Jamie grew up as a pastor’s kid in conservative, Evangelical Christianity. As a teenager and young adult, Jamie experienced abuse that is so common for young women. After a battle with depression and a brush with death as a young adult, she decided to follow a missionary calling she had received as a young child.
As a young couple, she and her husband, John, served as missionaries in Taiwan. Jamie speaks with honesty about the difficulties of life on the mission field, harsh conditions, culture shock, and her own emotional baggage that made everything in life more challenging.
In 1993, they co-founded a missionary training and sending organization and directed that organization for twenty-two years. They have trained over 300 missionaries who now serve from North Africa to East Asia.
In 2006, the Zumwalts planted a coffee house, church community called Joe’s Addiction in a “red light” district of Oklahoma City. Jamie is the lead pastor of this church. There they serve among the urban poor doing life together with people who experience homelessness, addiction, and abuse, learning together how to live the Way of Jesus. Joe’s Addiction is an example of the kind of Communities that the Zumwalts train people to start around the world.
She has authored two books: Simple Obsession: Enjoying the Tender Heart of God, a memoir about intimate relationship with Jesus and learning to hear God’s voice and Beloved Chaos: moving from religion to Love in a red light district, full of stories of the lives of people in the Joe’s Addiction Community and the evolution of Jamie’s own faith in the context of loving people on the margins.
Jamie is passionate to see Communities of the Hope (what Jesus called the Kingdom of God) spread to the places and the peoples where suffering and despair overwhelm. Jamie travels widely, teaching, speaking, holding seminars, and inviting more people to enter into this Dream of God for the world. She and John have five biological children, and many more who call Jamie, "Mama." "Mimi" is her favorite title though, given to her by her one granddaughter.
