These days, we are preparing for another Member Orientation Program, SEND’s pre-field training for those who are within a few months of leaving for the mission field. This summer’s group is one of the most diverse ones I have ever seen with 18 people coming from 7 different countries and going to 10 different SEND areas of ministry. As we are preparing for this major training event, the temptation is to focus entirely on what we are going to do during the 2 weeks that we are together on the SEND Farmington campus. We are arranging and re-arranging the schedule, contacting all the facilitators, updating our PowerPoint presentations, thinking through the logistics of our various “cultural experiences”, notifying those who will be leading chapel times, planning for shopping trips for the cook, and the list goes on and on. I am very thankful for a superb administrative assistant who works out of our International Office in Michigan, and is taking care of most of these details while I am writing blog posts here in Ukraine.
Category: Training Page 21 of 27
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.
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)
In my Bible this morning, I found this depressing reflection on the meaning of life:
For a person may labor with wisdom, knowledge and skill, and then they must leave all they own to another who has not toiled for it. This too is meaningless and a great misfortune. What do people get for all the toil and anxious striving with which they labor under the sun? All their days their work is grief and pain; even at night their minds do not rest. This too is meaningless. Ecclesiastes 2:21-23