To start of the year I (Chris) lead the Elevate students to Orlando in order to share Jesus, encourage the church there & help move forward the work God is doing through Antioch Orlando (our most recent church plant). This trip was deeply impactful for me and very encouraging about what God is doing in Orlando. I have been on many mission trips and have lead almost as many as I have been a part of. But after this trip I can easily say this was the best trip I have ever lead. While I want to unpack why but first I want to share a one personal highlights from the trip.
On this trip our focus was not to build anything or do any service projects but rather to connect with students on the University of Central Florida campus then connect them to Jesus & the local church. One girl that myself and an Elevate student connected with was able to see Jesus as he reveals himself in the Bible for the first time. This girl had previous experiences with Christians before but unfortunately those encounters did not show her that it is God’s kindness that leads to repentance (Acts 2:4). We were able to share with her that Jesus loves her so much that he came to earth, took all her sins on himself, died on a cross, & conquered sin & death so that she might know the fullness of that love. We were able to express to her that God has a good plan for her life. That Antioch Orlando is a church that believes that God delights in all people and wants to see them come fully alive as they encounter the love of God. I wish you could have seen her expression as these truths touched her heart for the first time. She was blown away that the so-called Jesus she had encountered before was not what the Bible reveals about the true Jesus. She was able to see for the first time that God is good and he loves her. Wow, what a moment that I will for sure never forget. The look in a persons eyes as the realize that Jesus is much more than they could have ever imagined. While I could go on sharing stories like this I would like to share some lessons I learned on this trip.
- Time spent with God is priceless. As a cornerstone of all the short-term mission trips I have been on has been the high need for time in the presence of God. There is truly nothing that changes & catalyzes people more than the presence of God. How we did this is simple. For started we started our mornings late. Many missions trip have people out the door and working no later than 8am. We however did not start until 9am at the earliest. We did this because we wanted each person on the trip to get an hour in the presence of God before seeing other people. After that how we started our day was 2-3 hours of worship, prayer, encouragement, and equipping for the word of God. I know for many this sounds a bit extreme and impractical. To be honest on the average work day 3-4 hour of total uninterrupted time in God’s presence is not practical. But this was not a typical week. This was a week that was meant to be a life changing experience so we did thing out of the norm and boy did they ever pay off. As people encounter the presence of God they are changed and our students (plus myself) were no exception to this rule.
- Mission trips are meant to stretch people and push them out of their comfort zones. I wrote down at the end of the trip my “wins” for the trip. One was absolutely seeing our students do things and flourish in ways I had yet to witnessed. Whether it was sharing the good news of Jesus with joy and boldness with anything that moved. Or praying and prophesying over teammates for the first time. Each of the students pushed themselves to love people with move intentionality than they ever had before and I noticed the difference. Mission trips are not designed to help people feel completely comfortable but rather to push us into something new so that we must press more into God than we ever have before.
- Team matters! This one was huge for me. In my history of leading I have not always been the best at delegation. However before the trip I had a series of events that help me recognize my need to delegate more to my team. I learned my lesson from those events and with joy in my heart released my team to run with many aspects of the trip (most of the things I am not strong at doing anyway). This choice freed me up to connect at more of a heart level with the students and to gauge the temperature of the overall team in a much more effective way. I was also able to have a better vantage point to know how to lead us and to hear from God as to what the team need in order to keep flourishing on this trip. For the first time a trip I lead did not have a day where most everyone blew it relationally with one another. It is quite amazing how much more powerful we is than me.
What a joy it was to not only be a part of this trip but also to lead it. Leading others is not a right but a privilege and I am thankful that I am learning to lead others more effectively with great love. I am thankful for a job that “requires” me to go and share the love of Jesus with others. I truly am living a blessed life. One of which I am not worthy.
A Look Behind the Curtain 