If you asked me what kind of ministry I was going to do on the world race, office work would not have been on the list. Most of the time when I answered that question, I prefaced with the statement: “We won’t exactly know what we will be doing until we get to each country.” I would then follow with a list of other ministries I expected we would do throughout the year: children’s, youth, camp, sports, evangelism, and the like. Office ministry was never on the list.
Well, now I can say it should have been. Minus a few opportunities to evangelize, teach English, and go on home visits, my team spent our time in the office of Hope Church Romania. We sent emails, reached out to churches, made videos, contacted partners, called PayPal a hundred times, scheduled interviews, took notes, updated Facebook pages, wrote newsletters, recruited potential missionaries, and much more. Yes, it wasn’t your “typical” ministry, but it sure was important. We may not have had opportunities to speak the name of Jesus to many lost souls, but we did the work that promoted the church’s growth in the long run. And if the church grows, more lost souls will find Jesus.
We worked, but unfortunately, we won’t get to see the fruit that our work will bear. We won’t get to meet the people who come to Jesus because of an encounter they had with a missionary we recruited. Churches will send short-term mission trip teams to Romania because of the initial email we sent, but we won’t get to see a Romanian boy give his life to Christ after that short-term team plays soccer with him every day.
This became a hard reality to face for us as a team. We desire to see fruit right away, but that isn’t how it always works. We decided to each write a letter to someone we will never meet, someone who comes to Christ as a result of our work. The idea came from Philippians 4:1, “Dear brothers and sisters, I love you and long to see you, for you are my joy and reward for my work” (NLT).
I thought I’d share my letter.
