Mike Jessop is the first par­ti­cipant in our young adult appren­tice­ship program, Moments. He’s been serving in Uganda with our Mission Part­ners Nick and Tessa Laing over the past four weeks.

On my first day in Uganda, my first thought was “I am not needed.” I visited the office and encountered a hard­work­ing team of local Ugandans. They were clin­ic­ally trained, admin­is­trat­ively com­pet­ent and excel­ling in man­aging the OneDay Health clinics. To top it off, they were embed­ded in the culture and lan­guage of which I was a for­eigner. The moment was both daunt­ing and hum­bling. I asked myself, “Do Ugandans really need another Muzungu (White person)?”

I grew up in a loving Christian home where service was greatly encouraged. So I served wherever I could. I served at church, youth group and kids’ holiday camps. I served overseas in Papua New Guinea. I loved being able to serve and help those around me. It drew me close to my servant saviour. However, it also led to an unhealthy desire to be needed. When I couldn’t live up to this desire, I became mentally and emotionally distressed.

As I reflec­ted on this crip­pling dynamic, I turned to Jesus. The person who was (and is) truly most needed by the world. Did he feel needed, though? Two pas­sages jumped to mind. Isaiah 53:2–3, a suf­fer­ing servant proph­ecy about Jesus, which says that he was not attract­ive or desir­able and that he was des­pised and rejec­ted. We see this ful­filled in Mark 6:1–6 when Jesus is preach­ing in his homet­own of Naz­areth and the people take offence at him and reject him. Jesus def­in­itely didn’t feel needed!

The next ques­tion that sprang to mind was, ‘Do I need Jesus?’ I “know” the correct answer, but do I live it out? The flip­side of my unhealthy desire to be needed is that I don’t want to need others. Maybe it stems from not wanting to be a burden. Maybe it stems from my DIY New Zealand culture. Whatever the case, I am aller­gic to relying on others. I didn’t put a lot of effort into fun­drais­ing for my Moment’s appren­tice­ship. I didn’t want other people’s money. As a result, my trip was mostly self-funded.

A depend­ence allergy can have dire con­sequences in mission. It makes you sus­cept­ible to white saviour­ism. It can lead to burnout. It inflates your ego. This is the oppos­ite of Jesus’ mis­sional posture and how I want to serve. In the incarn­a­tion, Jesus humbled himself and became depend­ent on human parents like a baby (Luke 2:4–7). He was depend­ent on others to provide for his needs in his min­istry (Luke 8:1–3), and he was depend­ent on his Father and the Spirit to com­plete his work (John 5:19).

Healthy cross-cultural mission involves inter-dependency. We live in God’s Kingdom when we serve others and are served by others. When we teach others and learn from them. When we love others and are loved by others. One-way relationships in mission are toxic for both the receiver and the giver.

Not only is inter-depend­ency import­ant in mission, but it is also crucial for our faith and sal­va­tion. We do not earn our faith. We are depend­ent on the gift of faith given through grace by Jesus Christ. Inde­pend­ence and pride are enemies of our faith. Just ask the tax col­lector and the Phar­isee (Luke 18:9–14). Through my dis­tress, I have come to realise that this depend­ence on God often takes the form of weakness.

Paul writes,

“But he said to me, ‘My grace is suf­fi­cient for you, for my power is made perfect in weak­ness.’ There­fore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weak­nesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weak­nesses, in insults, in hard­ships, in per­se­cu­tions, in dif­fi­culties. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor 12:9–10).

Our dependence on Jesus allows us to be united to him.

We are depend­ent on Jesus when we are in a loving rela­tion­ship with him. This allows us to faith­fully live out His Gospel in the world. I want to live my life with Christ, so that at the end of my life I can hear the blessed words, “Well done, good and faith­ful servant!” (Matt 25:21). Ulti­mately, faith­ful­ness is what matters.  When we are faith­ful to Christ, we are a bless­ing to others even if our work is small, not appre­ci­ated at the time, or doesn’t achieve the out­comes we hope for. Lord, help us be faithful!

As I reflec­ted on this initial moment in Gulu, I real­ised it doesn’t matter whether I am needed or not. What matters is being faith­ful to God wherever I am. So I took a step back and sought to be faith­ful through taking a posture of open­ness and humil­ity. I sought to connect with those around me to learn, encour­age and support. In this way, I can serve and be a bless­ing without being needed.

I can be a blessing through connecting with others and encouraging them in friendship. I wasn’t coming to save anyone. I wasn’t coming with a set plan to complete a project or do something specific. I came with an open mind and heart, open to God’s leading and to connecting with others.

I am thank­ful to Nick, the Mission Partner I am serving with here, that the first week I was in Gulu, I didn’t have a job or role. I had the time and space to connect with locals, to observe the culture around me and to learn Acholi (the local language).

Through my friend­ships with the local team and God’s leading, I have been invited to par­ti­cip­ate in dis­ciple­ship and run dis­cov­ery Bible studies for dif­fer­ent groups and I am organ­ising and running a lead­er­ship program for the OneDay Health managers.

This is an ongoing journey. I am still wrest­ling with the urge to feel needed; I still struggle to depend on others. Though my faith­ful­ness may waver, I look to the one who is faithful.

Moments is all about giving the par­ti­cipants an exper­i­ence of global mission so they can explore what God is calling them into long-term. Our Moments Appren­tices serve under one of our Mission Part­ners or a friend organ­isa­tion of NZCMS for 3 — 6 months’ place­ments. Learn more here. Follow Mike on his Moments journey on his face­book or Ins­tagram account. If you’d like to fin­an­cially support Mike as he serves in Uganda, please contact us here.