The Da Vinci Code isn’t the only film church members are talking about this summer. Invisible Children, an independently produced, rough-cut film with an MTV pace, has appeared in schools, universities and religious institutions. Churches of Christ have sponsored screenings of the film, which details the abduction of children in northern Uganda by the Lord’s Resistance Army. The rebel faction turns boys into gun-carrying killers and girls into sex slaves.

Twelve-year-old Nate Barton said the film made him sick — and angry.

“You know that if this was happening in America … there would be immediate action,” he said. “Why is Africa different?”

His congregation, the Rochester Church of Christ in Michigan, showed the film for 780 people — the largest screening in the Midwest, said Josh Graves, minister for young adults.

Graves and Barton were among the 300 people who walked four miles across their community and spent the night under the stars, mimicking the nightly commute made by Ugandan children as they try to avoid capture by the rebel army.

More than 58,000 people signed up on the Invisible Children Web site to participate in the late-April Global Night Commute, including church members from Oregon to Tennessee.

At the Michigan event, “I watched some of the children walking along singing with our worship minister … leading them in song,” said Sara Barton, Nate’s mother. “I prayed that the children in Northern Uganda could someday walk and sing loudly without fear of being abducted.”

Nate Barton spent the first eight years of his life in Uganda, where his parents served as missionaries. His next-door neighbor in Africa, Mark Moore, was a cultural adviser for the film’s crew.

Moore, a missionary for nine years in Jinja, Uganda, traveled to Uganda in 2004 as a translator and adviser for Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu and other government officials. “Through that process I met the Invisible Children filmmakers and began helping them present their story on Capitol Hill,” said Moore, now a minister for the Springfield, Va., Church of Christ.

Moore was impressed by the number of young Christians who promoted the film and the faith of the three filmmakers — ages 27, 24 and 22. “I think this generation of young people will be a powerful force for the gospel,” he said. “They are a great example of faith in action — in very creative and proactive ways.”

Jessica Buckley was one of 50 students at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tenn., who walked from a Target store parking lot to a church three miles away, joining about 3,000 students for the Global Night Commute. More than 1,000 students attended an Invisible Children event at Harding University in Searcy, Ark.

Heather MacLeod, a student at Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas, brought a DVD of Invisible Children home to Maryland to show her parents over Christmas break.

“I thought that Oprah Winfrey needed to see this DVD,” said Connie MacLeod, Heather’s mother. It became her mission.

After countless e-mails yielded only form-letter responses, Connie MacLeod and a friend from church flew to Chicago and attempted to deliver a copy of the film to the studio. After pleading with a security guard (“I told him this was a life and death matter,” she said) she got an address and overnighted the movie, hoping Oprah would see it. She contacted friends across the country to bombard the show with additional e-mails.

The filmmakers were interviewed on Oprah April 26 — and promptly sent out a message “asking everyone to stop with the e-mails,” Connie MacLeod said.

Days later a group of 25 students from Oklahoma Christian University in Oklahoma City walked to the steps of the state Capitol where they joined 1,000 students for the Global Night Commute.

Allen Thompson, a junior at Oklahoma Christian, said he first saw the documentary at the Tulsa International Soul Winning Workshop. He and fellow students organized an on-campus screening, attended by about 350 people.

Thompson, who was born in the African nation of Ethiopia, shared his testimony at 3 a.m. the night of the Commute. His parents died when he was young, and at age 5 he worked as a shepherd before moving to a Church of Christ-sponsored orphanage. A couple from Wisconsin adopted him, and he later became the first in his family to attend college.

Thompson said he hopes his generation will change the world, “not just by screaming at the government, but by changing ourselves” and confronting global problems.

“I was an invisible child in my own way,” he said. “It’s my prayer that those children can know the life that I have seen.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION, see www.invisiblechildren.com

PHOTO SUBMITTED: Chris Lindsey, a minister for the Rochester Church of Christ in Rochester Hills, Mich., joins the Global Night Commute.

June 1, 2006