Today, Shawn is one of the directors at one of Pine Cove’s eight camps. He stepped into this role about four summers ago and has solidified his position throughout that time. It was awesome to go and see the camp that he is now running that didn’t even exist my last time around and see how Shawn has helped to shape and mold his new baby. My last summer out there, Shawn was basically the number two at the camp I worked at, and I greatly respected and enjoyed his leadership. During the time that I’ve been gone, his leadership has definitely grown, but the things that I respect are still there.
One of the things that I respect the most about Shawn is the team player mentality. He’s been a lifetime athlete, and his years of experience on a sports team have totally translated into his ministry. Just like everyone has a role to play on a basketball court, everyone has a role to play at camp. The basic analogy that I’ll use is that a center on the basketball court needs to know how to dribble and shoot well, but he doesn’t need to try and play point guard or shoot too many threes. He needs to be under the basket and controlling the center of the court. There are four other position players that he needs to remember and realize it’s not his role to try and play theirs.
On the basketball court, Shawn has always been the superstar. He runs the offense, sets the speed, and as a teammate, you want the ball in his hands. Now at Pine Cove, it’s basically the same thing translated into summer camps. Now the biggest trait that all superstars need to help their team be successful is trust. Your team needs to know that when the ball is in your hands, you’ll do whatever it takes to win, whether it’s shoot or pass. For lack of a better analogy, Shawn’s basketball play has translated into summer camp. He was never a selfish player and was great at getting his teammates the ball at the perfect time. Just like it was never his team, this isn’t his camp. But everyone really knows who is in charge.
As I sat with Shawn over lunch, we talked about the idea of being well rounded. This is kind of a soap box of mine, so I won’t get off on it too much, I’ll just add Shawn’s thoughts. We will never be great in every aspect of life. If we try to, then we will either get exhausted or our natural gifts will be neglected as we try to focus on our weaknesses. But, we can’t just push our weaknesses to the side and try to ignore them. Just like a center in basketball needs to be able to dribble and shoot, we need to bring our weaknesses at least up to par – I apologize for all the sports analogies. We have to find the balance between ignoring our weaknesses and obsessing over them.
So Shawn tries to run his camp in the same manner. While Shawn is great on stage and has a fun personality (you kind of have to at summer camp), being in the spotlight isn’t his first choice. So he hires around his gifts. He looks for people with larger than life personalities that can ignite a crowd and run a stage. For him, hiring isn’t just about hunting for the best out there, it’s about hiring the best out there that fit in the bigger picture that is this camp. After all, he’s building a team that can be successful together, not just a group of all stars that can put on a show. In order to have the most success, we need role players that are passionate about the role they play. Sounds kind of familiar, like Someone else in history tried to do when building His team of twelve.
