The World Race is wild. It has been uncomfortable. But uncomfortable in a manageable way. Up until now. Welcome to Togo. Where Jessica has been having to check her heart and try not to be super overwhelmed to the point where she just can’t move forward. Sorry about the third person, but sometimes I just have to. Anywho, this month has been super hard so far. Cote d’Ivoire was pretty nice and comfy. There were a few times I felt slightly unsure, but wow, super duper easy and nice looking back on it. Ghana stretched me, and the challenge was amazing, and I experienced a ton of joy. I did things I had never done before, including teaching a whole class of kindergarteners Bible stories, math lessons, and phonics; preaching, and leading worship, so I was out of my comfort zone but still in a decently comfortable way. It was a good amount of challenge where I could grow but not want to run away and hide somewhere deep in the bush. Ghana was perfect.
Togo. Welp, i came in as a brand-new team leader having absolutely no idea what that meant (still not really). And our ministry is, hmmmm, overwhelming to say the least. Cool if you look at it from a bird’s eye view maybe like a month from now, but in the moment? Overwhelming. I think it will be so good for all of us, just overwhelming. And yes, I know I’ve said the word ‘overwhelming’ a lot.
Let me start with the team leader thing. The day we traveled to Togo was very emotionally exhausting, along with the next few days after that. Being a team leader means you are the one in direct contact with the host. You ask all the questions about what ministry will look like, what the food and water situation will be, where we can find toilet paper and ATMs, what we should wear to be honoring, and the list just goes on and on. And then the team leader communicates all these things to the team and answers any questions. The team leader also makes sure we have team time everyday (just a time where we all hang out in some form), that we get SIM cards for our phones, and some other responsibilities I won’t give in detail.
I will just say that being a team leader for the first few days was incredibly exhausting as I had so many people needing to ask me questions, meet with me, or tell me something. I was already struggling a bit with leaving Ghana since I had loved our time there and the people there, and now I had a thousand people asking me questions and needing me to do things when all I wanted was to organize my things, take a shower, and go to bed after a long day of traveling to Togo. I was nervous about what the ministry would be, and with missing Ghana and having a lot of new responsibilities, I felt like a total mess. The team leading thing has gotten less overwhelming since those first few days, but there is just a lot more to it than I ever expected, and it definitely has put a new twist on my Race. All that being said, I actually really enjoy team leading (didn’t sound like it, ehhhh???) and I think it will be a huge growing experience for me. I think I have a lot of strengths that will help me in this role, but it has just taken some getting used to and has been a big challenge so far. And those first few days were just a little much, so my emotions were all over the place.
And now the ministry. We teach and preach like all the time. We preach Sundays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and teach pastors in training on Mondays and Saturdays. We have Thursday and Friday off for our Adventure Day and Sabbath Day. So far, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, each team has gone to a different church and two people from each team of six preach. (There are three teams from my squad doing the same ministry this month). Starting yesterday, we go to churches in groups of two or three, which means everyone preaches. On Mondays and Saturdays, less people teach, but if you teach, it’s either for one hour or for an hour and a half. So basically, you preach and teach a lot throughout the week. In addition, we will be going to villages a few days a week. On those days, we will leave around 8 or 9 in the morning, return around 5 and leave directly for church to preach until 8 or 9 at night. In the villages, we will most likely be preaching/teaching, praying for people, and evangelizing.
Hmmm, well I preached for the first time in Ghana, and I only had to speak for around 10 minutes because of the translation…..hmmm, well, now I am preaching three times a week for a half hour instead of 10 minutes and not knowing if I can use the same sermon because we could return to the same church or go to a different one (NO ONE KNOWS. UGH – CAN I REUSE MY SERMONS OR NOT?!) And then trying to figure out how in the world I could teach something about the Bible for a full hour to a bunch of people training to be pastors when I’ve never taught adults, know nothing about being a pastor, and have never taught anything more than a math lesson or a story from the Bible to a bunch of kids where I can act half of it out and ask the same questions over and over so they remember what happened. YIKE. And yes, that is one single yike, no plural intended.
Side note that one of the possible topics we were given for teaching was ‘how to preach’. HAHAHAHAHAHA let me tell you how to preach.
#1 Go on the World Race
#2 Be told you are preaching the day before you preach or maybe even the day of or the hour of
#3 Pray desperately that something comes to mind
#4 Frantically write down what comes to mind
#5 Pray some more for God’s perfect peace and the Holy Spirit to move
#6 Walk up in front of church and pretend you’ve preached a thousand times in your life and know what you’re doing
#7 Laugh hysterically, manically, and slightly obnoxiously once you are back in the car because everyone there actually thinks you’ve had some sort of training or have preached many times before just because you’re a missionary and missionaries are experts.
Ok so maybe I shouldn’t teach people how to preach. Not that there is a certain way you have to preach but I probably just don’t have the best approach, ya know?
Anyway, the sheer amount of material needed to be prepared for this month has overwhelmed me. A lot. Along with my teammates. When I shared the schedule with them, a few eyes widened, a few jaws dropped, and a nice little laugh was had. If I thought I was out of my comfort zone last month preaching once, teaching a few lessons off the cuff here and there, and leading worship, then I had no idea what being uncomfortable was.
But something I’m really having to think about is who I’m teaching and preaching for. Am I seeking human approval, with lots of Amens and Hallelujahs from the congregation as I preach, and lots of congratulations from my teammates afterwards because I delivered such a seamless and beautiful presentation? It’s easy to want that. Don’t we all want to speak in front of a group of people and not stumble through our words or have no idea what we will say next? I know for a FACT that I am a planner and preparer. HARD CORE. And I don’t love speaking in front of large groups of people.
As I have been talking to God about how overwhelmed I have been, I’ve just felt as though my heart hasn’t been in the right place. I want to say I only want His glory, but what if His glory means I have to go up in front of a new church, in front of all my teammates, and not have a single thing ready? What if I stare awkwardly out at the crowd and literally nothing comes to mind? What if I stumble through everything and have no clear message and look like a complete and utter fool? But what if that was all God wanted from me? What if He only wanted my obedience in getting up there? What if He didn’t care if I said anything at all but only that I tried and that I had the courage to try? Would I be okay with “failing” if it still meant I stepped forward in faith and did it for His glory and not mine?
That’s a good question, and one I am still working through. I think the challenge for me this month is knowing how much time and effort I should be putting into preparation versus how much I should trust the Lord for the words to say. I think preparation is beautiful and wonderful and a good thing, but maybe since I have always so heavily depended on that, I need to step away a bit and see how God can move in the moment. I think he moves through preparation as well, and preparation allows you to spend a lot of time in the Word and learn a lot of cool details, but my tendency can be to use preparation to block out anything else God might be wanting to speak through me because I am so focused on saying what I have prepared. Maybe that means preparing less for some sermons than others and not necessarily having every word ready and every Bible passage ready and seamlessly put together (we ain’t got time for that anyway!)
It’s actually been pretty sweet the last few nights of going to different churches. The first night, me and another teammate were scheduled to preach. We arrived super late and didn’t have much time left in service so one of my teammates had offered to preach in my place since my sermon was longer, but even she didn’t preach – a different teammate did last second. And then when she was done, another teammate preached and neither of them had planned on it, yet it was beautiful.
And the next night, me and my teammate who HADN’T preached the night before were just going to go, and I did preach first as planned. My sermon was very prepared, but as I was speaking, one of my teammates who wasn’t planning to preach heard something in my sermon that really made her think she was supposed to share a part of her testimony. She had not prepared one bit, yet she got up there (super nervously) but delivered a beautiful message and didn’t stumble at all. And then another teammate who hadn’t planned on preaching also preached. I thought that was a pretty good example of how it’s good to be prepared because God moves through that but how we can also be open to what God wants to speak in the moment with no preparation at all.
I want to ask for your prayers this month as many of us prepare sermons and lessons that we would be open to letting God say what he wants to say through us, whether that be through preparation and planning or through getting up to speak and not having anything planned. He uses both, and I want to be open to that and not fear if I have nothing ready. Because goodness gracious, I don’t quite know how it’s possible to come up with that many sermons and lessons when you go to church 5 days a week, don’t have consistent access to WiFi to look up resources, and need time to just sit with the Lord and not try to plan sermons in the free time you do have. Thank you God for growth and challenge and may it all be to your glory!!!
