This week we heard the news that Invisible Children is shutting down, which brought back memories of founder Jason Russell’s time with us at The Gathering in 2005 – just one year after he and two friends had completed the original film.
Everyone in the room at The Gathering that year was in disbelief at what these young people had done in making a documentary in a war zone in Uganda. It began as an idea to actually film the war in Darfur. The friends bought a used camera on eBay and headed to Darfur but were threatened by the Lord’s Resistance Army and were detoured to Uganda where they ended up producing an electrifying but amateurish documentary about the horrors of the army and their leader Joseph Kony.
This first documentary premiered in a small community center in San Diego and has now played on 15,000 theater screens and has had millions of YouTube hits.
But no one could have known what Invisible Children would become over the next decade.
The organization’s second film is what most people likely remember. In the first five days of release, “Kony 2012” became the most viral video in history with more than 125 million  hits on YouTube.
But it wasn’t just a film. It created a tsunami of outrage and was the impetus for making Joseph Kony the world’s most wanted man. He and his army were responsible for the abduction and deaths of thousands of civilians – mostly children – in northern Uganda, as well as the mutilation of countless others by cutting off their lips, ears, noses, hands and feet.
Invisible Children invested millions of dollars in Africa, and they have been responsible for a relentless push for legislation, aid and partnering with other agencies to try and bring Joseph Kony to justice.
Today, Kony remains on the loose, but his army has been reduced to fewer than 200 scattered fighters in an isolated corner of Sudan. Almost two million displaced people have been returned to their homes, and the killings have been reduced by 92 percent.
In the New York Times this week, Invisible Children CEO Ben Keesey said:
“If you set out to change the world, I can assure you that it will be 1,000 times harder than you think. You will make mistakes. You won’t know how to get where you’re going. You probably won’t even know where to start. But that is the power of it all: you have to step into the scary unknown and learn along the way. This is why I have so much respect for the agents of change that have come before us, who have had to go through huge challenges and reinventions of their models to make the impact that they have.”
Yes, the pressures, responsibilities, criticisms and explosive growth took their toll on Jason personally, as is true in the lives of many of our frontline heroes.
Ten years after Mother Teresa’s death her personal journals and letters revealed a much different picture of the woman who was regarded as a living saint. For decades she felt she was literally abandoned by God and left in a terrible darkness.
In a letter from 1961 she wrote, “Darkness is such that I really do not see – neither with my mind nor with my reason – the place of God in my soul is blank – There is no God in me – when the pain of longing is so great.”
Yet, there is no measuring the impact her life had not only on the poor and outcast but the lives of thousands who revered her.
Another such “saint” who suffered the weight of the cares of those around him was Henri Nouwen. While a successful author and spiritual guide for so many, he went through a period of physical and mental exhaustion after his first year of working with severely handicapped people at Daybreak L’Arche in Toronto. Henri died two weeks after being with us at The Gathering in 1996.
There is a price to be paid for setting out to change the world. I have often argued against the easy promise of so many invitations from ministries and nonprofits to “come help change the world and make a difference” because they do not include the warning labels they should.
The terrible darkness of the fallen world is powerful.
Ben Keesey is right to say that it will be harder than you think, and I count it a privilege to know Jason and to have known Henri. Invisible Children has been far more than a media phenomenon. They have inspired and mobilized thousands of people in this country and across the world who have believed their lives can count for something.
Jason made a statement at The Gathering in 2005 that has stuck with me: “We feel so much that people in America, especially the youth, want to live for more. They’re dying to live for something more.”
Jason and Invisible Children are finishing this race faithfully and I thank God for them.