I was listening to some of the recorded plenary sessions from the recent AALC (www.sdaalc.org), specifically a message from Ken Fong.  He was saying that one of the hardest transitions is for people who return to their home church from a period of intense missions, whether it be overseas, inner-city, long or short term.  From my own experience the process is like this: you raise financial funds, you get on a plane, and go travel to somewhere that doesn’t feel like home, you may not know the language, you may feel intimidated, you are probably not comfortable, sometimes there are new customs, new ways of interacting, but what holds you all together is that you are single minded.  You have a daily, tangible focus that is so closely tied with your spirituality, its like an artist’s expression in his preferred medium.  And then before you know it, you are getting on a bus, empowered with stories to bring home, headed for the airport, but it is bittersweet because this place that still is outwardly foreign feels like a second home, with new friends forged with purpose.  Then you return to the home church that probably helped fund you and you are shocked to find the opposite of singlemindedness.  Instead there is a whirlwind of people involved in dramas, whether it be church politics, relational drama, materialism, or general american-ness.  Home now feels foreign.  You feel sick, but the pangs ebb away as you are numbed by distance.  During the plenary, Ken Fong was talking about making the atmosphere at the church more like that of the mission field.  I do want that.  Not sure how.  I think to a certain extent this describes the same issue of college ministry involved students transitioning into the local church of families.