Exotic people and places raise money and make great power-point presentations. As a former missions director for a missions organization, I know the impact these trips create in those that participate as well as the field in which they serve. The suburban neighbor down the street does not elicit the same visceral response as orphans in India. So, we forget at best, we ignore at worst. Teaching at GCU affords great opportunities to touch hundreds of lives every year. However, I am still a human, not merely an instructor. I am still a Christian not merely a scholar. I am still a teacher, but with a “go and make disciples” (Matthew 28:19) mandate.
Investing efforts of mission accomplishment on the GCU campus, as well as faithfully serving in church in preaching and teaching give a sense of eternal effectiveness. Going on a foreign mission trip to serve and teach gives us a passionate identity to God’s heart.
However, let me share my street with you. A few doors down is an older lady, desperately lonely, that is a hoarder, estranged from her children, who will hold you up as you walk your dog because she just wants to talk to someone. Another neighbor has been overcome with depression, and I just helped her find a Christian counselor to bring healing to her life. There is the couple across the street that have very verbal fights with each other and their children with the windows open late into the night. Also, there is a man that leaves his house, maybe only once a month. His only live interactions are with Amazon drivers, Uber eats and me (when I check in on him). Next to him is the lady with stage four cancer who is depleted from treatments and just copes with each day because she is the caregiver for her sicker husband. I wave on Sunday morning to the guy on my street polishing his Mustang before another car show as I am on my way to church. There is also the older lady behind me that just lost her 90+ year old father and is trying to cope with this void in her life.
No trip is necessary to fulfill the mandate of Jesus when he said literally, but also figuratively, “you give them something to eat.” There is enough hurt, pain and suffering, never going beyond a baseball’s throw from home. It is much easier to go to India and preach messages to large crowds than to live this each day and follow the mandate of Jesus when he stated, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends,” (John 15:13).