Missions as Pilgrimage

We go on mission trips to find ourselves — that truest part of “us” that we wouldn’t otherwise know or be able to tap into. We don’t go on mission trips to save people, to help the “less-fortunate,” or to feel good about ourselves.

We go, because we are the less-fortunate. We are the weak and broken vessels, needing to be filled with the glory of the divine. We go because we have to go in order to be complete.
 
And yet… When we go as humble servants, the poor and needy are served, the hungry are fed, and those who are wandering are found.
 
But we have to go as pilgrims. We have to admit that we know nothing and ask God to move in and through us. We have to acknowledge our own spiritual poverty — our utter inability to help anyone or do any good — in order to be of any good.

Recently, I got to meet a group of pilgrims who approached their spring break mission trip with fear and trembling. They were open to the possibility that everything they know about God was incomplete; they were ready to have their worlds shaken.
 
And God used them — precisely because of their humility, I believe.
 
This is the new generation of Jesus-followers — radically-committed disciples who are devoted to being stretched and challenged and walking with Jesus, not just trudging behind him. They understand their identity and authority and are excited about gaining their inheritance in the kingdom.
 
One young woman shared about her experience: “The fact is, what Christ is doing in me is something so much bigger than me… We ARE the Kingdom. Wherever we step we are planting seeds…”

I believe that short-term missions as pilgrimage is a much healthier model than a more imperialistic one that some in the West have adopted (presumedly not intentionally). In my opinion, there is no other way to do a successful mission trip. This is not only biblical; it’s historical. This idea of going and discovering as you go was quintessential to the early Church and even to medieval saints. Mission is primary to our discipleship, and if we do not go, we do not learn how to follow. However, how we go will most assuredly impact how we follow.

If you do not go as a learner, then you are nothing more than a resource-hogging “gringo” (as you might be called in Mexico) doing little good.
 
Maybe we shouldn’t just approach mission trips like this, but how we as the Body of Christ incarnate Jesus every day — through church, work, and life.