People start thinking about coming on a Transform trip for all sorts of reasons: to experience something new; to make a difference; to change the world. These are all good reasons – but we think about your trip a little differently. For us, Transform is about pilgrimage.
Pilgrimage has been a spiritual discipline throughout Church history. Christians have always travelled to meet God – be it to hear a great preacher, to embrace solitude or to visit a place where God is working. Pilgrimage is essentially simple. You leave what is comfortable and familiar, journey to a new place and possibly new people, you meet with God - you change. Transform is a new commitment to pilgrimage – it is a journey from the comfortable and familiar to meet God among those living with material and spiritual poverty.
Poverty is not statistics it is people. It is not a huge crowd in a refugee camp on the news it is thousands of individual stories. Recognising that someone in need is an individual, a person made in God’s image, a human being like me is the first step to fulfilling the command to love our neighbour as ourselves. This is the radical message of the good Samaritan: there are no strangers, no statistics, no news stories there are only people made in Gods image who are in need. This might mean the absolute poor around the world. Or it might mean the poor more closely to us. Someone who is bullied, or left out, or struggling with substance abuse or is desperately lonely or is in debt. The point is whoever they are and wherever they are they need a neighbour. And the neighbour is me.
It is amazing how often we do not see these people. We screen them out of our daily lives, flick over the TV news and end up not noticing them as people and not caring about them as we carry on our comfortable lives. Yet in a profound way God is with the broken, the outcast and the poor and we find an intimacy with God as we connect with them. It is in serving that we receive. It is in giving our lives away to others that we gain life. ‘Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven’ and we receive more of the kingdom when we are with them.
Transform is about making this kind of pilgrimage... We go not change the world but to encounter God and be changed. By leaving our comfort, exposing ourselves to the poor and the amazing brothers and sisters who work in incredibly challenging situations our own sense of discipleship and mission is transformed. We meet with God. Our duty is to work out this encounter in the rest of our lives. To come home and live differently in the light of what we experienced. You will not change the world by being on a Transform trip. But the world you encounter and the God who meets you there will change you for the rest of your life. And through you, He will change the world.
- David Westlake, Integral Mission Director