part 1 of 3!!!!
Community. Intimacy. Mission.
These are the 3 important foundations we have been and will be studying in these 3 months, so we can more effectively understand and share the Love of God. The first part of the month we learned about living in a community. Understanding the emotional, physical and spiritual boundaries within my squad. Also, “processing” is a word used a lot here. Verbal, written, internal processing. You name it, and we have probably done it. I did not realize how I did not fully process things, until I got here. What do we process? Well, everything! Sessions, not living at home right now, what the future will hold, what the past held…Learning about Honoring your friend/ Squad mates vs. gossiping about them. Romans 12:17 says, “Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all.” We can choose to ‘call out’ our brothers and sisters in Christ, or we can choose to ‘call each other higher.’ I really love that. Call each other up with love, instead of pushing each other down with hate, frustration or jealousy.
We also learned about healthy feedback, which kind of ties into calling each other higher. We don’t want to point fingers at someone, telling them what they do is wrong. Instead, we want to see the good in others and point them back to Jesus.
In our fun community here, giving feedback is super important. It’s something I haven’t really done before. The first week my team did feedback I think we were all a little nervous. We needed to given each of our teammates 1 affirmative and 1 constructive piece of feedback. Affirmative: looking at the Jesus in that person and highlighting it too them! Constructive: Bringing to someone’s attention a weakness they may have, and saying it in a loving way by pointing them back to Jesus. Feedback can be in different forms, we have given feedback where we have one person in the “hot seat” and we all share our affirmative and constructive feedback one at a time. Another way we did all affirmative feedback, where one person would sit in the corner of the room facing away from the rest of the team and we would all talk about the person, but only affirmative comments:)
And this week I had the privilege of leading feedback, and God put on my heart to do self-feedback. That was super awesome! The verse in James 2:8 says, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Words have power, when you speak them and when you think them. The way we think about ourselves can reflect how we treat others. Self-feedback is great. It helps you reflect on your week and encourage yourself. Build yourself up.
How can you build up your community and call others higher?
