At the beginning of April Bertha and I, together with Ted Szymczak, traveled to Spain and facilitated another Coaching Workshop. The workshop was full, with 24 participants from six different mission agencies, serving in six different countries. A large percentage of the coaching workshop is devoted to giving the participants opportunities to practice coaching one another. And they did so with enthusiasm! With 12 separate coaching conversations happening at the same time in one room, the noise level regularly reached 90 decibels in our training room. The aim of the workshop is naturally on practicing skills, not on completing conversations, and so I regularly had to interrupt our eager coaches and ask them to move on to the next learning activity. At times, I found it very difficult to regain their attention when it was time to switch to another exercise. At one point, we even tried using a drum set standing in the room! But I would much rather have had that problem than dealing with half-hearted participation.
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In Hosea 2:14-15, God says to the Israelites, “Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. There she will respond as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt.”
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| Haleakala Sliding Sands Trail on Maui. Yes, even Maui has places that seem hostile to life. |
Last summer I felt in a slump–a general lack of passion for ministry. While at the Yamanaka Chalet, I read the book, “Leading on Empty: Refilling Your Tank and Renewing Your Passion” by Pastor Wayne Cordeiro. It’s his story of how, when he found himself depleted after about 30 years of ministry, he took time to recharge and refocus on what is truly important. Towards the very end of the book, he talks about potential. We usually associate potential with young people. We think of them with their life ahead, their gifts and talents, lots of opportunities, and we look forward to how God will use them. They have potential!
But this isn’t the group Pastor Wayne is talking about. In his book, he’s referring to people who have been in ministry a long time. Maybe they feel depleted. Maybe they need to take time to refocus. Maybe it’s time for them to make some changes. At any rate, he challenges this group of people to rediscover their potential.
How do you evaluate the effectiveness of our training? This has been a question that we are still seeking to answer in SEND U.
One realization that I have come to in the past few years is that asking the participants how well they liked the training is not enough of a measure. We regularly receive positive comments about the various training initiatives we do for our mission members, either on evaluation sheets hurriedly filled out in the last 5 minutes of the training event, or in conversations with people walking out the door. But while it is gratifying to hear that they enjoyed the workshop, what we want to see happen is for the participants to change their behaviors as result of what they have learned.
A final post on the topic of life as a marathon from Philip Jackson, a colleague and friend of mine from Macedonia. Phil serves as the field leader and church planting team leader in the city of Skopje. Phil also runs marathons, and his first full marathon was the Athens Classic Marathon.
Lastly, and appropriately, the final message that hit home from the whole marathon experience was the powerful encouragement provided by imagining the actual finish. While running the weekend-long runs in training for the Athens race, invariably I would imagine myself running into the classic stadium and running under that finish line banner. And invariably my eyes would tear up and powerful emotions would come over me. Note that this was while I was training at a place (along the Vardar River in Skopje) where other runners were running along the same path, and there I was with tears streaming down my cheeks. That happened numerous times and sure enough, on November 13 when I stepped across that finish line, my eyes teared up and powerful emotions came over me…just as I had imagined. The point, however, is not that my imagination equaled reality, but rather that the thought of what was to come gave me powerful energy to keep going…to keep running until one day I actually did cross the finish line.
Again, the parallels are obvious. Here is a powerful motivation for us, one that is highlighted again and again in Scripture. We endure life’s long race with much greater success when we take time to think about the finish line or our final destination. One day, Jesus will be standing and waiting for you! When you take your last breath on earth, you’ll walk or run right into His arms and hopefully, you’ll hear “Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into your rest.” (see Matt 25:21 and other blog posts on success)