During my time as a staff member of a ship-based charity, I was directly involved in helping to deliver humanitarian services to remote island locations for years. I’ve seen the impact of delivering life-saving health services, drinking water, and disaster recovery supplies to communities who truly needed help.

During the first trip or two, every person is important, every name memorable, every moment of value. But after you’ve been on a few trips it can be easy to become a little calloused: the people you’re helping become a sea of faces, the community another set of coordinates, the supplies simply cargo to be unloaded in the most ideal location. This life changing, community supporting, development focused, amazing work becomes just another job to do. While this is understandable, the honeymoon period ends for everyone; this is something that must not get the better of us.

I was at a conference in 2018 during which a man told the story of his time locked in prison in a closed nation. What was he guilty of? Nothing as dramatic as what we do on ships…he was leading a tour group who happened to be praying as they went. The government in question was concerned that his group’s prayers had the power to overthrow their leadership, and therefore they locked him up.
For two years.
For praying.
At the end of his story, he invited us to pray for the same nation, asking that God would liberate the people of said nation. As we prayed, I had a “conversation with God“. This wasn’t any kind of audible voice deal, more a series of unexpected thoughts whose content challenged my unrecognised internal theology. I’ll describe it for you:

As I prayed, I felt challenged to pray that Christian missionaries would begin to leave this closed nation, carrying the hope of Jesus’ life, death, burial and resurrection to the world at large. I thought to myself “but they don’t even know the gospel yet, they need to receive! They are the ones who need help!” As I thought it, I realised the problem. When Jesus had just returned to earth as a resurrected man, with all of the power and glory, His disciples finally worked out who He was (okay we could argue that Peter figured it out earlier). Having just figured it out, they then received this remarkable instruction: “…go into all of the world and make disciples…” The instruction to go and evangelise, teach, and disciple the world was not specific to a particular race, colour or creed, but directed at those who were following Jesus! I realised that my own tendency is to see a whole range of individuals as not quite called yet, and that idea is not based on a biblical perspective. Whether recipients of humanitarian assistance, living in less affluent contexts, or with a different set of tools for delivering the message, I was realising that ALL who declare Jesus as Saviour are called to “go”.

That few minutes at a conference challenged my mindset of intentional focus: no longer can I accept the idea of only delivering aid in the name of Jesus. Now I find myself wondering what it could look like to empower those I meet, so that they can go. If they have joined the body of Christ, how can I encourage them into the field, empower them with the tools they need, ensure that they have the support they need? To add a little more perspective, it goes further than that. Jesus’ directive at the end of His life was a reflection of what He had previously taught during His ministry, when He sent disciples two-by-two and directed them to preach His coming. They healed people, preached good news of great joy, and saw the spiritual realm submit to the name of Jesus. I can’t help thinking that when they left, they may not have been convinced of His real identity themselves yet, but along the way they found themselves a part of a much larger, far more powerful story than they had realised.

For those of us in ministry which focuses on practical needs, it is so common to get to a point of being a little jaded, perhaps a little tired, a little distanced from the “first love” we experienced once upon a time when we met Jesus in our time of need. When we reach that point, the natural tendency is to get callous, to forget why we are really doing what we do: it’s not about the water or the antibiotics, it’s not about providing a home or a meal. Though those are important, they should not ever become the end. The end is always to express the heart of a loving, compassionate God who wants ALL to know that there is a better way, that His salvation is not far off, that hope IS available. The end is to take those who choose to believe, and send them, possibly before they’re as ready as we would like…let’s be honest, how many of us were really actually ready when we first went?

If His name is to be made known in the furthest of the unreached corners of the globe, if He is to be declared to every hearing ear, shown to every seeing eye, and meet every needy heart with love, we must remember that every believer has the same call. Those of us who are well-equipped have the opportunity to empower those less-equipped. As we minister in our nations, we must see discipleship in the nation we dream for, as far more than simply teaching believers to adhere to moral codes and do religion the way we think looks right. We MUST empower every nation’s believers to search scripture for God-truth, we must empower them to understand who redeems them, and we must champion and release them when they discover the calling in His word to GO into the world declaring His truth. Young, old, indigenous, of foreign progeny, rich or poor, intelligent or not, ALL believers are called to declare the gospel of Jesus and grow increasingly as disciples not just in their home (comfortable) context, but across the street, the suburb, the town, the island, the continent or the oceans. The call is there, whether that looks like preaching from a soap box, washing wounds, feeding hungry, caring for orphans, or ministering with prophetic worship; for every disciple there is a community who needs to hear the message in a relatable way. For every community someone has been called; from every community of Jesus followers,

ALL are called.

We MUST empower the everys and the alls into the privilege of sharing the Love of God shown in Jesus’ death and resurrection. We must release them before we think they’re ready. Only when the church, town, nation in question begins to send missionaries, will that body of believers really begin achieving discipleship which lasts beyond a generation.

The progression of getting my head around this has been a long one, an uncomfortable one, and one which has accompanied changes in how I serve in missions. This is not a question of whether ship based outreach is right or wrong, because if a community is hard to reach and coastal, ships make perfect sense.
This is a question of what motivates me. Am I driven by a need to be seen delivering medical or humanitarian services, am I driven by a desire to have big numbers in some report? Or is my drive a desire to get to actual humans with a relatable message of a loving, merciful, grace filled God who cares enough that I get to them, despite the difficulty reaching them?
I’d like to say the answer is the latter rather than the former…but if I’m honest I don’t think my motives are totally pure just yet, it’s probably somewhere in between, moving further to the latter as time goes by.

My time with ship ministry hit pause at the end of 2018, and though I’ve transitioned into a ministry with a training focused programme, I haven’t reached the end of the question…it’s worth unpacking well I think.

What do you think? Have I missed something important? Let me know in the comments!