A Lesson from Southeast Asian Pastors

I was six months into living in Southeast Asia when I was roped into my first extended road trip by my national friend, Ralph. He asked me to go with him on a cross-island road trip with a group of pastors for an undetermined amount of time, to help out a church plant in a new up-and-coming city. They needed another driver, which is why Ralph asked me to tag along in the first place. I was pretty excited. This was a chance for real, meaningful ministry—as opposed to language learning and speaking in broken sentences to those patient enough to converse with me.

We were to meet in front of our church to set out, and I was waiting there as Ralph and his dad, Pastor Don, pulled around in a car. “Good morning!” they said. “There were no more automatic cars from the rental place—so we got a manual one. No worries, right?”

I learned that day how to drive stick.

I also learned a host of other things that day—how “carsick” and “drunk” were the same word in the local language, how the island we were on had only 1 “highway” (partially made of dirt), how the palm plantations had taken over the majority of the natural rainforest in our area, and how there was no need to stop to sleep on a road trip if you had more than one driver. Ralph and I alternated through the night, and we drove, and drove, and drove.

We began with the three of us, but we ended with six of us, picking up three more pastors on the way—never stopping for longer than an hour or so to grab food or to see a local church within our denomination. One pastor brought with him a huge bag of fried fish, which we would eat for the next six meals.

When I was not driving, I was either sleeping or listening to music. I could barely understand what the pastors were talking about, and it seemed rather unimportant to me. They were sharing old stories about their ministries and cracking jokes. I asked a few questions about what we were going to do when we got to the church plant, and they mentioned that we were going to help with a Sunday service and hang out with the pastor. I was excited to see the work going on in this other city, and I was really excited to engage in the work of ministry when we got there.

It took us around forty straight hours of driving before we finally arrived Saturday night. We booked the cheapest hotel we could find and sat down to eat more fish. At this point, there were worms crawling in my fish since we had no way to refrigerate the food. “Don’t worry,” Ralph assured me. “That kind of worm won’t really hurt you.” I called it a night, a little worried about my stomach but mostly optimistic for the rest of the trip.

The next morning, we woke up and went to the church plant. We met with the pastor beforehand, helped set up for the service, worshipped together, and ate together. They asked me to share a testimony, so I explained the gospel (as best I could six months into living there) through the lens of my own life story. They were appreciative and whatnot, but I was really looking forward to the real gospel work.

“Pastor Don,” I asked, “what are we doing next? Evangelism? Meeting with church members? Helping with a Bible study?”

“Returning home, of course,” he replied. “We have wives to get back to, do we not?”

I was floored. We had driven forty hours for the purpose of this trip, right? In what world does one drive forty hours to “help out” a church plant and only stay for one Sunday service? Bitterness crept up inside me. I had driven so many hours, stalled out while learning to drive manual so many times, eaten worm-infested fish, and been away from my wife for days for nothing? It was hard to see any sense of purpose at that point. Resigned, I got in the car, and we set off on the same way we came.

It was not till we were ten or so hours into our trip home, as I was listening to some more music, blissfully unaware of the conversation around me, that I came to a realization: this trip was not about ministry at all. It was not really about the church plant, it was not about my testimony, it was not about what we could bring to the table or what we could affect as a group of ministry workers.

The trip was about community.  

The pastors within our denomination on our island were few and far between—maybe one church (and thus, one pastor) in each major town. They rarely saw each other outside the occasional denominational meeting. This was their chance to catch up, to encourage one another, and to hang out as a group of guys called to do difficult ministry in a difficult place. They had invited me, a foreigner who barely understood their language, to take part in that fellowship. And the entire time, I had oriented my expectations around what I wanted to do, refusing to share in their storytelling or their fellowship. I had isolated myself, essentially destroying the purpose of the trip.

The reasoning for why I did not understand the purpose of the trip was twofold—for one, I had a wrong perspective on ministry work. I do not want to downplay how my own selfishness played into my attitude on this trip. I also want to point out, however, that I was clinging to my own cultural norm. We western-raised Christians have been steeped in individualism and the shock of moving into a community-oriented society can be jarring. It certainly was for me, and this story perfectly exemplifies where my cultural blinders prohibited me from seeing the purpose behind my fellow Christians’ actions. To really engage in this new country, I was going to have to recognize where my culture of individualism, productivity, or isolation was influencing my definitions of “worthwhile” ministry.

So, getting back to the story—I took my headphones off, and I tried my best to listen. My language was not great, but I could pick up enough. I laughed with them, and I listened as they began to share about the difficult situations they were in as ministers. They told me about church members stealing their crops and Christian congregants giving off their children in marriage to Muslims. These pastors had a whole lot of difficulties. I was not able to solve any of them. And, I don’t really think they wanted me to solve any of them. But by listening, I began to appreciate why they decided to take this trip in the first place. The communion of our brothers and sisters as we minister matters. It matters even more when you are in an area of persecution and difficulty.

I learned a lot of things on this trip. Some were cultural or socio-economic: the insistence on eating the same leftovers despite rottenness, the driving-straight-through-the-night, or the various language mishaps. The deeper lesson, however, transcended culture. We are made to be in community. We desperately need brothers and sisters that can sympathize with our issues, and we are better ministers and missionaries through that community. As an American, often caught in a culture of individualism and isolationism, this can be especially convicting.

I would encourage you—learn from our Southeast Asian brethren. An 80-hour road trip may not be the solution for you, but we still must make room and time for community together, even if it involves inconvenience. Furthermore, if we have any desire to work alongside people of other cultures, we must learn to put aside our own cultural assumptions about work, about time, about community, and about ministry.