Five years ago right now I was just starting training camp for this wild unknown called the World Race. The vast majority of my Race seems like just yesterday – I feel like I could step back into life into any of the 12 (yes, we got a bonus country) places that I served with the people on my teams and it would be totally normal. There’s literally not a single day that goes by that doesn’t have me thinking about some person, place or moment that I experienced that year of my life.
On the other hand it feels like it was a different lifetime. And well, that’s probably because it was. Aside from deciding to surrender my life to Christ, the World Race is undoubtedly the most important decision I’ve ever made and the most important thing that’s ever happened to me in my life, and my life hasn’t been anywhere near the same since.
I want to take a quick moment here before I tell you how the World Race was the best thing I’ve ever done to deeply, deeply thank those who supported me all that time ago and allowed me to do this. I can assure you that many people around the globe in the past, present and future along with myself have been radically touched by the journey you allowed me to go on. So thank you. Gracias. Khob-kun. Asante sana.
I’m much different than 5 years ago and it has only a little to do with getting a haircut.
The promo video I watched that drew me to the World Race says you can’t change the world until you’ve been changed yourself. The World Race is about changing the lives of others through meeting physical, emotional or spiritual needs just as the Bible and Jesus call us to do. However, if we do that without ourselves being changed we have missed out on so much that the WR has to offer. I experienced this change in many, many ways that you can read in my old blogs but here are several that were of high importance.
I expected (oops we can’t have expectations on the WR) – I mean I thought it quite likely for me to come away from the World Race with a profound new knowledge of God, and while I would say I gained an enormous amount of knowledge about the Father and that it profoundly changed me – the most important thing I learned about my relationship with God is how simple it is. Through prayer, interaction with others all around the globe, and the Holy Spirit I realized it’s quite basic: God is our Heavenly Father and loves us as His own children. He isn’t weighing out our wrongs and rights deciding how much to love us that day. As soon as I surrendered to Jesus, I became his adopted son! Looking at my relationship with God through this parental lens showed me the inadequacies of how I was living. A dad wants his children to obey him out of deep love and respect not out of obligation – and my Dad is perfect and holy so why wouldn’t I give him all of my love back in return?
The Race has radically altered how I’m still living my life today. I’ve had a lot of important things happen to me since I finished the World Race that to most people would seem a lot more important on the grand scale than traveling the world for 11 months. I got married, but the World Race is more important than that because I’m a remarkably different, and I believe better, husband than I would have been without the WR. I’ve had a son since I got back from the World Race. Surely being responsible for new life is more important than living out of a backpack for a year and eating some crazy foods, right!? But the World Race is more important than that because I know that now and for the rest of my time on this world as a dad, I will be an unbelievably different (and again I believe better) father than I would have been before the World Race.
The World Race prepared me greatly for marriage. I spent a year fighting through differences with people I often wasn’t sure I liked or not – that has sure made fighting through differences with the person I love most a lot easier. It taught me true servant leadership – the importance of regularly putting somebody before myself. As a dad, it now brings me such joy to reflect on how much God the Father loves me every time I think of how much I love my son. I led a team for 9 months (one month as the only guy on the team!) and this helped show me how to lead a family – spiritually and emotionally. Finally, it helped me refocus my priorities. I see how important it is to lead spiritually and to raise up my son in a way that shows him God’s love and also the great needs of others all over the globe. I also learned to take comfort in God’s peace that surpasses all understanding when surprises come around like unexpectedly losing my job because boy did I have to lean on that peace amidst regular surprise while on the WR.
I do think the World Race had one small downfall for me and it deals with the most difficult part of the WR…the dreaded community! You’re thinking oh of course, it must be really difficult to live every hour with people who were strangers and you didn’t pick to be on your team. Well, yes it is, but actually my heart constantly yearns for those crazy strangers that got on my nerves way too often. The downfall of the World Race for me is this: it has wrecked my view of community, and made anything less than genuine, intimate community, that pursues one another and the Lord together and pushes others to be better unacceptable to me. And this has made life tough at times.
My family and I are currently serving the Lord while living in Asia and our biggest struggle isn’t the food, the climate, the culture, the language, or even the distance from home, but that our community here is so different than and not as deep as what we had on the World Race. Were there times I would have given anything to get away from my teammates? Sure. Heck, there were a few specific instances I thought AIM should be paying ME $15,000 for having to be a team leader. But the relationships I formed and the fight it took to form many of them are some of the most powerful, beautiful things I took from my World Race. The WR showed me how important it is to be honest and open with others and that the pursuit of God’s kingdom is not a race to be run solo. It showed me the power of forgiveness, and that with God it’s possible to love people who you not long before couldn’t stand to be around.
Were there parts of the World Race that were cool and exciting and made for great photo albums? Of course! But even if I never rafted the Nile or saw Dracula’s Castle and Angkor Wat it was worth it. Even if I never lived in a mud hut in a Ugandan facility with some of Joseph Kony’s children or in the Malaysian jungle or camped by the sea in Ireland it was worth it. Even if I never ate pad thai in Thailand or grew my hair out into an extremely good looking ponytail (subject to personal opinion) it was worth it. Even if I hadn’t met my wife on my Race and married her in a ceremony led by one of our teammates and attended by about 30 more then it was still totally worth it.
Even if I hadn’t got the greatest Christmas gift ever – a purple purse from the Thai girls we worked with – the WR was worth it.
Throughout the low points – which there were plenty of – the illnesses, homesickness, the fights with teammates, teammates you fought with and then grew to love going home sick, and the way too first-hand glimpses of the unacceptable realities of this world like poverty and prostitution – the World Race was absolutely worth it. The World Race has you do a final evaluation and mine concluded with this: “The World Race was the absolute hardest thing I’ve ever done. I would recommend it to everyone.”
The World Race showed me how little of a box I had God in – then it blew up my box. It showed me how mighty and powerful God is and how he loves me exactly how a father loves a child – just perfectly and to an infinite degree. It showed me the beauty of living life with a community of believers who fight together to show this love to each other and others around them. Finally, it made me realize that everyone, everywhere is deserving of hearing about and seeing this love. And because of these things I’ll thankfully never be the same.
These are the biggest reasons the World Race is the most important decision I ever made, and one I can’t encourage you enough to deeply consider making. Well, and I mean you’ve got to try the ugali.
Everybody’s favorite east African delicacy
If you’re interested in the World Race and have any questions or want to hear from someone who’s done it please feel free to email me at [email protected]. I love to talk about the World Race – the good, bad and ugly.
