The True Purpose of Missions
The beauty was undeniable.
Cold, rugged, isolated – and magnificent.
It took a couple of hours to get there by small plane. This place, this small isolated town in Northern Alaska, was our destination. It was to be a mission trip to encourage the believers at a small church, a church that did not have a pastor and a church that was making it by waiting for the itinerant pastor to come every few months.
The church building was cabin-like, heated by a wood stove. It smelled of nature – snow, trees, and a burning furnace. The people were hungry. Hungry for teaching, for preaching, for discipleship, and for encouragement from sisters and brothers in the Lord.
The mission trip wasn’t busy. It wasn’t hectic and filled with activity, sweating in the heat, fighting bugs, getting blisters on your hands from the labor, battling frustration over trying to understand the language, and working through the exhaustion of the mission schedule. It wasn’t about trying to pack the daily itinerary with projects to stay busy.
It wasn’t about us.
It was about encouraging believers. Believers who lived 9 months of the year, cut off from society outside their small village. It was about sitting and talking, discipling small groups, and preaching God’s word so they would walk away with new insight. It was about singing praise and worship songs in unity, glorifying God. It was about the hugs we got each time we saw those who lived there, thinking about how much we would miss them. It was about forming new relationships, new family, taking time to laugh, to pray, and to impart wisdom into each other.
This is missions.
It is about working with the needs of the people. Not acting on your preconceived ideas of what a mission trip looks like to others – trying to put your own “back home” perspective into play, but taking on the perspective of those on the ground in the field you are working.
Missions is about flexibility – getting outside your own control, your own expectations and allowing God to lead..
