What do you do when God shuts down everything you had planned?

You plant a garden.

This is what God told his people as they were led into exile in Jeremiah 29:5. They had watched Jerusalem fade off into the rear-view mirror and their ear-tickling prophets were encouraging them not to unpack their bags. The true word from God was: this is going to take some time but you are right where I have you.

COVID-19 has been a curveball for churches and missionaries alike. For our church, all of our trips were canceled. I am sure your church is in a similar place. The question facing all of us is the same: How do we do missions when we can’t go anywhere?

Who Goes?

I have been training and mobilizing “regular people” to go on mission with God for more than a decade now. For many of these people, this starts with learning how to reach out to their neighbor, coworker, or friend. For thirty-eight of these people, this has led to them moving overseas to work with unreached people groups.

With my story in mind, think of mobilization as a 10-point scale with 1 meaning that someone has no awareness or interest in mission, and a 10 is someone who is actively engaged in mission (at home or abroad). I typically work with people who are somewhere in the +6 range. If we see missions as the fruit of discipleship, this +6 focus of mine needed to expand. 

Rethinking the Garden

In a year where everything is canceled, my “COVID-garden” has been to focus on discipling people who are in the -5 end of this scale. We have tried to do this by hosting several virtual mission trips. These trips try to immerse people in a particular region and ministry for 90 minutes. We have people participate from all generations and backgrounds from babies to great grandparents.

Our first trip was to the Amazon Jungle of Peru with the Cocama Project. Without any expectation for what would take place, we were overjoyed to see whole families log into the video call. We had more than 100 participants, and many of them were from outside of our church.

Some of them had made a day of it. They had prepared by cooking a meal from Peru and eating it as a family. They had printed off the handout with the notes, Bible study, and kid’s activities. We knew they would enjoy hearing the personal testimonies from people who had been on a trip to this village and enjoy the presentation from the missionary.

We were a little worried about how people would react to 15 minutes of prayer in break-out rooms with folks from churches they had never met before. But the feedback was: more prayer time, please!

Refugee Highway

We have now conducted our second virtual trip, Refugee Highway, to highlight the journey that refugees take in fleeing danger and to learn how the church can help. We were able to “bring in” workers on both ends of the refugee highway. This started with an IMB missionary in Uganda who is working among refugees in a large camp there. 

On this side of the highway, we were joined by Houston Welcomes Refugees and a few Wilcrest members who had volunteered with them or had refugee friends. This trip was a moving experience for the participants. Many people reported back that this was the first time they had seen the plight of refugees.

My question for you is: what is in your COVID garden? How are you going to use this time we've been given?

Brian Hebért is the Associate Pastor at Wilcrest Baptist Church.

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