Musical Play at Peru Camporee Highlights the Importance of Discipleship

A musical play named Fishermen debuted at the recent 4th Northern Peru Union Pathfinder Camporee, bringing to life well-known stories from the life of Jesus to highlight the importance of Christian discipleship. Fishermen premiered a series of episodes depicting heart-warming scenes of Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane, Peter’s denial of Jesus, and the miracle of the resurrection of Jairus’ daughter, among others.

The musical play sought to depict how the selfishness of human beings and their struggle to gain power and control can place them in danger of losing salvation, organizers said, just as it happened with Jesus’ disciples Peter and John.

“Before they met Jesus, [Peter and John] were both fishermen. But when they became disciples, they felt they wanted to win the world, believing that Jesus had an earthly kingdom,” Remberto Sarzuri, Nuevo Tiempo Perú media studio general manager and producer of the play, said.

The episodes seek to depict how everyday events helped Jesus’ disciples to overcome selfishness and become His followers, and to then share the love of Christ with others. In a nutshell, that is discipleship, church leaders said.

An episode of the play was presented at each of the evening sessions of the regional camporee, which brought together more than nine thousand campers from northern Peru.

“For the staging of the play, a total of 180 volunteer actors were used,” Sarzuri said. “Each episode included at least 150.” Most of the volunteer actors belong to the JASS Leaders Club (Adventist Youth in Service to the Lord), and the rest were Adventist church members with a passion for acting, who were selected through a casting process that considered the Bible-based characters needed.

The North Peru Union Mission of the Adventist Church acted as the executive producer, and Nuevo Tiempo Perú was the producer of the play. Nuevo Tiempo Perú deployed a team of 33 people to the camporee to help with the direction, production, characters, costumes, and the installation of a studio to help stage the play, including the production of props and digital set design. Eighty percent of the scenery was digital.

Regarding the music for the play, Fishermen included 25 songs, 20 of them written and composed exclusively for the musical drama. “It was a very ambitious project and the first time that Nuevo Tiempo has done something like this,” Sarzuri said. “Each episode was recorded in cinematic format, so it will become available to the public very soon,” he added.

Regional church leaders said that they hope Fishermen can reach more people. “We would like the play to become a tool to encourage people to practice the principles of discipleship and become more acquainted with the Bible and the Seventh-day Adventist Church,” they said.

The original version of this story was posted on the South American Division Spanish-language news site.