Debrief: essentially a mini church camp for adults.
Every few months, our squad gets together for a long weekend to have a debrief. After month 1, month 4, month 9 and the end of the race before going home after month 11. This is a time to rest, recharge, and get poured in to by our leaders. We have one after month 1 to help us after our month of adjusting, and to make sure everything is going as it should. We were placed in teams during training camp, so we also had to make sure those teams were working as they should, and get help/ advice on how to handle situations that came up during the month.
World race is more than a missions trip. It is a discipleship program. As much as we are trying to pour in to and help the world, we have leaders who want to help us grow in our own walk with God and in our own gifts. Because of this, we each have a one on one with at least one of our 5 leaders. This is time to get poured in to and have a safe place to express what you’re going through and thus get Godly counsel out of it.
Because of all of this, there is set aside times, basically just long weekends, where we make time to rest and recharge. We deal with things that need to be dealt with before going in to month 2 and thus making sure we aren’t dragging garbage with us through the rest of the race.
Mornings we have sessions. We come together as a group to cast vision for our group, and learn strategies and tools that will further help our ministry but also help us grow closer to God.
Throughout the day, each team has a appointed time to come meet with all the coaches as a whole to debrief on how the month went. (And if you’re team isn’t debriefing this is when you get the time to rest and enjoy God’s creation where you are.)
We also have our scheduled 1/1 with the leaders during the day, and also get to use this time to get to know the people on your squad better.
At night we come back together for worship and sessions. As an honor, I along with one of my squamates, Re, were chosen to be worship leaders, so throughout the day we also spent time with God and each other planning on how to lead the squad to the best of our ability into the presence of God. Then our leaders would pour into us a message/ lesson from God to further equip us.
Our debrief this month was the BIGGEST blessing, and we got pretty lucky with location. Since we are in Belize, beaches are easily accessible. So for the last few days, we got to stay in a hostel on the beach during our debrief. What an incredible blessing from God that as we go out in to the world to serve him and surrender ourselves to his glory (and along with that surrounding our comforts of home and materialistic things) he still wants to give us good things because he’s a good father. I’m in awe of just how much he loves us and wants to give to his kids.
But just because we’re in debrief does not mean we aren’t doing missions. Life is mission and mission is life. We don’t get “off” days in the kingdom, we just have unplanned ministry. For the most part, every person on this squad is incredibly intentional with sharing the gospel with strangers. We shared the message of the gospel with others staying in our hostel, with locals, with the people who served our meals if we went out, etc. God knew the people who need to hear his word, so even on debrief during times of unplanned ministry, we choose to use our time to spread the gospel when we can because God knew we’d be here. He planned for us to be.
But if you were curious of why I was at the beach the last few days, here’s why. This race is a marathon, not a sprint. We have to take times to break and recharge and not burn ourselves out by going through life too quickly and overlooking problems that need to be dealt with
Now we’re ready to take on month 2 head on in full swing!
