We were asked to write a blog about how we were called to
this mission trip. Here is my story…
I love when people ask me “How in
the heck did you find out about the World Race??” because it’s an answer only
someone of my generation could give: “I stumbled upon it while I was wasting
time between classes on the internet.” Looks like the World Wide Web isn’t a
complete waste of time after all! (I bet that thing really catches on one day…)
It is pretty amazing though, how
the most random little things can have such a huge impact. I read the article
in October 2007, it stuck with me until I applied August of ’08, and here I am
writing about it in November, after being accepted!!! That article was entitled
“The Importance of Leaving Home,” and was written by Jeff Goins (who, it turns
out, is on staff with AIM…who knew). In it, he discussed the need for us,
especially young american Christians, to take a pilgrimage, to rediscover the
lost “art of leaving.” Jeff briefly touched on the things that make the WR so
special and so redemptive, both for ourselves and the people we will touch. The
idea of a year-long mission, traveling around the world, with a unique focus on
spiritual pilgrimage, really struck me as an insane idea. But insane in a good
way.
During that semester, I had been
bouncing around different ideas about what to do after I graduate-missions, the
Peace Corps, traveling, a job (okay, I wasn’t planning on getting a job, I’ll
be honest)-but nothing had really jumped inside me and pulled at my soul the
way the World Race did. As my roommate says, he just thought this would be a
passing fancy, and then 
it would flutter away. But ohhh how wrong he was! Haha
sorry Red (that’s my roommate…he has red hair…you’ll hear about him in the
future I’m sure). So, that crazy adventure/pilgrimage called the World Race
kept buzzing around my brain, and I thought to myself that this is the kind of
thing that people dream of, but never actually do. Would I do it?! And during
those following months of pondering and dreaming and laughing (because really,
what middle-class suburban college kid goes around the world with
nothing but a backpack, proclaiming the name of the Lord?!), I was reading some
heavy, heavy material. Books like A New
Kind of Christian, Surprised by Hope, Irresistible Revolution, and Jesus for President. These authors
(McLaren, Wright, and Claiborne) smacked me upside the head with their words,
and forced me to see how thoroughly I had ignored the call of the Gospel – a
call to seek redemption and justice and peace for a planet crying out for hope.
As Derek Webb sings, “the earth and the sky and the sea are all holding their
breath/
wars and abuses have nature groaning with death/
you say we’re just
trying to stay alive/
it looks so much more like a way to die/
and this too
shall be made right.”
I guess it was a combination of
lots of little things. An article about taking a pilgrimage; books about
creating a renewed framework through which to truly understand Jesus and His
good news; and a growing unease in my spirit that I, as Seth Barnes wrote in Why Have A World Race, am “under-challenged
and ultra-coddled…representative of an entire generation that has a sneaky
suspicion that maybe they’re on a path that is too easy…tempted to sell out to
a career track and a lifestyle that doesn’t or shouldn’t define them.”
So here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen.
