walk in faith and partner with me. I was filled with joy because I knew God was behind all of this. Everything from the start was set up according to God's will. I was witnessing His power and His work right in front of my eyes.
May 10, 2015
It's been a couple of months since the missions committee approved The Cultivation Project, but today is official website launch day! I am not sure where God will ultimately lead this project, but I have much faith that He will do great things with it. I will be heading to Taiwan this summer for my first overseas missions trip along with a team from Chinese Evangelical Church in order to create a documentary that will focus on Vision 119 by Send International and the work of the Gospel through our team. Zach will be organizing a series that will focus on video testimonials of various Christian students in fellowships at San Diego State University. With that being said, please pray that The Cultivation Project will continue to align with God's will and ultimately produce documentaries that will inspire, motivate and encourage future missionaries and missions supporters. Thank you for your support!
In Christ,
Cameron Kuey