Personal Reflections from Warm Springs Mission Trip 2024
July 25, 2024 | by: John Lee | 0 Comments
Posted in: Pastoral Encouragement
This upcoming Sunday our church will have the wonderful opportunity during the worship service to hear a mission report full of stories from this year’s short-term mission team and our time ministering on the Warm Springs Reservation. It has been a wonderful privilege of mine to have been able to join and serve on these teams every year since joining the Oak Hills family in late 2021. Every year as I come back home, the Lord has both encouraged and challenged me. I wanted to briefly share a few reflections of mine from this year’s trip. I pray that the Lord would use these reflections of mine to both encourage and challenge you. Although you may not have physically been on the mission trip to Warm Springs, your “mission field” is exactly where the Lord has you right now to the people around you.
1. God is Bigger and Greater!
Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3:20-21)
This whole year the Lord has continually been challenging me with just how big and great he is. This has led to a year of praying “big prayers” for our church, our communities, my personal life, and especially for the people of Warm Springs. Throughout this year’s trip I was reminded continually that God’s compassion and mercy for the people of Warm Springs is bigger and greater than my own (and our whole team combined). I saw this in the reality of the gospel at work all around us. I was tangibly reminded of this through the unity of our teams that we shared immediately because of Jesus. I was tangibly reminded of this as we were known by the people of Warm Springs not by our local church names but as the collective “church people” who have been there all summer. I was tangibly reminded of this when most of our work sites were left unfinished yet we were filled with thankfulness for another set of “church people” coming only a week after us would finish what we started. It has been a tremendous week where I was able to witness what God has been doing with small faithful steps of obedience through his people over the years. Relationships and trust deepening, ministry influence expanding, and more conversations about Christ as the hope of the world with others. What God has done and is doing is so much bigger and greater than our team this last week. This is not to lessen the importance of having a short-term team like ours being in Warm Springs. Rather, it is quite the opposite. We often want God to use us in big, drastic, recognizable-by-all type of ways but he often uses our small faithful steps of obedience in mighty ways. Way more than we might have ever thought or asked. So, see what God is able to do with small steps of faithfulness and see how God is able to take our “short-term work” to have eternal, long-term significance. What a comfort and what a marvelous thing to behold.
2. The Harvest is Plentiful!
Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” (Matthew 9:37-38)
During one of our last evenings in Warm Springs, one of the full-time missionaries, Evan, gathered us all in the common dining area after dinner. We had time to share stories and reflect on our week together. Evan opened up our time by asking why churches sending short-term summer teams has played such a vital importance to their ministry in Warm Springs. All of the reasons given, I believe, can be summarized in the reality that the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few. This conversation in some way transported my mind to one of the most impactful mission trips as a youth student to another Native American Reservation in Montana that God used as a huge part of my own story to pursue a call into pastoral ministry. It was there that the Lord opened my eyes to the reality that there are many that the Lord has and is preparing to hear and receive the gospel. As I looked around in the room full of our “church people”, I was filled with such zeal for the task of the Great Commission that Christ has given to his church. During this same evening, we began to hear stories of people from our team being able to read scripture with the kids, share the reason for why our teams would travel from our various homes to a place like Warm Springs, and have opportunities to share the gospel with others. During this week, many of us were utterly convinced that God has and is preparing hearts to hear and receive the gospel. In other words, the harvest is plentiful! This truth led many in our group to be bold for the gospel. Do you believe this today in the place the Lord has placed you in right now? Truly, the harvest is plentiful and the Lord commissions and sends out his church with the firm confidence that He will be with us until the end of the age as we share the great hope of Christ with all those around us.
3. How Beautiful are the Feet!
How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” (Romans 10:14-15)
During a lunch break at my work site for the week, a few of us had an opportunity to hear from Evan of how the nearby town tends to overlook or disregard the people on the Warm Springs reservation. In other words, “can anything good come out of Warm Springs?” Maybe even some of us from Oak Hills might even wonder why we go all the way over to Oregon each summer. There is much that I would love to share and write on this, but for the sake of the length of this touchpoint I’ll share a simple reflection. During this last week, the Lord faithfully showed in small ways the beauty of the gospel and the fruit that He is bearing through the proclamation of it in Warm Springs. During Kid’s Club each afternoon, a bible story and message is shared with the kids. After the bible lesson, application-type questions are asked and the children love to answer! Not only do they love to answer, but some of their most simple answers tend to be the most encouraging as they speak of the person of Jesus and the significance of his life, death, and resurrection. In other words, what may seem to be simple and slow-moving from our perspective, God is doing something really beautiful through the gospel in Warm Springs. He is drawing hearts who were once far from him near to him. So, can anything good come out of Warm Springs? Most definitely, through the gospel, the Lord is raising up worshippers who love him. Just as He raised my once spiritually dead self to be made alive together with Christ, he is doing in Warm Springs. May He raise up more and more! But, here is a challenging question for us to consider, how will these precious image bearers hear the wonderful good news apart from God’s people energized by his grace and Spirit to go and proclaim, point, and preach of Him who is all in all? How will your neighbors, friends, family, and those around you hear? May the feet of Oak Hills be beautiful in the eyes of the Lord.
So, Now What?
These reflections of mine are reminders that far surpass my week in Warm Springs (I’d like for you to already prayerfully consider joining our summer short-term mission trip next summer!) With that, these reflections are needed in my own life here now in Kansas City. They are reminders that Oak Hills needs continually as well. May they encourage and challenge you presently where God has placed you and seeks to use you. May you be reminded that God is bigger and greater than we can fathom, that the harvest is plentiful today, and that the feet that sow the truth of the gospel of Jesus are truly beautiful. May the Lord use our seemingly small steps in the obedience of faith to the glory of His name throughout all generations forever and ever.
Soli Deo Gloria,
P. John
