I’m sitting at the end of my month in El Salvador, wondering why I haven’t written anything about it.
You would think I’d be bubbling over with words, since I did two of my favorite things this month for ministry: teach English and play soccer. Thinking through these two aspects of our ministry is kind of confusing because my instinct is to compartmentalize the month into two different realms: the first, which I’ll call “When I Was a Leader,” and the second, which I’ll (not surprisingly) call “When I Was Not a Leader.”
And though at first I really want to separate these two realms of ministry, what I learned over the course of this month is that the two were more connected than I thought. Even more importantly, though, was my realization that the distinction mattered even less than I thought.
It took a week for me to actually figure out what I was doing (I think I can fairly attribute 75% of my state of constant confusion to jetlag). As a World Racer, I assumed that our ministry was leading the various activities our host described: English class, P.E. class, and the soccer academy/soccer practices.
I made a mental checklist: I can teach English. Check. I can teach P.E. Check. And I’ve coached soccer before. No problem. Check. Check. Check. I can slay this leadership thing. I went into the month excited to create drills and soccer plays.
I figured out, right away, that even leading English class required me to first be a student. I didn’t know a “long A” from a “short A” sound, or any of the vowel sounds for that matter, and I definitely didn’t have a clue what a consonant diagraph was. The English class we taught was an after-school program for high-school students, and Esther and I had six students to teach. Leadership in this realm, after learning the things for ourselves that’d we be teaching, came pretty naturally. Coming up with activities and practicing with my students was cut-and-dry: I am the teacher. I am the leader.
We may have taught English on those days of the week, but on the P.E. field and soccer pitch, we were the students. Little did I know that it was I who would be running sprints, playing soccer, and grudgingly finding a basketball in my hands. Wait a minute. If I’m not leading, what even is my ministry??
If you’re an achiever and used to knowing you’re capable, you might understand what I was feeling. Does ministry in a school setting even “count” if I’m not even a teacher?
At first, not having a leadership role in that aspect of ministry was confusing. But as I participated in P.E. classes and soccer practice under our ministry host’s wonderful team of local leaders, I became grateful for the “backseat;” misery loves company and there is no misery like those of a middle-school PE class being forced to run timed sprints. I regurlarly hung out with one girl, Meg, and she was my key to being “in” with a few other girls. I loved cheering them on during their sprints and other drills.
I distinctly remember playing soccer one afternoon and passing back to a girl in the midfield. She watched it for a second, and I could tell she was sizing herself up against an oncoming boy who was going to challenge her for it. She was hesitating as the ball hung in limbo between her and the opponent for a couple seconds.
“Vamos! Vamos!” I yelled to her, motioning with my hand for her to step up and take control of the ball. The next moment was super cool to see: she glanced up at me, having heard my encouragement, set her mouth in an adorably determined manner, and pushed forward. She took complete control of the ball, sidestepped the oncoming boy, and passed the ball back up the other side of the field.
I cheered and told her how well she’d done-it was a perfect play. I marvelled at how my belief in her, as a fellow teammate who passed to her and not a teacher, had empowered her.
In another grade’s P.E. class, I also befriended a small posse of very sweet, very competetive elementary-school-aged boys who consistently asked me to be on their soccer team for PE, despite the fact that I embarassingly shouted “MI EQUIPO” whenever I saw them, on or off the field.
As the weeks progressed, I connected the dots between ministry and the everyday life in our little town. The elementary and middle school students we saw in (our shared) P.E. classes were the same kids we visited while helping our host with the feeding program he does in the slum community. I got to visit Meg’s home as a friend from school. I met her little sister and her older brother, and tasted a dessert her mother made. One Saturday, I saw a few of my soccer boys playing a city league game and congratulated them afterwards. My high-school students lived in our town, too, so I would see them around at the park or at vegetable stands. I felt more and more like I was part of the community, simply by knowing the youth in various age groups.
When another short-term team from Lipscomb University’s women’s soccer team came for their Spring Break, they took leadership roles in the soccer programs, and yet, we were still followers. I saw ministry through the eyes of these brand-new missionaries and remembered my first mission trip. I watched as they became the shiny new toys at the elementary/middle school and ran through their P.E. and soccer drills.
And after they left, one of the most interesting parts of being a participant and not a leader was observing how the students treated us. They didn’t treat us like shiny new toys-we were old news. We were “normal.” We were Humberto’s gringas that they knew would be in their P.E. class twice a week and whom they would see randomly the rest of the week. We had fellowship with them on the soccer field and during the break time at school. They saw how we lived our lives.
At some points, of course, I still thought: “I’m literally going to P.E. and soccer practice for ministry. What is this?” Because even though we’d share a short testimony or devotional at the soccer practices away from the school and with the high-schoolers after English, I didn’t see how this was “enough.” If only I spoke Spanish and could share with them during class, I thought. If only…
My perspective on lacing up my sneakers and putting my game face on changed, however, when I met a couple of El Salvadorian congressmen that my team befriended. They took us all to a lunch of oysters and shrimp, and we sat at a table in a dried-up creekbed and listened to them talk about their country. They shared the very real prevalence and danger kids-even those in our own temporary community-face in gang membership. They’re recruited young, and quickly are in over their heads as initiation commonly requires the new members to commit murder. Our congressmen friends told us that, as rough statistic, approximately 10% of the population in El Salvador is directly connected to a gang. The stranger part was that I had already seen the ripple effect of those connections.
I flashed back to a day in the slums, praying for a woman whose son was missing. She didn’t know if he had been taken by a gang, but she thought it the most likely explanation. She was grieving for her son and asking for prayer, knowing he was probably dead and buried in a coffee field.
I flashed back to the director of a sports complex, introducing us and the Lipscomb soccer team to the youth soccer teams we’d worked with for an afternoon (outside of our usual ministry range). He’d told us that many of the boys-high schoolers-were at risk of or already falling in with gangs. He explained why soccer was so close to his heart, as a way of reaching these young men before they had life-changing decisions to make.
The congressmen told us that there are two ways to leave a gang. One way is simply to be killed. I tried to absorb that reality.
The other way is to become a Christian.
“The gang leaders let a member leave if they become a Christian. They can leave, totally leave the gang.” The leaders watch the new supposed Christian, making sure they’re serious and not messing aroung with girls or drugs or the like, but after a couple years, if their conversion story checks out, they are free.
Jesus is, quite literally, the only way out for some of these gang members.
With that perspective, I looked back on the month and knew that it hadn’t mattered that I was just another participant in P.E. because I wasn’t just another participant: I was a Christian. It really was that simple. I had Jesus, the key that some of these kids needed to stay out of a gang, the key that maybe they, too, could use one day to bring freedom to friends and family.
In the moment, whether following instructions for a bizarre relay race or giving instructions to my English classes, being a Godly example to the youth had mattered.
Even when my ministry had simply been to be an inclusive, encouraging force on a soccer team without any clear leadership role. Even when I was the leader, building mentorship-type relationships with my high-schoolers.
I think that my position as both a leader and a follower this month will bear fruit that I’ll never see: maybe my fellow classmates learned a thing or two about grace and love when I encouraged them, or when they had the choice to include the weird gringa and they lovingly did.
Maybe my high-schoolers will remember our last day of English, when Esther and I lead them in a a “build-up session,” where we each went around and said the positive things we saw in each other. The students hadn’t ever done anything like that before, and I’d felt that after their first month of English class, affirmation from their teachers and classmaets would be a powerful encouragement.
Whether I was playing with the younger students or being playfully serious about boyfriends/girlfriends with my older students, I had played and built relationships and my role as leader or follower had never mattered in scope of the Kingdom this last month. It was the stewarding of each position with joy and contentment that had brought Kingdom and, I can hope, has helped make disciples.
