Somebody showed me this movie poster the other day and I thought it was a joke. A bad joke. A bad joke about tough guy church planters. But it’s not. It’s real. And cool.
The guy the movie is based on is real, and actually sounds pretty cool. His name is Sam Childers. He built an orphanage in South Sudan and started leading armed missions to rescue kidnapped children. Hence the name.
“Slowly the orphanage began to take shape. During the day Sam cleared the brush and built the huts that would house the children. During the evening, he slept under a mosquito net slung from a tree: bible in one hand, AK47 in the other.
Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, Lynn and Sam’s daughter Paige fought a battle of their own. The family car was repossessed and a foreclosure notice was issued on the house. Sam had enough money to pay the outstanding mortgage or finish the orphanage. He couldn’t afford both so he sent the money to Africa.With the orphanage finished, Sam began to lead armed missions to rescue children from the LRA. It wasn’t long before tales of his exploits spread and villagers began to call him “The Machine Gun Preacher.”
Sounds like a Christian movie I might actually want to watch.