Let me explain a bit about how the World Race works.
Every month starts with travel. You and your whole team pack up, say goodbye to your ministry host, meet up with the rest of your squad, get in a rented bus, sleep on an airport floor, take a plane, get on another rented bus, say goodbye to your squad, split off into teams, and then say hello to your new ministry host. Then it’s ministry time.
Ministry time lasts for 2.5-4 weeks, and you do your utmost to serve and bless your ministry host, learn another language, tell some people in another country about Jesus, and eat as much local cuisine as your budget can allow. Ministry ends, you say goodbye, and perhaps it happens to be a month where you do debrief and spend more time with the squad, one big happy family of 21-50 people, depending on your route.
Debrief is time to relax, hang with friends, and spend time with God. A little more “you time”, a little less “pressure”. You’re done with ministry for the month, and next month’s ministry doesn’t start for another 6 days. Sweet.
Welp, that’s the plan at least. Or maybe I should call it the framework. Because as you might be able to guess, or already know, the reality of my time, or any other racers’ (that’s what they call us), time on the World Race is that things are rarely so clean cut. This framework that I’ve explained is what was communicated to me, and even though I never expected things to be that smooth, nor were they really designed to be, I often can be surprised by just how much a ministry host, a travel day, a team, or even a debrief can differ from what I might imagine. But I am so glad that the reality of my life right now is not something I can predict. Let me give an example.
My squad and I just got finished with our “Debrief” in Lanmadaw, Yangong, Myanmar. Four days ago I thought we were going spend some time in teams talking about the month and our feelings, meet in a hotel conference room a lot, sing a couple of worship songs, and maybe have some discussions about vision casting for the squad. Some of those things happened, and it was cool.
But what really happened is that a church was planted. You see, we barely met in that hotel conference room, it was too expensive when you can use a park for free during the day. So, every day, 40 or so of us foreigners met in a park in the middle of Lanmadaw, sang songs, talked about our feelings, listened to God, and smiled to every single local we could. And on the fourth day something happened. One of my squadmates met a Christian Burmese woman, and invited her to join us. When she joined us, we asked her if she would like share the gospel for us to the people the park, later that day, and she agreed. So, later that day, we gathered as many people as our American faces could, and she shared the story of what Jesus has done in her life. About 5 people accepted Jesus into their life that afternoon. Around 15 requested a Bible in Burmese, and a dozen or so committed to come back the next day, at the same time.
This was something incredible, and it wasn’t planned by any of us in the slightest.
I’m learning that there is no such thing as ministry time. It’s just me being fully me all the time. And if I think that I need to designate a time where I’m loving like Jesus would, and a time where I’m not, then something’s not right within me. A church was planted, yesterday, because my squad was willing to believe that there’s no such thing as ministry time, and our leadership was discerning enough to recognize how to enable that.
Some incredible things are happening within my squad that don’t exactly fit the mould of “exactly 11 countries in 11 months, one month per country,” and that’s so cool. We have 5 people staying behind to help that church grow as the rest of the squad heads off to India today. And that’s because we aren’t too proud to respond when God make a change to our carefully orchestrated plans.
Plans are good; the world basically wouldn’t function if no one ever made plans, and that would be bad. But, I am learning more and more to not hold the plans that I’ve made or am subscribed to as something more important than what God is leading me to in the moment.
‘Till next time,
Andrew
