So I went on a mission trip to Sheffield, England with a
whole bunch of my amazing friends here in College Station (22 of us total)! It
was an amazing experience and I wish I could have been there longer. Our
purpose on this trip was to make the name of Jesus famous and to serve the
local church. As most of you know I currently attend Antioch Community Church
in College Station, TX, which is part of the Antioch Movement of Churches, and
there is also an Antioch church in Sheffield that is part of the movement! We
wanted to bless them and their city for a short term trip.
Getting to Sheffield was quite the experience with a flight
to London (including a 5hr or so conversation with a Muslim man from Turkey and
a lesbian, Catholic lady from Houston about religion on the flight), a delay at
customs, a flight to Manchester, and then a train to Sheffield. The city itself
is a neat array of beautiful architecture and a meshing of towns. Everything
was within walking distance in town and many locals used the public
transportation system to get around. Most of the nights we ate dinner at a pub
(just a restaurant with a bar basically) because most places in town closed at
6pm including shops and restaurants, or simply because 22 people require a lot
of space. The daylight hours were long although it was cloudy most of the time we
were there. It was a fun cultural experience learning the different words
people used and how people interacted.
Now to get down to the good stuff. Most days we would have
team time in the morning at the church, which would include worship and/or a
teaching. After team time and lunch we would then head out into the city to
proclaim the name of Jesus. We did this a variety of ways, but it was mostly
just walking up to people and starting a conversation. Most people in the city
of Sheffield identify themselves as atheist with only about 3% identifying as
Christian. Because of this most people were opposed to Christianity or any
religion because they believed religion was for non-intellectual people. We,
however, were able to shake their views a little bit. Going out in small groups
we would meet people where they were, in the market or studying on campus
(there were 2 university campuses that we visited) and tell them about our
passion and about the intimate, personal relationship with Jesus that we have.
We were told that most people have high outer walls but low inner walls meaning
that it would be hard to start a conversation with someone but once you did it
would be easy to go deep. This may have been how it worked for most people;
however, I have almost no problem starting conversations with people on the
streets.
Every day I would have multiple conversations with people
lasting significant amounts of time. I rarely got turned away and people would
kindly and intently listen to my heart. Maybe they just liked my accent, but
the Word of the Lord was reaching people’s ears. One group me and Shannon
talked to loved talking to us so much that we had a difficult time getting away
from them so that we could talk to others! Nobody accepted the Gospel, but I
know there are a lot of people who’s view of Christianity was shaken and seeds
were planted. I really began to understand people’s mindset on religion when I
had about a 30min conversation with a man on the street who basically called me
naïve person for following religion. He believed that Christianity was made up
during the dark ages to make people be more moral and is now only useful in 3rd
world countries. (I hope to write a blog post about this ideology specifically) He kept repeated that I “think I know” things, but I gladly
repeated that I “do” know the Truth. He believed my mission was to bring people
into my “club” and didn’t like my “offensive” actions that were trying to make
me feel better. He was pretty upset that I didn’t know the answers to a lot of
things and claimed to know how to obtain eternal life. He may not have left the
conversation a Christian, but his beliefs were definitely challenged and I hope
he talked about our conversation with his “religious” friend that he was about
to go hang out with. One day Kullen, Khira, and me made a sign that said “dream
interpretation” and had lots of really fun conversations with people. People
would tell us their dream, we would pray and ask Jesus what it meant, and then
tell them. We also would have people who were just interested in how we did it
talk with us. We were able to show people that God really cares about them and
that He does still speak to us!
Others on the team were able to do the same: sharing the
love of Jesus to a lost city through relationships, words of knowledge, and
anything other way Jesus spoke through them. We have at least one person
connected with the church who was looking for community, one Muslim girl who is
very interested in finding friends, and I’m believing that so much more is
going to happen from the repercussions of what we were able to do! The point is
that Jesus’ name was glorified and the city of Sheffield is a little bit
brighter.
During the trip I was also given the honor to give a
teaching about community to our team! You can find a recording here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/q0a74j7e8fxvej6/Community.mp3?dl=0
I love my team and I am so thankful that I was given the opportunity
to go on this trip with them! Thank you to everyone who helped support us going on this trip! From building some shelves at the church to
walking around the city evangelizing to playing on the playground the name of Jesus was proclaimed! Again I love this group of people so much and am so thankful to get to go on one last mission trip with them before I move off. They are a group of world changers whom I call family and they will always carry a piece of my heart.
