JAMA President, Dr. John C. Kim (center)
The man behind Jesus Awakening Movement for America/All Nations (JAMA) is an unassuming man – but when he opens his mouth, people listen. Dr. John C. Kim, the president and founder of one of the larger Christian conferences in America, is 71-years-old and a cancer survivor, but somehow still managed to find the strength to trek across the country for a national prayer tour. Kim and his small team covered 35,000 miles, visited 36 states, over 200 cities and 90 college campuses over 190 days in order to share JAMA’s message: prayer and ownership of America.
“God has given me such a heart to love this country, especially the next generations,” said Kim. “JAMA is mainly two things. First, a prayer movement. Second, we want to raise up the next generation of leaders.”
The movement, which started in 1993, with six Koreans praying at the Arrowhead Springs conference center in California, has rapidly grown to become an internationally recognized movement, and though the organization is often pegged as a Korean American/Korean Christian conference, Kim wants to make it clear that JAMA has no restrictions – the movement may have started with Koreans, but it doesn’t plan on stopping there.
“I think one of the things we are lacking in our community is that we serve each other but we don’t really serve the nation,” said Kim. “Many Korean Americans and other ethnicities think, ‘I’m an American citizen, but I’m a minority.’ But how can God’s children be minorities? Do you think God created us to be a minority? I don’t think so.”
Kim, who calls himself an American with Korean heritage, rather than a Korean American, would like to see people throwing off the minority cloak and taking ownership of the nation they live in.
“When you take ownership, you must be able to love. You love and you give, all based on the scripture, ‘For God so loved the world, He gave His one and only son,'” said Kim. “So I love this country because this is my country and then so I give.”
This spirit of giving was what propelled Kim to start his third cross-country prayer tour, in August 2010. The 190-day intercessory “road trip” took Kim and two other staff members, Elijah Han and Jefferson Lee, to nearly all the major cities in America. The reception would vary, with some audiences numbering over 200 and some consisting of just the staff itself. On those days, the trio still prayed.
Lee, who did almost all the driving on the 35,000-mile journey, called his involvement “an un-voluntary volunteering.”
“It was one of those convictions,” said Lee.” “If, I, who was born in America couldn’t go around and take ownership compared to a 71-year-old man who was born in Korea – well, if his love for America is greater than mine, then how could I call myself American?”
Jefferson Lee (front) leading prayer.
“I remember going to a multi-ethnic church and these Caucasian college students came up to me after worship, and they would say things like, ‘Before coming here, I hated America, and I was anti-American, but after tonight, it made me realize I have to take love America and take ownership of it,’” said Lee. “The most important thing was that it wasn’t another white person telling him to love America, it was an American with Korean heritage telling him to love America. I think that’s the thing that was really impressed upon me – it didn’t matter who was saying it.”
And while Kim disapproves the minority mentality, he isn’t asking people to let go of their cultural identities – he just believes that each person has the opportunity to uniquely contribute to America.
“I have a resentment toward the ‘melting pot society.’ If you put all the vegetables and colorful things in a melting pot and it boils, then what is the color? Gray. Gray soup comes out. That’s not really America,” explained Kim. “But in a salad bowl, we have all kinds of colorful vegetables, tomatoes, carrots, cucumber, and each one makes that unique taste in the salad bowl.”
It’s this message that has made Kim, and JAMA, well known, and while the successful prayer tour, which wrapped up in late April, has brought more attention to the movement, its JAMA’s annual national conference, New Awakening, that keeps it relevant.
“There’s not many conferences that really focus on the next generation and really taking ownership of this country. The other national conferences you hear about are limited, like Passion, which is only for college students, or missions conferences, for people going on missions, but JAMA tries to gather everybody,” said Lee, who started volunteering for the conferences as a high school student10 years ago. “From little kids, to retired people. And for everyone to just be able to worship together is a really great thing to see.”
To register for this year’s conference, to take place from July 6-9th, at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, go here.
