Equipped for the Kingdom: Pursuing Great Commission Living

“I remember leaving,” Grace said, “and thinking, ‘That was amazing! I think I’m called to missions because I shared my faith!’”

Grace never lost her passion for missions. It would stay with her over the coming years, and through more short-term trips, God would continue to grow in her a love for other cultures and a desire to reach the lost.

Her desire was good, but the reason for it, Grace explained, was somewhat misguided.

“I think I put missionaries on a pedestal and thought that in order to obey, I had to go — that it was the noble thing to do, making the sacrifice to leave my home and such,” she said.

In time, God would reveal to her that living in obedience to the Great Commission does not always necessitate surrendering your life to international missions. However, it does mean surrendering your life to Christ.

Set in A Broad Place

In fall 2021, Grace arrived on the campus of Southeastern Seminary. She came at the tail end of the Covid-19 pandemic and had traveled all the way from California.

Looking back on those years before her time at Southeastern, Grace observed God’s hand at work, prompting her to wrestle with and address issues that she otherwise would have run away from if the pandemic hadn’t delayed her.

In Grace’s waiting, God began preparing her for her time at Southeastern and for a season of personal and spiritual growth and restoration.

“Being at Southeastern was really refreshing,” Grace recalled. “The Lord put my feet in a broad place and allowed me the opportunity to reflect on the lengths that he went to by sending his Son to die on a cross in order to reconcile me to himself.”

“The longer I was here, the healthier I became spiritually and mentally and emotionally,” she said. “I was better positioned to desire to be effective in ministry, whether that’s here or overseas.”

I was better positioned to desire to be effective in ministry, whether that’s here or overseas.

Grace originally started at Southeastern pursuing a degree in Christian marital, family, and individual counseling, considering it a potential pathway to the mission field. But by the end of her first semester, she began to question her original interest in counseling.

At the time, her roommate was pursuing a degree in intercultural studies, and Grace realized, “I found myself more interested in listening to what she was learning in her courses.”

So, she decided to switch degrees and head down the intercultural studies route.

Stepping into Refugee Ministry

That same semester, God led Grace to begin involvement with a local ministry called Refugee Hope Partners (RHP), a Christian ministry committed to helping and supporting refugees arriving in the Triangle. One of her friends at Southeastern, Lizzy, was already working with RHP.

“I had said I wanted to get involved in a ministry of some sort,” Grace explained. “I had no prior ESL experience or anything like that. But Lizzy had invited me to at least check out RHP because they needed ESL instructors.”

Upon beginning volunteering with RHP, Grace soon realized that she had a love for working with refugees, especially Muslim people groups. RHP also offered a practical and tangible way for her to apply the things she was learning in her classes, as well as opportunities to continue sharing the gospel with non-believers — both of which her professors encouraged her to do.

“I remember so many of my professors told me, ‘I would rather you get a ‘C’ in my class and be tending to your families or your church community or the lost, than get an ‘A’ but just be completely checked out from the world in which God has placed you,’” she said.

Guides for the Journey

Many of Grace’s professors played pivotal roles in both her academic and spiritual journey as they helped prepare her for the work of ministry.

She recalled taking a course in personal discipleship and disciple-making with George Robinson, professor of global disciple making.

“As a professor, he was really influential during my time at Southeastern, but his class was also practical,” Grace said, remembering the many ways the course equipped her with helpful tools for sharing the gospel.

While Robinson wanted to prepare his students for gospel ministry, he — like many Southeastern professors — also sought to invest in his students’ lives and walks with the Lord.

“He really took care to encourage me with what the Lord taught him overseas, in coming back, and in the years that followed,” Grace recalled.

“He continued to encourage me in pursuit of obedience to the Great Commission over the course of the remainder of my time at Southeastern.”

Scott Hildreth, associate professor of missiology, Al James, professor of missions (retired), and Keelan Cook, instructor of missiology, also played formative roles in Grace’s academic journey.

She remembered in particular a contextualization class with Hildreth that taught her how to think through difficult cultural and contextual situations while also remaining aware of her own personal framework.

“He encouraged us to consider, ‘What does the Bible actually say? And then how do I encourage and disciple this new believer to be faithful to what the Bible actually says within their cultural framework?” she explained.

“I had never thought about those things before because I had never met someone who had to counsel another person in a situation like that,” Grace said.

She recalled how helpful it was to take the class with several students who had served on the mission field and were able to offer real-life examples of similar situations — highlighting the practicality and necessity of what they were learning.

“How Do I Obey the Great Commission?”

While God was maturing Grace spiritually and equipping her academically, he also began to gently shape the way she understood the Great Commission and her call to the mission field.

“Dr. Robinson was one of the professors who helped change my perspective of what it meant to obey the Great Commission,” Grace recalled. Hildreth and James also influenced her understanding of God’s call to missions.

“They helped challenge, directly or indirectly, this idea that in order to obey the Great Commission, I had to go and do vocational missions.”

“Through my time at Southeastern, the Lord grew my love for his gospel and for people,” Grace said. “It became less about making the biggest sacrifice and going to the hardest place in the bush of Papua New Guinea, and more about treasuring his word and praying for those who don’t know him and who might come to know him through my faithfulness to live out the gospel in word and deed where I’m at.”

Through my time at Southeastern, the Lord grew my love for his gospel and for people.

For a long time, she had asked the question, “How do I obey the Great Commission? In what context?” She realized the answer was both simple and profound: “In whatever context I find myself in is how I obey the Great Commission.”

So That Others May Know

Grace graduated from Southeastern in spring 2024 with her Master of Arts in intercultural studies. She still has a passion for missions and is open to God’s call to go overseas.

However, for the past year, she has been serving with a non-profit called World Relief, helping refugees — like those she worked with through RHP — in their resettlement process.

She specifically helps refugees in vulnerable or medically fragile situations. She has found that her courses, like Hildreth’s contextualization class, are intensely applicable to her daily work as she regularly interacts with people from different cultures, ethnicities, and religions.

In a providential and slightly ironic turn of events, Grace is also considering returning to school to resume her original degree in counseling.

“I’m actually seeing that there is an opportunity to incorporate counseling within refugee resettlement or diaspora ministry,” she explained. She’s excited at the idea of becoming even more equipped for her work with refugees.

Throughout the many twists and turns of Grace’s journey, God’s hand has been faithful and present in her life. Looking back on her time at Southeastern, Grace is able to see just how much he grew and challenged her.

“Overall, the Lord made his word very accessible for me, very tangible, and very real,” she explained. “He grew my love for him, the church, and the lost in ways I wouldn’t have expected — because I thought seminary was just about getting equipped to know and share my Bible better.”

“In order to do that, the Lord showed me who he is and how to know him better and treasure him more, growing in me a desire for other people to experience wholeness by his word, just like I had,” Grace said.

“The wholeness and healing — and all the things I experienced when I moved here — led me to realize, ‘Oh, look what God can do! Don’t I want other people to experience that, whether I stay or go?’”

 

Please join us in praying for Grace and the work that she is doing at World Relief, that God would give her opportunities to be a witness of the goodness of his gospel. Pray for wisdom and clarity as she discerns next steps in her life and considers further education. And pray that, in all that she does, whether she stays or goes, God would be glorified.