The blogs are the only way to learn more about the World Race program, so I’ve been reading them since about last November or so when I started investigating the prospect of 11 countries in 11 months. When this particular Racer added herself as a subscriber to my blog, I was flattered. It also made me see her a little bit more as a real person. It reminded of the times in college when an alumni member of my fraternity would first walk into the basement of our house. Often I would have heard stories of the individual from older members of the fraternity, and their personality was larger than life. All of a sudden that piece of fraternity lore became flesh and blood and my expectations were either confirmed or dashed.
Then I thought, yeah the World Race is a little bit like a fraternity. A group of people all called to the same identity-shaping experience. The difference is when my new blog subscriber decided to stay attached to the Race by subscribing to my blog, I thought it was really cool; I was flattered, in fact. When alumni stayed attached to our fraternity, I often took issue. I liked it when they came back to hang out every once in a while, but when they wanted to be able to have an opinion, and offer their viewpoint on how the organization should be structured and maintained, I thought they were usually off-base.
The difference is this: The Spirit of a fraternity comes from the brotherhood that is active coming together in a common vision of what Brotherhood is, while the Spirit of the World Race is tied up in the Holy Spirit of the God who is omnipresent from everlasting to everlasting. In my Fraternity, when we had an opinion on what the Spirit of that place was, we were beholden to the current brotherhood. The question was posed as, “What do we want this place to be about?” The Race is more about what the Spirit wants to do in and through the program – “What does the Holy Spirit want this to be about?”
When I had a first-hand encounter with AIM for the first time at Training Camp I was struck by the community of people I found involved there. One day we were doing a team activity when Seth Barnes, the founder of AIM, came and started up some conversation. At one point I said, “Man, this place is great!” He gave me a look that seemed to say, “You don’t really get it all yet.” I kept that look in my head for a while and kept wrestling with it.
He already knew something in that moment that I didn’t quite grasp until recently. An organization like AIM isn’t necessarily about bringing together just the right mix of people or structuring it a specific way. Those things may be important, but what makes “this place great” is that, as an organization, everyone be open to what God wants to be doing there. What I found that was so great at camp was that God was doing big, amazing things with myself, my squad, and most importantly just about everything and everyone AIM touches. When we realize that that greatness comes from an everlasting God, we can rest that we don’t need to be doing much to maintain the greatness of the ministry.
We all want to be attached to something bigger than ourselves. Alumni who came back to my fraternity were looking for that something bigger they knew when they too were members of the organization. What they failed to realize is that the something bigger they remembered was really no bigger then the 20-or-so guys who accompanied them in their fraternity experience – the ones who helped create that Fraternity Spirit that they loved. That Spirit had been replaced by a new Spirit, one that was created by the new group of guys. It was a little bit painful to see them come back and cling to something that was gone.
And that’s why it’s actually pretty cool when World Race alumni stay attached to the Race – because the Spirit behind the Race isn’t confined to any one person, team or squad. The Spirit behind the Race is the Holy Spirit who dwells in all of us. I rejoice any time someone clings to that Spirit.
