KINGDOM JOURNEYS: Rediscovering a Lost Spiritual Discipline Seth Barnes Adventures in Missions April 2012 1 Acknowledgements My name is on the cover, but no one writes a book without help, and I had a lot of it. First there are the people who helped write the content of the book that I lived: Joe Bunting was my writing partner before he was my son-in-law. He has been a huge help in getting this book in your hands. It’s taken me four years of writing and thinking and still it needed something more - someone to help me take the manuscript the last leg to completion. And just before marrying my daughter Talia, Joe did that. I’m hoping there will be other collaborations to follow. My mom and dad lived the journeying life, having met in Yosemite on separate journeys one summer, and then when I came along, packing up for Italy for three years. Karen, saw me ricochet back from Indonesia for the wedding and has been my traveling companion ever since. She’s lived the adventures that are in these pages. Talia, Seth, Estie, Emily, and Leah started out in the back of bikes, cars, and planes, and have had their own fair share of kingdom journeys. I really began to understand the power of kingdom journey when I saw it transforming their lives. The people who have helped me along the way are too numerous to list. There is our support team – perhaps 40 of them have hung in there since the beginning. These people saw something in us we didn’t see in ourselves. And Connie Means is the one non-family supporter who has backed me since I was 17 years old. There’s a special place in heaven for saints like her. Friends like the Watsons and the Hitchcocks helped us stuff the first Adventures envelopes. Heidi Neulander and Lisa Finney believed in us first and worked in the garage with me. Rob Finney actually built that office and so much else in my life. Sue Mast, Mary Lou Laird, Ron and Darla Campbell; and Dori Beach, were all at the first staff retr eat. Bill Britton, Clint Bokelman, Scott Borg, and Joe Rogers came along not long thereafter and for some reason, haven’t left me yet. Anna-Marie Franken was originally a partner in Swaziland and then became a partner in the vision of a year-long kingdom journey. God gave her a dream that it could happen and it took a year’s mileage in my journey to get my arms around it and see God’s point. Andrew Shearman stirred up my vision for the kingdom and has loved me well. Gary Black and Tom Davis are brothers who I’m doing the journey of life with. Michael Hindes took the World Race for four years and helped prove the concepts contained in this book. Then there are those who helped me specifically on this book project: Dan Brock transcribed a lot of my writings. Emily Drevets spent a summer helping me shape the first manuscript. Ashlie Offenburg helped in the editing process. Jeff Goins has done a better job of taking my mentoring than anyone else. He has helped me shape the manuscript and get it in your hands. Robert Sutherland is a master editor. He cleaned up the final draft. Mark Oestreicher saw the book’s potential and has encouraged me to make sure it finds its audience. Allie Lousch put the last touches on the final draft at a time when we were all sick of the project. Thank you all for speeding me on my journey and shaping this message in ways that I could not. You are all tangible evidence to me that God is personal and caring. 2 Unless otherwise indicated, Bible quotations are taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. 3 Introduction Hundreds of books talk about our faith walk as a journey, but few delve into the subject of how a physical journey can reinvent and revitalize our spiritual journey with God. If you look at Jesus, you see that he called his disciples to follow him on a physical journey, not just a spiritual one. He tramped around with them in Judea for three years, even sending them out on their own short-term mission trips without him. Everywhere that his team traveled, they talked about the kingdom – a kingdom that wasn’t of this world, but was so real. Jesus continually described it for them, comparing it to things they could see like a net, a pearl, and a treasure (in one chapter of the Bible – Matt. 13 - he used no less than seven metaphors to describe the kingdom). As we explore this subject together, I want to take you alongside some of the people who are on these journeys throughout the world discovering the Kingdom of God. As you hear their stories, let me encourage you to ask the question, “God, do you want me to do something like this? Is this where you're leading me?” God wants to take you to mountaintops of faith. To do that, he may lead you up the Himalayan Mountains in Nepal, as he did Ruth Wilson, to show you amazing views of his creation. He may call you to abandon your comfortable home, Starbucks, and Sports Center to travel from Florida to Texas on a bicycle, as he did Andrew Maas. He may want you to catch a plane to Swaziland in Africa, like Mallorie Miller did, to help a nation of AIDS victims and experience something of their pain. Or, he may want you to go to inner city Philly, like Claud Crosby, to walk with God through streets lined with drug dealers and addicts. God teaches through experience, and God may be calling you to experience a kingdom journey, a real life journey through the world that will prepare you for your lifelong journey of faith. 4 Chapter 1: My Journey “A ship in harbor is safe – but that is not what ships are for.” – John A. Shedd 1 The road was long and lonely that led from Vienna, Virginia, to Tegucigalpa, Honduras, but my heart was pounding with anticipation as I began to drive. It was the first stage in a kingdom journey that led me to Indonesia, across the world to the Dominican Republic, and back to Virginia. I ventured out in 1980, right after graduating college. I was all potential and little training. But everything began to change when I set out on my journey. I had gotten my first job – to help start a micro-credit organization in Bali. Training was held in Honduras, so I left Virginia in a yellow Chevy Vega and drove southwest through Texas, crossing the Mexican border at Matamoros. This was the adventure I yearned to live! The world was full of possibilities. The unknown loomed before me – I relished the feeling of meeting life head-on. To combat boredom, I picked up eleven hitchhikers along the way. One told me a story about his time in Borneo where he had hunted whales. One evening he was invited to a feast by a tribe of Kalimantan headhunters. They put a plate of mystery meat in front of him and he dug in… I dropped off my hitchhiking friend in New Orleans and wondered what it would be like to live in a country where head-hunting was still practiced. After a few days, I arrived – exhausted – in Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico. I had been driving without detour or respite, sleeping mostly in my car. I decided to take some time and enjoy the area. I ate dinner in a local restaurant and met an American. He told me about the Mayan ruins and invited me to explore with him. The next day we hiked jungle trails and saw the ruins of Palenque. The heat was intense and we cooled off by sitting beneath the beautifully blue, cascading waterfalls. I couldn’t believe how lush and verdant everything was. It was a scene from National Geographic. As I reflect back on it now, I can see that while it was adventure that got me on the road, there was a price to pay as I went further down it. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. The world and its pain had barely touched my spirit. My days were organized to meet my personal needs. In time, my priorities would be readjusted, but only as I encountered the painful parts of my kingdom journey. It took me seven days to get to Honduras; I almost didn’t make it. The Vega ’s engine was barely running on two cylinders by the time I sputtered into Tegucigalpa well after midnight. The first leg of the trip was over. Two years later, God led me to begin a ministry. Over the next three years, I traveled to Indonesia, flew to Chicago, got married, returned to Indonesia for a year, spent two years in the Caribbean, and then enrolled in business school in Virginia. Since then, I’ve experienced the vicarious thrill of launching young people into the adventures God prepared for them. Often, they look like variations of my own journeys. Twenty-seven years later I was back in Chiapas. I was there with a group of fifty twenty- somethings, my own daughter among them. I could see the thrill of adventure in their eyes – a distant echo of what I felt on my own journey.