Back to Africa #1--Spiritual Tourism

Three weeks from today my friend Tom and I will board a plane to fly halfway around the world, again.
It was not until after I was home from my first trip to Tanzania in 2008, that it hit me that I was able to cross off a lifelong item on my Bucket List.  That item was to go on photo safari in the Serengeti.  As much as I enjoyed that, it pales in comparison to what goes on in my heart and soul these days as I am undone by the thought that I have the extreme privilege to return to Africa a 4th time in as many years.
Until I depart, I would like to reminisce a little of my past journey's and how they seem to be preparing me for another trip on my "safari"(Swahili for journey)
One of the things that I have struggled with along this journey has been my deep desire to keep these trips from becoming just "spiritual tourism".  I have worked hard to not just be a tourist that goes, gives a little, does a few token gestures of service, all to make myself feel better...
The needs are so great, and I will never be able to "fix" them.  (Yes, I admit I am a "fixer")  But one thing I am learning is that I can have an impact and in some small way assist in being a catalyst of change.
For me, this "impact" comes in a number of ways.  First and foremost is comes in having the privilege to have influence in my church and being a part of what we as a church do to develop strategic partnerships with ministries around the world.  Through these partnership, we encourage and provide opportunities for people to develop and/or expand their Biblical Worldview.  The one thing I am learning is that as we go, God uses different element, people, events, differently in the team members lives in different ways.  We can not create, or recreate this impact and/or transformation.  As we each submit to what God wants to do in each of us, we each pick up or sense differently parts of the trip that impact us in different ways.  What I like best is that as we share what God is doing in each of us we learn more about all that God does in us together to expand our world view.  It actually multiplies what God does in each of us individually as we share in each others lives together.
We do our best to prepare our teams to create a disdain for spiritual tourism.  We attempt to get them out of their comfort zones, and as we like to say, "ruin them for the ordinary".  We challenge them to actively seek all that God wants to communicate to them on the journey that lies ahead of them.  I truly believe that God does not need me to do anything for Him.  What He wants most is a personal relationship with Himself.  What He does in and through that relationship comes from an overflow of that relationship, that ends up blessing others as well as myself much more than if I just went and tried to do something humanitarian on my own, no matter how altruistic my motives.  What these short term outreaches provide is an opportunity for people to experience what God is doing around the world and realize that it involves way more than our sheltered religiosity here in America.  I admit what I just said is a generalization, but find that often times when I and our team members talk upon returning home, we have begun to discover that we didn't know what we didn't know...
Bishop Mpemba from Mwanza, Tanzania uses an alphabet analogy.  Humanly speaking, all we know is that which is between A and Z.  God lives before A and after Z.  We can't even begin to understand all that goes on before A or after Z.  As we open ourselves up to His work in and through us in the context of a personal relationship with Him, our world view is expanded way beyond ourselves and we experience new levels of what it means to be a follower of Christ here on this earth.

For me this is best expressed in an image that I stole of a moment in time as God transformed a heart.  The image is of our Lead Pastor, Keith Boyer, and his youngest daughter Brittany.  It was the moment that God gripped her heart for others outside her everyday world.  It was also a transformation in humility as she was undone by the fact that God would use her to touch the lives of children with His love and compassion; children who through no fault of their own are under resourced and less fortunate.
It was also a moment in a father's heart that is a culmination of years of prayers for that child.  A prayer that God would capture his child's heart is such a way that marks the child with the fact that the expression of His love for the child is not meant to be held, but given away, and the appreciation that comes for a God that gives opportunities to express that love to those less fortunate.  That joy that overflows to a father that gets to share in his daughter living out of the overflow of God's love in and through her, is a joy that is beyond description.
What I had the intense privilege of witnessing that day went way beyond the transformation in a father/daughter relationship and has instilled in me a deep and growing passion to provide opportunities for people go beyond "spiritual tourism" and experience first hand God's overflow in them as they express the Love, Grace, and Mercy of the God of the universe to those less fortunate than themselves.  It is through experiences at this level that we begin to experience a mutual redemption that will forever change our lives, and our relationships.