The Core of Our DNA

In 2007, Anna-Marie challenged about 20 young people saying, “Let’s sell everything we have and put what’s left in a backpack, and travel the world seeking God and serving people.”

We started this journey without a name. In asking God what our focus should be, He highlighted Psalm 84: “Blessed are those whose hearts are set on a pilgrimage.” We realised that this was not just a journey, but a pilgrimage. We have to fit everything we take with us into a backpack and simplify live like a pilgrim does, so our senses are opened up to discover. We also need to stay flexible to adjust plans along the way. The Word of God, faith and the Holy Spirit are central to our pilgrimage.

This was the birth of Global Challenge and of our core value, God-seekers. After that year, we wanted to see if the experience could continue and be turned into a God-seeking lifestyle. Every day since then, God has been inviting us into His adventure. As we follow step by step, He leads us to discover more of Himself.

In the early days of Global when we travelled as a team together, almost every second week, we’d read in Scripture that we have to love each other. That’s the birth place of our community: where we travelled together and had to learn to love each other.

Many years later, hundreds of people have moved to Jeffreys Bay to be part of something that God is doing here. There’s a generation that’s desperately looking for community – where love is real and authentic. That’s our challenge: to love as Jesus loves us, so that the world will know that we are His disciples.

For our very first world journey, we took a fresh approach to travelling to foreign nations. We asked how we could be effective in reaching people with a frame of reference that was vastly different from ours.

We bought round-the-world tickets and went into spaces and countries we had never visited before. We connected with people in whichever way we experienced the Holy Spirit’s lead. We learned to use gaps of time where we had to wait for a boat, train or plane to seek God.

He led us to serve wherever we went, from orphanages in India to helping people rebuild after a mudslide in Guatemala. Wherever His Spirit led, we were available to be used by God to very practically be His hands and feet to people He would identify.

On our return to South Africa, our Global leadership team was doing Church Planting training in Cape Town when a devastating fire destroyed 80 homes in the Red Hill settlement in Cape Town. The Holy Spirit prompted us to stop our classroom activities so we could help people rebuild their homes.

Many years ago, just after the war in Bosnia, we had the privilege to help with camps. It was a mission to get into Bosnia! We were only able to get visas in Libya or London. We couldn’t get to Libya, so London it was! We had to travel through Europe for at least a week to get to our destination.

Taking young people with me (Anna-Marie) on these travels, I realised that many things happen organically as we do life together while travelling. The uncertainty, unpredictability and uncomfortable situations we go through are excellent opportunities for discipleship. They draw us to God in a new way.

After one of these trips to Bosnia, we went to an island, Korčula (said to be Marco Polo’s birthplace). I had read about Marco Polo’s travels from a very young age. I was prompted to take a group of young people around the world and see what God would do. This was the beginning of what would become our Global Challenge One Year journeys.

After returning from our first year-journey, we settled in J-bay as a missions organisation. One day, when walking through a shopping mall that had closed down, the Holy Spirit prompted me (Anna-Marie) saying, “This can be a school”. This came as a shock as we had no expectation of venturing into education. We had no idea what we were doing. We just obeyed God step by step.

Things kept unfolding as we were walking it out. Five hectares of land was donated, which turned into 7.5 hectares and over the years, we bought more. We had no money, but we sensed God was saying, “Start with the foundations”.

For three years, we built a school without any money from week to week. God provided in awesome, creative ways, never doing the same thing twice – always providing in new ways. God brought more people into the story. Jacobus Scott had studied architecture and returned from our world journey after two years. Anna-Marie told him he had to design a school. He said he was unable to. He’d only studied and never designed anything. The school, Global Leadership Academy was Jakes’ first design.