What Missions Isn't

As many of you know I am currently studying to be a missionary, and I feel the need as a new class of freshmen has just come in to clear away a stereotype that has plagued missions within that last couple of years. Missions is not as cool as you think it is.

Over the past couple of years, I've noticed how "cool" the church has made missions out to be, people seem to think that missionaries travel all the time, have these amazing vacation-like experiences in other countries, and get paid to do it. I'm here to tell you that that mindset is dead wrong. Missions is weird, it's messy, and it's hard.

Most people go into a missions program and think that they're going to learn about different cultures and languages. Granted we do, that's part of it, but there's also theology classes that confuse you and make you question yourself, there are Bible courses that made you read through hours of the Old Testament. When you finally get to the classes on other cultures, you realize just how different other cultures are and how when you go to minister to these people you are sacrificing your freedom to bring them the Good News that will save them for eternity.

You realize that you might have to give up your American citizenship to even stay in the country you feel called to. Then on top of this, you have your family, who is supportive and wants the best for you, but don't exactly understand you anymore, because your mindset has changed over all the time that you've been learning and trying to understand a different worldview than that you grew up with.

You notice more intently themes of American culture such as individualism and materialism. None of these things are extremely wrong, but you become more detached knowing the implications of those mindsets. This, in turn, can cause you to put up a small barrier that you don't know how to cross, you see these things in your own life and you deal with them as you see them, but the general American public doesn't see a problem with these things.

This all to say that before considering going into ministry it's important to understand what you're signing up for. A full-time missionary does not travel all the time, they travel to one new place and they stay there, they create their life in that culture, they raise their family there, they create life-long friends there. The most traveling they do is every couple years when they're on furlough to the U.S.

I say these things not to discredit missions and the work that they do, but I say it to take this veil away that many people have put over it. Missions is amazing, and some of the most rewarding work that I've done, that's why I'm prepared to make this my life and why I've been going to school for it and not simply jumping in.

I have learned while being here at school, that missions life is unpredictable, you never know where you'll be called to or what will happen. There's a joke that the upper-classmen tell the Freshmen every year that says, "You never know where you're going on internship until you're on the plane. And even then someone might come running down the runway and pull you off." Even with me in my own plans for internship and long-term have been changing immensely just within this week. But, I know that through these changes the Lord will work and He will remain the center of what I do for the rest of my life.