What Happens When You Stop Planning and Start Going

“Hey, Jonathan,” said my brother excitedly on the phone, “I am going to the Philippines this summer for a month to preach an evangelistic series, and I think you should join me.”

It was the mid 2000s, I was 17, and I had never witnessed a full-scale evangelistic campaign in my home country, let alone abroad, but now I was to travel halfway across the globe to participate in one. “OK. But I can’t preach,” I answered, inspired by my brother’s enthusiasm.

 “That’s fine; you can come as support staff, maybe do music and tell children’s stories,” he replied.

“All right,” I said, probably thinking more about the fun of seeing another country than the mission work itself. A few months later I landed in beautiful central Philippines, with no real concept of what was about to take place—in the campaign and in my heart.

Watching my brother, who had experienced a powerful conversion and was baptized only weeks prior, preach the fullness of our message night after night was inspiring. Never had I heard it so clear. Engaging with locals and Filipino culture was as wonderful as it was foreign. Having, at that point, only ever lived in and experienced the European context, this cross-cultural evangelism endeavor changed my narrow, almost nonexistent view of the church’s mission and the power of gospel preaching. At that point I was myself just starting the process of becoming more serious with God, yet here I was doing mission work with whatever I knew how to do.

In That Very Hour What You Ought to Say

It came as a shock, then, when one Friday afternoon, a week or so into our campaign, I was asked to come to another church and do what I had said I couldn’t and wouldn’t do—preach.

Slightly terrified, I asked one of the group leaders, who was a pastor, to give me a sermon to share. His notes, however, made no sense to me, and so I ended up on the platform the next morning with no sermon in hand and no idea what to do but pray. What happened next I will never forget. The Holy Spirit provided sentence after sentence. I would preach, and as the interpreter translated what I had said into the Cebuano language, the next phrase would simply “appear” in my mind.
At the end of the campaign 1,200 people were baptized. Numbers unimaginable in my home country.

This experience left me shocked and amazed, yet it opened the door to adventures with God and a willingness to face—and through God’s grace—overcome fears, hesitations, and obstacles for missions abroad and at home.

A few years later God decided to “interrupt” (and unbeknownst to me, completely change) my plans to earn a media degree at a private university in Munich by calling me into a bit more long-term cross-cultural mission experience.

To the Ends of the Earth

It was spring 2009, and I randomly woke up one Tuesday morning with this urgent impression that I needed to leave Europe to “do something for God.” I knew it was from above, because I had had no such personal desires up to that point, and now it suddenly appeared unprompted and with serious conviction. At that time I was still quite unaware of the mission opportunities our global church had to offer. Through a divine appointment, however, God provided direction the following Sabbath morning when I bumped into a visiting member whom I remembered had been a missionary in Papua, Indonesia, a decade earlier. I asked him about my options, and he was more than happy to share. To make a long story short: five months later, after many flights (of which some felt safer than others), I found myself on the last leg of my journey, on a small boat headed to what would be my mission post on a tiny atoll of the Marshall Islands, right in the heart of the Pacific Ocean.

There on Wotja, a six-mile-long and, at its widest, half-mile-wide island, I was to serve as a missionary teacher for a year. The challenges were numerous: no electricity, no running water, no connection to the outside world, barely usable school supplies, dilapidated facilities, little support, a major language barrier, and a culture that was far more foreign to me than anything I had ever encountered before.

Mission engagement doesn’t have to be complicated. People crave connection, purpose, community, love, health, direction, and truth. Provide something, and the Spirit will link you to those you can serve.

I was still young, barely older than the youth I was supposed to teach, with no strong instructional experience, and yet I knew God had called me there for that purpose. The best place to be truly is at the center of God’s will. It may not feel the safest, but it’s the most rewarding.

I could have come up with countless reasons not to go, not to “waste” a year of my life. But God provided solutions for even the more legitimate obstacles and fears.

It was a hard year, yes. Cultural, social, and lingual barriers as well as personal limitations made it difficult to preach the gospel and to break through to the hearts of the people, but God provided ways. Together with a friend who had joined me and two Filipino Bible workers who had already been serving on this island of just 300 souls (about half of which were children), we went about the Lord’s business. God blessed, and we were privileged to baptize about 12 individuals in the mighty waters of the Pacific, establishing the first Adventist presence in one of the most remote places on earth.

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One of the 12 individuals being baptized. First local Adventists on the island. March 2010

First official Sabbath service on the island in a makeshift “church” (a rearranged classroom). March 2010.

The Adventist school

The shack where us missionaries lived.

A radio was the only way to communicate to the outside world.

Young locals during a Bible game.

Missionaries Jonathan Walter, Robert Reimer, Elmer Realda, with many of the students of the local Adventist school.

(f.l.t.r.) Missionaries Rene Suhot, Jonathan Walter, Robert Reimer, Elmer Realda

You Are Never “Ready” for Missions

Over the years I have had a variety of mission experiences, both abroad and at home, in developing countries as well as highly sophisticated, post-Christian societies. Every single time, embarking on some mission activity brought about a certain anxiety and feeling of uncertainty at first. After all, it is not just some random pursuit—it is a spiritual battle. Stepping into the unpredictable terrains of outreach requires you to assess your faith and put your sincerity to the test. Yet nothing is more rewarding and faith-building than joining the Holy Spirit and the angels at the front lines.

Your Bible knowledge is applied to something beyond your devotional time and Sabbath School class.

Your prayers change from primarily self-focused conversations with God to pleadings of intercession for lost souls.

Your religious experience transforms from beautifying your own bubble to infusing the world with Jesus’ glory, truth, and miracles.

You become a happier, spiritually healthier, and fulfilled Christian.

The reality is that you will never “be ready” for outreach, evangelism, and missions. Postponing engagement is really only doing yourself a disservice. “Later” never comes. “Next time” is a cheap excuse. Your family members, neighbors, and colleagues are dying in their sins. Your city, country, and the 10-40 window are filled with millions and billions of real human beings who are desperately in need of the real divine being—Jesus Christ!

In that moment of intercession a channel of divine light from heaven pierced through the dark clouds of secularism and distraction, possibly accessing this young man’s heart for the first time.

Here is the good news about sharing the good news: It is never too late to join God’s endeavor to reach this broken, fallen world. Literally, right now, as you are reading these lines, you can pause and pray for God to show you whom to talk to about Jesus today; what to do that will glorify Him and make Him known in your community; which unreached territory or people group to serve.

From Toothache to the Throne Room of Heaven

I never thought I would hear such a question. “What is prayer?” a teenage boy I had met while prayer walking the streets of post-Christian Iceland asked me. I explained in a few sentences. He shared how he was struggling with depression and wanted me to pray for him. I did.

Later, knocking on a door, I offered prayer to another young man in his early 20s. I think he found the simple proposal amusing and maybe slightly confusing. He didn’t really know what to let me pray for, but he settled on a toothache he had. To this day, I wonder if he was just saying something to get it over with or if it was sincere. Nevertheless, I prayed a short prayer for him and his tooth. When I opened my eyes, the young man no longer looked amused, but deeply and sincerely touched by the Holy Spirit, with tears in his eyes. You see, even something as simple as praying with a stranger is mission. In that moment of intercession a channel of divine light from heaven pierced through the dark clouds of secularism and distraction, possibly accessing this young man’s heart for the first time and bringing awareness that there is more in the universe than meets the eye. God can do in a prayerful moment what we could not do in a lifetime. And He is eagerly waiting to touch more people with His love through you and me!

Mission engagement doesn’t have to be complicated. People crave connection, purpose, community, love, health, direction, and truth. Provide something, and the Spirit will link you to those you can serve. It’s often the simplest things that make a world of difference, because God works in them.

Whether you choose to serve in a short-term or long-term mission endeavor does not matter, for our mission is not bound by time. Mission is a daily and ongoing lifestyle worth living; one that would be a shame to miss.

Will you join today?