When Obedience Looks Like Staying
After years of preparing for overseas missions, Katie Parler sensed God leading her to pause her plans and embrace a different kind of calling: to stay. This is the story of how He is using that season to advance the gospel through sending others and faithful obedience in a local church context.
Read MoreWhen Obedience Looks Like Staying
Katie Parler | Aug 7, 2026, 17:54 PM
After years of preparing for overseas missions, Katie Parler sensed God leading her to pause her plans and embrace a different kind of calling: to stay. This is the story of how He is using that season to advance the gospel through sending others and faithful obedience in a local church context.
Stateside mobilization for global missions was never part of my plan. If I’m honest, it was the last thing I wanted God to ask of me. I wanted to be the one who was sent.
Could He really be asking me to stay so that others might go in my place?
That question followed me after mission training in November 2025, where I wrestled with the Lord after I heard, “The best mobilizers are the people who want to go overseas.” I was sure of one thing: God wouldn’t ask me to stay, not when I had spent years preparing to go.
Right?
Wrong.
We often talk about moving overseas as one of the greatest sacrifices a Christian can make, leaving behind comfort and familiarity so that the gospel can reach people who have little or no access to the name of Jesus. It’s a worthy call that I believe in.
I’ve always resonated with C.T. Studd’s words: “Some wish to live within the sound of a church or chapel bell; I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell.”
But God has been teaching me something I didn’t expect: obedience to the Great Commission carries the same weight, no matter where it’s lived out. Staying can require just as much surrender as going.
As I approach the end of my time at The Summit Church, where I’ve spent the past four years serving through The Summit Institute, I can see how God has been reshaping my plans. For nearly three years, I was in the Journeymen application process—a two-year international missionary opportunity for young adults—as I prepared to go overseas. It felt certain until August 2025.
With the guidance of the Holy Spirit and wise counsel from my community, I made the difficult decision to press pause. I still remember hitting “send” on the email to an IMB staff member, telling them I was stepping away indefinitely. In that moment, I stepped into a level of surrender I didn’t know I was capable of.
What followed wasn’t clarity, but hardship. This past year has been marked by grief, as my life looks nothing like what I had imagined. Outwardly, I told people my plans were on hold indefinitely. Inwardly, I clung to a quiet timeline of my own: I’ll be ready by January 2026.
Not only was I not ready, but God began leading me somewhere unexpected. A place surrounded by churches. Not overseas, but to Charlotte. Not across the world, but two hours away.
If I’m honest, it felt like the opposite of everything I had hoped for. But it became clear that following Jesus wouldn’t look the way I had planned. At least not right now.
Right now, picking up my cross looks different.
It means moving to a new city instead of a new country. Stepping away from vocational ministry for a season, trusting God to restore what has been worn down. Helping send others and coaching missionaries through Reliant.
It means committing to a church plant, Oasis Church, before it even launches. Showing up to counseling week after week, trusting God to heal what I cannot. And making disciples, not because it’s my job, but because Jesus commands it.
In all of this, my Father is teaching me how to live as His beloved daughter.
This past year has held both deep struggles and unexpected joys. Through it all, He has drawn me closer to Himself and to others, reminding me that I was never meant to do this alone. He is teaching me the beauty of dependence.
I used to think the greatest thing I could give my life to was going. Now I’m learning that faithfulness is not measured by geography, but by obedience.
For now, obedience means staying, so the gospel of Jesus Christ might advance through the lives of those I've been privileged to help send.
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