A few days ago, someone asked me why I took this "mission/service opportunity" in Japan. I immediately thought, "I'm not doing mission work here... I'm just enjoying teaching English to kids!" But then I began to ponder the idea of what mission work is, and what it looks like.
I think in the church, we often hear the words "mission" and "ministry" and think "those are the people who work in places like Africa and actively engage the people around them with the Word of God." People doing mission work are building homes and churches and sharing the Gospel message with church services and Bible studies. They aren't me... I'm just teaching. I'm just __(fill in the blank)__. I'm just making new friends.
I came here thinking just those things.
Yet as I consider what that means, what it really means, I begin to see how even "just" doing whatever job you have, wherever that may be, is ministry.
I truly believe that God created us to be relational beings. All the way back in the Garden of Eden, God created Adam. Soon after, he said, "It is not good for man to be alone. I will make a helper for him" (Gen. 2:18). God gave the first man someone to share life with. Someone to be with. In the Gospels, we find Jesus continually reaching out to others. He spent a great deal of time with his disciples, and even when they continually failed to see who he truly was, Jesus spent time with them. He continued to build a relationship with them. He never gave up on them. He never said, "Okay, disciples. I've given you so many chances, and you still don't get it. I'm giving up. I'm tossing in the towel. You're just too stupid." Instead, he does things like wash their feet. Their grimy, sweaty, dirt-filled feet. He met the disciples where they were and continued to build a relationship with them, to love them.
We have this need to relate to each other. I see this in my time here, too. My students, my wonderful students, are really shy. They don't want to say anything to me in English because they're afraid they might make a mistake. And yet just this week, I was lucky enough to be able to eat with a group of fifth graders who, while not the strongest English speakers, kept trying to communicate with me. Miming things, asking friends questions to find the English word they want to use. One rather shy girl (even to her classmates and school mates) asked different teachers and friends multiple questions just so she could ask me if I ran "fast." And after lunch, she was thrilled when I agreed to have a snowball fight with her (they don't get a lot of snow, so even the wet half inch they got was a lot for them), and everybody in the school spent their time outside throwing snow at each other.
I knew that we have this need for relationship, but I still wondered, is this really "ministry?"
And yet, just after Jesus washes his disciples feet, he says to them, "By this all shall know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:35). Love. An important concept, and one that is built out of having a meaningful relationship with someone. I love my family and friends because we've grown and continue to grow in our relation to one another through eating together, having meaningful conversations with each other, and doing various activities- playing cards, running, watching movies, cooking- together. And the meaningful conversations always come out of the activities we do together. My closest friends and I have had some of the most meaningful conversations while running together, cooking together, or watching movies together. What began as doing something we shared an interest in turned into something vastly more significant. But without those activities, where would those conversations come from?
Furthermore, how can I build a relationship deep enough with these kids, some of whom I have little in common with, that eventually turns to those meaningful conversations? Is it still ministry if those conversations never come up? Again, I question. What is ministry?
And again, I turn to my ever-present source of wisdom, the Word, and find my answer. And again, I turn to Jesus' commission to love one another. He didn't say "have deep conversations about Me with everyone you meet." He simply said to love. Why love? What's so different about love? Doesn't everyone show love to others? Non-Christians love each other. They send each other Valentine's Day gifts, they give hugs, they have conversations with each other. That's love. How is what I'm doing any different? And yet, there's more to it- Christ adds to the idea of love with these words "as I have loved you." This, I think, may be the difference. Going back to the relationship between Jesus and his disciples, I can't help but notice that he never gave up on them, even when the disciples were completely clueless as to just who it was they were following. And, even when his time on earth had grown short and they still didn't understand that he was the Savior they'd read about and learned about in their religion studies, Jesus still gave his life for them, evoking for me the words of John 15: "greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends." To die for someone? That's a different kind of love all together. That involves sacrifice.
But still, I'm not Jesus. I am not dying for the people I'm working with. Not literally. Ministry takes sacrifice sometimes.
However, I'm giving my time and I'm trying (and I'm afraid, failing miserably at times) to love these people I'm meeting and these people I'm getting to know. And in those moments when I really just want to tell my students to shut up and be quiet, I don't, knowing that such a command wouldn't be very loving. Instead, with a patience that can't come from myself, I raise my finger to my lips and wait... and sometimes, that wait is a long wait.
I truly believe I'm laying down my life in the sense that I'm spending my days using my talents. After all, Paul writes that we "all have different gifts, but the same body." My gift happens to be in building relationships through teaching English right now. And my ministry? I think that's something that occurs in the way I share that gift.
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