Not a Mountaintop Experience

I was talking to a friend recently who just returned from East Asia on a mission trip. Like most who go on mission trips, she returned elated, convinced that where she was is the greatest place on earth and wanting to go back. I can’t say I blame her. Returning from the mission field is tough business. To move from such glorious displays of God’s hand back to your day to day life at work or school is disheartening. Most missions organizations and churches provide intentional times of de-briefing to help the missionaries actually chew and swallow everything they’ve experienced on the trip so as to return to their normal lives with the lessons they’ve learned.

In my de-briefing of my mission trip to Panama, our leaders helped de-brief us with the mountaintop analogy of Matthew 17. In this chapter, Jesus takes Peter, James, and John with him up a mountain and is transfigured before them, and begins conversing with Elijah and Moses. Peter then says that it’s good to be there and that, should Christ wish, they would make three tents for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. The interpretation given to our team was that, like Peter, James, and John, we had all had mountaintop experiences. And like Peter we all wished we could stay, but while mountaintop experiences are good, their purpose is to send us back down refreshed. Encouraging…but upon reflection, completely wrong and hazardously misleading. The first and most obvious error is circumstantial. None of us were physically in the presence of Jesus. He lives in us, but for now his physical body is not among. But that’s not what caused Peter to want to stay. They were seeing Jesus’ glory in a radical and most unique way. And they saw him speaking to two long-dead Prophets. That’s hardly on the same level as going to another country and sharing the gospel. That’s…on a whole new level. No doubt they couldn’t stay there. They had work to do.

That brings me to my second objection to this interpretation. What did Peter, James, and John come back down to from the mountain? The remainder of Christ’s ministry for one. And two, the birth of the church and the events of the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, a missions book if ever there was one. Missions was not on top of the mountain. It was what awaited them when their mountaintop experience ended.

Mission trips are elating, no doubt. But they are not an experience to be ended. If you choose to describe that elation in terms of being on a mountaintop, that’s fine, just so long as you understand that God isn’t calling you to come down. What I mean is this: going to a new country and culture and spreading the gospel among people groups unknown gives you a fresh perspective on what God is doing in the rest of the world, and for that we should give God thanks that his word is bearing fruit among all the nations. But for most missionaries, that’s only a bonus. The deepest joy they return with, the one that makes it sometimes painfully hard to return to America, has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that they went overseas. For most, the country isn’t what they miss. It’s a perspective.

Alice’s Adventures on the Mission Field

“She ate a little bit, and said anxiously to herself ‘Which way? Which way?’, holding her hand on the top of her head to feel which way it was growing; and she was quite surprised to find that she remained the same size. To be sure, this is what generally happens when one eats cake; but Alice had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the common way.” -Lewis Carrol, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

It’s worth saying once again that missions is what happened when the three disciples returned from the mountain with Jesus. The implication for the modern-day short-term missionary who is dreadfully about to return to “normal life” after an incredible week or month is this: don’t settle for less. You’ve tasted the working hand of God. Taste more. You don’t have to go back if you don’t want to. Yes, you must relocate back home. But what made the trip so amazing doesn’t need to end.

A good illustration of what I’m getting to is my brother. My brother is currently entering his second year of a two, possibly three-year missionary commitment in East Asia. What’s he doing over there? He’s teaching English at a university over there. And because it’s a closed country, as far as the government knows, that’s ONLY why he’s there. But why is he really there? To share the gospel. He’s a missionary. But compare myself and him. We’re both out of school. We are both working to make a living. What’s the difference between him and me? Only what I allow to differ us. The missionary’s joy isn’t dependent on going to a new culture. It’s about the overwhelming and unavoidable sense of purpose the hits them in the face when they arise each morning. A friend of mine has an excellent quote on her Facebook page which says “What gets you up in the morning? Wrong, it’s the Gospel.” What happens on mission trips is what’s supposed to happen every day in the life of every Christian.

Think about it: what mindset do you wake up with on a mission trip? That you’re going to go out and share the gospel that day, or disciple new believers. How do you go to bed that night? With restful satisfaction, and in prayers of gratitude and intercession. The missionary’s entire mindset becomes centered on the good news of Christ’s substitutionary death and resurrection. You wake up in the expectation of preaching Jesus. You go to sleep meditating on the memories of preaching Jesus that day. And everywhere in between is the preaching of Jesus.

Think about the fellowship among missionaries. Relationships so naturally build themselves upon commonalities. In other words, the content of conversations between two people will so often and so naturally gravitate on shared interests: music, movies, food, politics, etc. This applies to all relationships. So what does this mean for two missionaries whose mindsets have become so dependent on the gospel? Their conversations, and thus their relationship will become about Christ. Or to put it another way, instead of having a relationship based on secular things they have in common, their relationship will be based on what they have in common in Christ. And when relationships are built around that which is most beautiful- the sharing of the gospel, praying for one another, rejoicing with eachother about Christ’s work in eachother’s and others’ lives- the fullness of fellowship happens. Relationships become intimate in whole new levels. The deepest relationships you will ever have are with the people you do ministry with. It’s with people you pray with. I find it amazing to think about how many Christians I know that I have NEVER prayed with. For those who have been on mission trips, I have these two questions: How often in your time there did you talk to a friend about people you had shared the gospel with? How often have you done that since returning?

It is this constant focus on the gospel, and the intentional, spiritually-nourishing relationships with other believers that gives the missionary such a zeal over their time in the foreign land. The location is very useful though. Between my brother and me, who do you think wakes up with a greater sense of missional purpose? Well my brother wakes up each morning and is slammed with the reality that he’s in Asia, while I wake up in an area I’ve known all my life and a familiarity with my culture that I take for granted. It’s easier for me to wake up in the morning and feel like it’s just another day. But for him, each morning he is hit hard with the reality that he’s in an unfamiliar place, which naturally draws his attention next to the reason why he’s there. It’s like the difference between waking up in your own bed and waking up on a couch at a friend’s place. At home I wake up in my bed thinking “Well…I’m awake now” and I get up. At a friend’s place, I wake up and remember why I’m there. “Wait this isn’t my bed. Oh yeah, I spent the night over at Jon’s last night.” Mission field beds cause us to wake up and go “Whaaa? Oh yeah, I’m in Panama. And I’m in Panama on a mission trip. When I get up, I’ve got people to go see and share Christ with them.”

It all comes down to a sense of purpose. Mission trips don’t give you any more purpose than you have here in your day-to-day life. They just serve as a highlighter. They remind the Christian of how life is to be lived everyday. When we return to college, when we come back and return to our jobs, we’re to wake up and say “People need to hear the Gospel today. Believers need to be encouraged today.” And then you go about seeking opportunities to spread the love of Christ. And then you come home and set your alarm for another day, and give God thanks for however he chose to use you that day, no matter how small. Christ is to pervade our thoughts, and the beauty of mission trips is that they make it a whole lot easier to let him in. Here we have movies to see, CDs to listen to, entertainment magazines to read. There’s it’s only Christ. Psalm 16:11 says that in God’s presence is “fullness of joy.” To those whose entire lives revolve around Jesus, and whose relationships are intentionally Jesus-centered, God’s presence is far more easy to recognize. As such, the missionary, who experiences such focus during their trip experiences the supreme joy and satisfaction of being in God’s presence. And this is why they’re afraid of returning. It’s not about being back in America. It’s not about leaving that country you’ve been spending time in. It’s the fear that they’ll lose the focus that being overseas has given them. It’s the fear of getting lost in their day-to-day responsibilities so that the oh-so-clear sense of purpose they’ve attained will become blurred, and joy with it.

Missions is about spreading the gospel to people who haven’t heard it yet. It is an outward focus. But as for what happens internally to the one who preaches, missions isn’t about ‘where’, it’s about ‘how’; how to think, how to relate to the lost, how to pray, how to live in unity with other believers, how to LIVE. It’s no light matter to understand why you were created. Such a thing governs your entire life. Nothing brings you greater joy. It’s purpose that so many people discover overseas on the mission field. And it’s purpose that they’re afraid to lose. Live with the purpose of a missionary.

Like Alice, come to expect the things that are out-of-the-way to the extent that it seems dull and stupid for life to continue on in the normal way. Life is dull if our days are about going to school or to your job. Life is dull if our idea of fellowship is confined to watching TV together. Be different! Acknowledge the purpose of your day as the gospel. And let that make your relationships anything but dull. Get in with those who share a missional mindset, who will live life with you, together for the sake of building each other up and taking the gospel to those who need to hear it.

Purpose, purpose, purpose! How you feel at the end of your mission trip is how you’re to consistently feel, for how you lived then is how you’re to live always. Yes, you may have work and school to go back to. But becoming employees and students is exactly how missionaries get into closed countries for the sake of the gospel. So don’t make excuses. Expect nothing less here than what you experienced there. That is the life God has called us to live.