The Gospel & Encountering Christ in the Mission Field with Jeff Runyan

How do you see the world? What is your understanding of what it means to live out the fullness of the Christian faith? Is it living a life solely devoted to prayer and fasting? Is it ignoring God’s moral laws but going out of your way to care of the poor and the sick? Saint James tells us clearly it is both, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. (James 1:27)”If you devote yourself to God but ignore finding Him by serving others, you are missing a big chunk of Christianity. If you care for your fellow man but do nothing to worship God and follow His ways, you still are missing the mark. On today’s podcast, Jeff Runyan, founder of Encounter Travel, sits down with me to talk about how to live out the fullness of Christianity by encountering Christ personally, in our hearts, and also encountering Him by serving those who need it most in the global mission field. Jeff served in FOCUS for seventeen years. For ten of those year, he ran FOCUS’s massive global missions department. There is most likely, no one else in the Catholic world who has experienced more missions trips and led more people on mission than Jeff. Today, he runs Encounter Travel, setting up custom mission trips for churches, youth groups, and any other group that would like to put a pilgrimage or mission trip together. In this conversation, Jeff shares what made him fall in love with the mission field, how he has personally encountered Christ over and over again through the years, the difference between a Catholic society and a Protestant one (spoiler, the both have their pluses and minuses), some of the miracles has has witnessed, and why YOU should recalibrate your worldview by going on a pilgrimage, or mission trip. And if you can’t go far away, you can always step out in service in your local community, the needs are great there, and Christ can always be encountered in the other. Follow Encounter Travel onInstagramTheir website’or email them at [email protected] last but certainly not least. If you would like to financially support the show, that is now and option to you, and I would be so grateful if you did! For $8 dollars a month, you can help free up some of my time to write bible studies, podcast episode reflections, and start audience conversations. Interested? Become a paid subscriber here on my Substack page.If you want to dive into my other work you can purchase my book Rekindled, or one of my Bible Studies.Also, if you need a refresher on the Gospel message, check out the first episode of this podcast.Did this episode speak to you? Please share it with a friend so we can grow the show!Also, if you would like me to speak at one of your events, email me at [email protected] my next mission trip (jk, but I’m taking my kids when they get older),Mallory Smyth