Well, the 2013 St. Thomas EYC Senior High Mission Trip to Austin, Texas was a smashing success. We worked at a food service organization called Angel House, which is run very well and I was impressed by what they do there. We helped organize a Food Bank. We worked on the grounds of an adult education center (landscaping work is a staple of mission trips), and we headed up to West, Texas where a plant explosion has devastated the town. Our job there was debris clean-up.
Beyond the physical work, mission trips are where real ministry takes place. Some look at mission as us going out and "being God's hands" in the world. This is a good missiology and I wouldn't detract from it, but it is not my own emphasis. I rather think of God being 'out there' where we are going, and that through our work, our worship and our fellowship God is going to minister to us. I get to spend time with youth I've not yet formed a deep connection with, and real counseling goes on, and we all learn to see the world in a new way. A mission trip is really an education, a way to help train ourselves how to be and how to see the world aright, every day.
The simple truth of the matter is that we could do more material good than we do on mission trips by simply raising money and giving it to the organizations that do the work that they do so well. But for the Christian, spiritual goods trump material goods, and the spiritual goods provided for those who go are beyond calculation. This trip is like a family vacation, where we go and spend time with the rest of the Body of Christ, out there in the world removed from our home church. It is meeting and relating to Christ in a way different from what we normally do, and that helps us make what we 'normally do' less 'normal'. That is a very good thing. By all of these standards, the mission trip was indeed successful, and I am happy to have been a part of it.
This was my 20th mission trip. Every trip has highs and lows. Behind the church ministry that takes place, I personally experience a spiritual struggle that seems hidden to others. I experience spiritual struggles within that are of monumental proportions. Every stress, every threat to the safety of the crew, every danger and spiritual road bump manifests itself demonically, and what may seem to others to be the pitfalls and successes of mission trips, are to me battles that are won or lost, with cosmic consequences. Mission is warfare. This manifests itself in my internal moral struggles, in my dreams, and in my visions. I can feel the devil doing all he can to push us out of the place God wants us to be, and I can see all the ways God pushes back onto the path of His message. God is saying something to us on a mission trip. The bombs and traps of the devil are ways to drown out His voice. In that sense, mission trips are simply the Christian life: they are spiritual warfare manifesting as a ministerial adventure. That is just what life is all about.
Mission trips are physically wasting and spiritually ascending, as I've said all hard Christian work is. I have a condition called Spastic Colon or IBS, and my stomach gets ground into a pulp. My sleep is disturbed by increased visions. The physical work can be oppressive for someone like me. Spiritually I have extreme lows and highs. But when I get back, and I relax and reflect, I am elevated in a way that is hard to describe. I feel united with all things, and especially with God, and I am better for it. This is what mission trips are about. That is what this mission trip was about. And that, my friends, is real success.
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