Life of a Student Missionary

Life of a student missionary

By Ryan Billington

Written in November, 2009

            “I am a student missionary.”  A phrase with a thousand different meanings to a thousand different people.  Missionary… personally, I think the word sounds a bit detached from the modern world, as if it jumped into the 21^st century out of the pages of a dusty old book from the 1800s and walks around today, towing with it connotations of responsibility, and a feeling that the words “revival”, “tent meeting”, and “evangelistic series” should soon follow.  But that’s just me.

For most students, the word is very much a mystery, an enigmatic plane ticket to unknown opportunities far away from College Place and onion fields, and far away from home.  And for the hundreds and hundreds of students that have grasped that ticket to the far, far away, it is memories of those long months that have forever shaped who they are.

            Many imagine the exotic—doing great works, the awe of a new place, people, or culture; it’s easy for the mind to cling to expectations of something new, awesome, and transcendent on the other side of the world.  And yes—it does seem incredibly new…  Yet despite the 6-inch praying mantis on my porch, dodging the 3-foot bunch of bananas hanging from my ceiling, and the jungle threatening to burst upon the school campus, it seems the person experiencing these things is still me.  Myself.  Here.  In Pohnpei.  I went half way around the world for something transcendent, yet here I am—with the same favorite foods, bad habits, joys, relationship difficulties, and self-addiction.  Apparently, who you are follows you around the world.  It’s difficult to escape from yourself.

Though my surroundings keep hinting that I am in a completely different world, the sledgehammer blow must be awarded to the change in what I’m supposed to do.  I haven’t turned in any assignments in the last four months, or dodged a car while crossing College Avenue, or worried about making enough money to pay for next quarter, or wondered if I have enough time to make it through the cafeteria line and finish the assignment for my one o’clock.  Apparently, teaching as an SM comes with different responsibilities, expectations, and very different struggles. 

A quick opinion based off four short months of experience—I think teaching is job loaded with the potential for struggle.  I struggle to cover material, to teach that material well, to decipher a way to make that material interesting for thirty-some different viewpoints, to find healthy expectations for students’ performance and ability to do work, and to control a classroom of 30 high school students only slightly younger than me so that learning might triumph over chaos.  I struggle to inspire a desire to learn, to connect personally with these kids of mine, to inspire hopes and dreams, to show them a God who breathes and wears contacts… it’s a very intimidating experience to be handed the attention of a hundred different teenagers for nine months.  The sobriety of being entrusted with such responsibility beyond the betterment of yourself hits you fast.  It’s as if I suddenly, and unwillingly, have been pushed into the selfless lifestyle Jesus calls us to.  My job, my responsibilities, my struggles are all supposed to be about bettering a hundred high school students for nine months.

I think selfless struggle is the pixie dust of the SM experience.  It’s the potion that, should I chose to drink it, could cause this year to have such a huge effect on who I am or may become.  A wise person once said that our greatest struggles often become the cornerstones of meaning in our later lives.  But I think that is only true if we’re struggling to better someone other than ourselves, that it’s only true if my energy is being deposited into something from which I cannot expect any sort of return.  I put hours of effort into lessons, lectures, graded papers, and class materials, hoping that my students might choose to benefit from what I hope to give them.  But I have no power to force them to choose to benefit from my work, or to see my effort to help them, or to see my hopes for their friendship.  The choice is theirs.  Its like one of those blue mail drop boxes… once I drop a letter in, I have yet to find how I can force the drop box to give it—or anything—back. 

A guy named Rob Bell says that “Love is a giving up of power.”  Perhaps that explains why the SM experience has wrapped—somewhere inside of it—insight into the mystery of why love and service are so connected, of how Jesus lived a life of such selfless service.  It’s really hard to continue pouring your life and self into something you don’t love. 

Perhaps the mystery of selfless service, of humbly handing out pieces of yourself because of a desire to better others, contains insight into what a God with contacts might look like. 

Of the vulnerability, investment, and risk of such a God…

Of the vulnerability of relationship…

Of the hurting power we hand to those we love…

Of the ability of the human heart to ache…

Of the brokenness of humanity… 

Of why selfishness is so safe… 

And of why selfless struggle carries such an unnervingly large power to change us.