By Jim Coggins

“WE WANT people to learn with their feet,” said Cam Huth, describing a unique program run by two Coquitlam pastors.

Holy Land pilgrims ‘learning through their feet.

Since 2007, Huth and Mark Francisco, senior leader of Coquitlam Alliance Church, have been leading tours to Israel. Each brings particular skills to the enterprise.

Francisco is an experienced Bible teacher. Huth brings administrative skills and travel experience, having served with mission agencies in various parts of the world.

What is unique about the tours is that while they use a bus, participants spend a lot of time walking, usually several miles a day. Rather than start in Jerusalem, the tours start where Israel started, in the desert – since “great leaders come from the desert.”

Participants also “walk the canyons of Ein Gedi where David and Saul played cat and mouse,” as well as Galilee and Jerusalem. What this does, Francisco said, is offer an “opportunity to learn with our eyes, ears and feet.”

After the group walks into a location, Francisco offers an hour and a half of teaching, connecting the Bible to the land and the culture.  

This makes the Bible “come alive,” Francisco said, adding that the Holy Land has a way of “ambushing” visitors when they least expect it.

For instance, hearing a boy call “Abba” in the marketplace gave Francisco a fresh understanding of the intimacy of Jesus’ prayer to his “Father.” Even after many trips to Israel, Francisco said he will still “wake up at night weeping with joy over what I am learning.”

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Huth also was ambushed by the Holy Land. He had never been there until Francisco finally convinced him to go in 2006.

He was so impressed the two decided to start leading their own trips. There are now two two-week Fifth Gospel tours each year, in May and October, each falling between the rainy and hot seasons.

The groups have ranged in size from 27 to 43, so they can fit on one bus and be together with the leaders. Participants are also put together in ‘family units’ of five or six; this  offers bonding experiences as the members of each group share what they are learning with each other.

Fifth Gospel Encounters has never had to advertise, as the tours fill up by word of mouth. In fact, this year Francisco and Huth have been asked to lead a third trip, in March, for Christian and Missionary Alliance leaders who are attending that denomination’s conference in Turkey.

Tours are especially geared to pastors, professors and Bible college students. This is one reason a tour is held in May, so students can fit it in between the school term and a summer job or ministry opportunity. Credit for the tour is offered through Prairie Bible Institute.

Many lay people have chosen to go too, including leaders and workers from Coquitlam Alliance. Francisco is passionate about Christians connecting their faith to the culture and land of Israel because of the way it has impacted him: “It changed my ministry and leadership style.”

Huth noted that since he is of British descent, something resonates when he goes to Britain, which does not happen when he goes to other places. But when he went to Israel, he felt the same kind of resonance because there he found a “link to my spiritual journey, a very connection to God.”

Last August, Huth left his other work to become executive pastor at Coquitlam Alliance. This means that every year, two of the church’s leading pastors are gone for at least four weeks.  The church is willing to let the pastors go, Huth said, because it is “visionary when it comes to local and global missions” and because the church has realized that the trips are a worthwhile investment – they “give life to Mark’s preaching.”

Learning with the feet and heart instead of just the head, Francisco said, is how Jesus taught the disciples when he called them to follow him and walk alongside him. Jewish leaders noted that, even though they were unlearned, the disciples had a unique power because they had walked with Jesus.

March 2010