"That is why we need to learn another model—mission as pilgrimage, which is based on a vision of the Christian life as a journey. This model grows out of the sense of being pilgrims together, pilgrims who feel the dust under their feet and come to know the places where they sojourn.
The problem with the world is not that we do not see others. We do. We know the needs of the world. But to feel the gifts and needs of the world—that means learning to journey with people in different parts of the world. This kind of journeying is slower than mission done as delivery of aid, slower even than partnership. It takes time just to learn the history, for example, of Gulu in northern Uganda, to learn what is happening there. But when we take time for that, it begins to transform the pilgrim. You have learned the names of people and places, these far-flung places with names very difficult to pronounce. You have inhaled the dust.
Mission as pilgrimage is about that transformation. It's not about fixing northern Uganda. You're not going to fix northern Uganda! It's not even about partnering with "northern Uganda." How can you partner with all of northern Uganda? Where do you begin? Instead, the pilgrim begins to know, to feel, that northern Uganda, with all its tragedy and terror, is a Christian story. That it is not just their story, but that it is our story." Emmanuel Katongole
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