JOPLIN – Jon Smith’s favorite place to be is outside. From hunting and camping to kayaking and white-water rafting, he’s addicted to the outdoors.
As a Missouri campus missionary planted far from snowy peaks, rushing rivers, and salty waves, being an outdoorsman is part of who he is, yet for many years, it felt incompatible with where he was. In the past few years, God has given him a platform to minister out of who he is—and being an outdoorsman is a part of himself he can’t escape, no matter where he lives.
Smith’s earliest memories take place in the Oregon wilderness, fishing and hiking with his dad. In many ways, he grew up outside. He progressed through the Cub and Boy Scouts program. He took wildness survival and rock-climbing courses in college. But when he started his role as BSU Director at Missouri Southern in 2005, he quickly found that the Midwest “is a different landscape.”
In the last 18 years, Smith has nursed his thirst for the outdoors as best as he could. It wasn’t until a few years ago that he realized his loves for nature, God, and college students could converge—and not just when away on mission trips in more exhilarating locations. Those passions could intersect every day in his work as a college minister, right here in the plains and rolling hills and humidity of southern Missouri.
Frisbee golf served as the initial bridge. “[Frisbee golf] was probably the first thing that I saw had an opportunity in ministry,” Smith says. The shoulder-to-shoulder activity provided a context for one-one-one discipleship. “We would have great conversations while slinging a disk.”
A shift took place in Smith’s approach to ministry. “I used to minister from what I’d been taught,” he says. “Now I minister from who I am. Who I am is very outdoorsy.” Smith started to look for ways to incorporate students into activities he enjoys. He regularly offers outdoor activities such as float trips and hiking, then intentionally uses these contexts to show his students truths about who God.
For the last two years, Smith has taken international students on hikes. This past September he took a group to Prairie State Park, home of magnificent roaming buffalo. “Ministering from who I am wants to look at buffalo in the woods,” Smith says. On the way, they stopped to pet a turtle in the road. “For a bunch of Japanese and Korean girls from Tokyo and Seoul mega cities, this is the most outdoorsy thing they’ve ever done,” he says. Smith turned turtle petting into a teaching moment. “A turtle teaches us to take life more slowly, be patient. To a girl from a big city, that might be really important…not all are believers, but it’s a lesson that they can say ‘this Christian brought me and it’s wisdom from the Bible.’”
A few years ago, Smith took a few students on a discipleship trip to Rocky Mountain National Park. As they hiked, camped, and white-water rafted, he taught contextual lessons drawing connections between nature and faith—such as a hiking devotion that talked about how the path of following Christ is narrow.
It was then that he had another life-altering revelation: God was calling him to write a book. “I’ve always had a love for books…from the time I was old enough to read,” he says. He’s wanted to be an author since he was a child, “but it wasn’t a dream I ever really seriously pursued.”
Smith was reading a devotional by Steve Chapman called Look at Life from a Deer Stand. The small book of 75 mini devotions captivated him. “I couldn’t put it down,” he says. Hungry for more, he couldn’t find anything else like it. Christian resources for hunters and fishermen dominate the market—there’s even a Bible for sportsmen. But for the everyday person who loves nature yet doesn’t fish, farm, or hunt? He found nothing.
“I realized there’s work to be done,” he says. “I love those activities. There’s a lot published for people who harvest. But there are millions of people out there for whom that’s not the case. They want to go hiking, rafting, experience outdoors, experience God, but they’re not harvesting.”
In fact, tens of millions of Americans hike every year. “There’s a reason for that,” Smith says. “We have an innate connection to creation. In the beginning God gave Adam a job, stewardship of the earth. We have an innate connection to the world God made because it was made for us.” Smith was struck by the realization that millions of people are engaging in outdoor activities every year, but most of them are “worshipping the creation without the Creator.”
“I began trying to stitch together what we see in Scripture with what we see in the world and how God reveals Himself in both,” Smith says. He couldn’t find many people weaving the two together, except in the context of hunting and fishing. He wanted to change that. Out of him poured a series of devotions connecting Scriptural principles to their reflection in nature. “God is saying a lot of the same things to us through the world around us,” he says.
With the devotional written, Smith embarked on building an online platform in hopes that a publisher will pick up his book. He quickly realized that pursuit unlocked another avenue of ministry to college students, who spend a staggering number of hours looking at screens. By posting short Tik Tok videos with a natural bent, he might have a shot at catching their attention between the latest cat videos.
“My lane is stitching together the natural world and Scripture,” Smith says. For the past year, he’s been putting out at least one video a week. One went viral, getting over 130,000 views and doubling his following to 3800. While he sees that as a drop in the bucket, his students don’t. “Most students hover under 1000 [followers], the average college student has a couple hundred,” Smith says. “They think I’m doing great.”
Smith published his content to multiple platforms under the username “Wilderness Theologian”, He loves teaching people new things about creation and helping them see God through nature. “I think we need to be more attentive to nature…God invented physics, astronomy, geology, all that other stuff…What I like to say is creation speaks. I don’t think most people know how to listen. The rocks cry out. So do stars, the animals, even the bacteria. We just don’t know what they’re saying.”
Smith has learned to listen when creation speaks, and through his college ministry, online platform, and someday his book, he aims to help others do the same.