Why every pastor should visit the Holy Land at least once

I'd been involved in ministry for years before I first visited Israel. I thought I knew the Bible. I didn't — not really. I knew the words, but I didn't know the world those words described.

Standing on the Mount of Olives and seeing the Kidron Valley below — the valley Jesus crossed on the night of his arrest — I understood for the first time the physical courage of what he did. He could see Gethsemane from there. He walked down into it willingly.

The Holy Land gave my preaching a third dimension. I can describe the sound of wind in the Galilean reeds. The smell of incense in the Holy Sepulchre. The weight of Jerusalem stone under your hands at the Western Wall. My congregation doesn't just hear my sermons now — they see them.

If you're a pastor reading this and you haven't been, go. Scrape together the money. Find a group. Make it happen. It will change your ministry more than any conference, any book, any degree. The land is the fifth gospel, and it's waiting for you to read it.