My name is James, and I was a goer in East Asia for 5 ½ years. I’m still waiting for the day when someone comes up and asks, “So what do you actually do all day?” I think there have been times where a person wanted to ask that, but felt it might have been too impolite or forward and so changed it to, “So what have you been up to recently?” I would be excited to answer this question, not because I want to defend my job or my paycheck, but because I think I have the best job in the world. I get paid to bring the gospel to dark areas of the world and to see lives changed for Jesus! That is the bottom line; everything we do as goers is focused on that goal.
What Did You Do Today?
For example, you might ask a goer, “What did you do today?” and they might answer, “I spent five hours in language class and four hours applying for a residency permit.” While we are not actively focusing on bringing anyone into the kingdom of God through these activities, we are working toward a future vision where locals will hear the gospel in their own language, believe, and go out to spread the gospel themselves. We long to see churches planted. This can only be achieved through persistence in language learning and longevity on the field. Now before I get more specific about life overseas, there is one more problem that should be addressed. The problem is that the answer to “What does a goer actually do all day?” can change drastically depending on multiple variables: How long have been in the field? What are the vision and goals of the team? What stage of the work they are in? What are their giftings and what role on the team do they have? A person on my team who has been on the field for six months will primarily be focused on language learning, skills development, and team bonding. Whereas a person who has been on the field for six years will be focused on helping lead the team, discipleship of local believers, evangelism, and church formation and strengthening. With that being said, let’s look at my specific team.
Since You Asked…
My team is a part of Campus to Campus (C2C) Missions. We exist to bring the gospel to and plant churches among unreached cities with high university populations. When I lived in East Asia, we were in a city of 12 million people with around 1.2 million college students. The specific area I was in charge of was about a square mile and had four major universities and multiple minor universities totaling about 200,000+ university students–the vast majority of whom had never heard the gospel! This was one season of my life there:
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Monday through Thursday from 8am-12pm and Friday from 8am-9:30am, I taught English at a university. I did this because the government doesn’t like goers, so I had a “cover job” for a visa to stay in the country. Almost every day for lunch, I would have a discipleship meeting with a local believer, a lunch meeting with a friend with whom I was sharing the gospel, a weekly meeting with team leadership to assess how our team was doing and where we were heading, or a bi-weekly meeting with the church elders to assess the health of our churches.
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After lunch, East Asia naps, so I would go back home and answer emails or relax, depending on how busy my night was. In the afternoon, I would spend time preparing for Bible studies, preaching at our church on Sunday, or teaching the theological development class for the church I taught on Sunday nights. Or I would go to our private language class, led by a local believer, so that we could learn the spiritual vocabulary that they didn’t teach us in school.
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Around dinner time, I would try to hang out with friends by going out to restaurants, playing basketball, going to movies, skateboarding, going on walks, anything to try and build relationship and trust with these college students.
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After dinner, one night of the week we would have a Bible study (that we called family group) that we led in English and the local language at our apartment. Another night of the week, we would have an English Corner on campus to help our friends improve their English. And another night, we would have team church where we worshiped together. During team worship time, we either watched a message from one of the Salt Network Churches or one of our team members preached. Lastly, we would have a small business meeting to talk shop. The other nights of the week we would either hang out with friends or do fun things with our teammates.
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Saturday was our Sabbath. On this day, we were not allowed to do any work. We prioritized recharging our souls by seeking God’s presence and then doing fun things that were restful to our souls. Sometimes that would be playing sports, watching a movie, spending time in nature, reading a good book, being alone, or being with other people. Saturday was sometimes difficult for people to balance spending time with God and resting/playing, but it was very needed.
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Finally, Sunday would come around. For those on our team that had been on the field long enough to help plant a church, seeing the local church come together to worship God and fellowship was one of the most joyful moments in any week. After church, we would have discussion groups to apply the message and then we would often go out to lunch together as the church. After lunch, I would come back and rest before I would finish preparing for the three-hour class I taught on Sunday nights to train and develop our local leaders.
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And these were just the scheduled events. This doesn’t include traveling across the city to a government office (that changes the required paperwork as often as a seasonal restaurant changes their menu), writing emails and updates to supporters and family back home (although statistically, most will not read them), getting lost on buses, taking the subway an hour and a half to get to IKEA to buy kitchen supplies (only to have your kitchen knife taken away when you try to reenter the subway), or trying to contact a company (because the kiddie pool you bought online to baptize people in your apartment in is 6 inches shorter than advertised and will no longer feasibly baptize the 6 foot 1 university student who gave his life to Christ).
The life of a missionary is chaotic, busy, and can be very stressful. But it can also be incredibly rewarding as we see the light of Christ begin to brighten up the people and city around us.
Parents of Goers 