Travel changes us. Experiencing new places, different cultures, help us see Home with a new perspective while growing understanding for others. For Dean DeHoog, a pastor at the Corner Bible Church in Allegan, Michigan, an invitation from his mother to accompany her on a biblical history tour of Greece changed him, changed his understanding of the apostle Paul in the book of Acts, changed his approach to his work at the church, while deepening his relationship to his parent.
“My mom had a trip scheduled to go to Greece,” DeHoog says. “I didn’t know a whole lot about it. At the last minute, her sister canceled. I had lunch with my parents, and they started dropping some subtle hints. At the end of lunch, it basically came down to—would you like to take this trip with your mom?”
DeHoog did some research, and what he found fascinated him. The tour his mother had booked was to follow in the footsteps of Apostle Paul.
“It was an unusual trip,” he says. “It was not what I would classify a typical vacation. Most vacations are on the relaxing side, and this trip was pretty intense. It was what I would call a 10-day Bible study. The trip was scheduled around mainland Greece and the Greek Islands with a Bible study focus where the trip reenacted Paul’s second and third missionary journeys which are cataloged in the Book of Acts.”
DeHoog says he gained a deeper knowledge of the overarching political culture of the time. Studying Greek culture during his school years was one thing, he says, but being on the ground and seeing it in person was far more fascinating.
“Greece during the time of Paul, when Paul was establishing these churches, was paralleled very closely to what we experience today as the United States,” DeHoog says.
The trip in general deepened his knowledge of Paul’s life and mission but also deepened his relationship to his mother, DeHoog says. He will take some of that knowledge to his work as one of the pastors at the Corner Bible Church, 4001 124th Avenue, in Allegan.
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