On the World Race, as we get to the end of a time of ministry with a contact, we always challenge each other to ‘finish well’. We want to make sure not to let our enthusiasm or effort diminish as we get closer to the end of the work we have been doing.
This month has been no different. It’s been a gruelling month because of the high heats (unusual to me in general, let alone at a time of year I expect to be really cold) and heavy work – not just sitting in a hot climate but pushing ourselves physically. In the last week or so we have finished tilling the soil at the back of the house, tripling the space used for planting, gone over the ground in the front garden removing the grass that had grown back up from where we had tilled it all initially, and redecorated the rooms of where the boys who live here stay. It would have been easy to get half-hearted about it as we finish off but we have been happy to spur each other on as we go, even when our water supply was turned off for more than 2 days and we had to rely on the reserves that we had already purified and switch to taking bucket showers.
There is a ‘culture of honour’ fostered within the World Race, built on the principles of considering others and preferring them in the choices that we make, that finishing well really leads into. One of the biggest things for this culture is that within teams we have a time of ‘feedback’ every evening in which we share our joys and challenges of the day and also speak life into each other. This involves giving both ‘positive’ and ‘constructive’ feedback to a person when we see it – encouraging someone in ways you see that God has been growing them and encouraging them in things you have seen that they can still grow in, all the while calling people up in to who they can be – who God has made them to be.
Occasionally, since there were several teams in one place, we have a session all together and this month we did this too. It actually started because of some recurring issues that needed to be addressed but it’s done in such an open, discussable format that we are all able to benefit as we spend time challenging each other as a large group and encouraging each other in the positive things that we have seen and in the ways that we can be better as a group. That time this month was an encouraging time for me as I was called (as many of us were) to push harder for being all that we can be. I was subsequently encouraged a couple of nights ago as the all-girls team here invited me into their feedback for five minutes to encourage me in how they had seen me take on what came out of that initial meeting.
So as we close this month, it has been great to see us develop a community that dares us to be more than might normally settle for, to be the best us we can be, to make the most of all we have. And I hope that, as we have closed the first third of our race, we have finished not just well but best.
