Hello, friends!
Happy TUESDAY to you all. Here's hoping it's been a good one for you. I know that normally I post on Fridays instead of Tuesdays but I decided that I'd like to switch things up a little bit. Fridays can be kind of crazy with travel, conferences, and things like that. Tuesdays, on the other hand, are generally pretty stable. It's also a day when I'm usually stuck in front of a computer catching up on all the admin and such that I didn't do on my off day (Monday). So, it makes sense to add this to the mix of "things to do on a Tuesday."
This past weekend our Area Team (affectionately known as " Team MO Fast, MO Furious", or "MO Fast" for short). had it's first staff meeting of the year. We had some time of bible study and prayer together, got some great training on reaching Latin@ students, watched the opening ceremonies of the Olympics together, played some team building games, and generally had a good time working on starting the year off right.
One of the big things from our time together was Will, our fearless leader, challenging the team to make 1000 asks as a unit this year in 3 categories; Ministry Partnership, Student Ownership, and Conference Attendance. For ministry partnership, this means asking more people to serve alongside us, give to our ministry, and pray for us regularly. For Student Ownership, it's about asking students to make decisions for Jesus, or asking Christian students to lead in some capacity. For Conference Attendance, we mean specifically for our different strategic ministry conferences that we have this year reaching international students, Black students, Latin@ students, Native students, and Asian American students.
A second big thing was from the 2 interns who I have been coaching in Ministry Partnership this summer. As a team, we decided that we wanted to make 65 asks to partnership before October 1. I'm pretty sure that if each of us makes 3 asks for the next 7 weeks, we'll just hit our goal. It was a goal they wanted to hit so that they could finish out our New Student Outreach season fully funded.
What was interesting about those two ask related goals was my reaction to both of them. Rather, it was how I noticed my reacting to both of them. If you know me, you know that I'm a very competitive person and that I'm a team player to the max. I also have what can only be described as a mildly unhealthy sense of responsibility when it comes to my teams. When you put those 3 characteristics together, what you get is someone of often takes a team goal and decides that the best way to make sure it's accomplished is to do a bulk of the heavy lifting.
I totally had to stop myself when I heard both those goals because my mind immediately started moving towards how much extra I could do to lessen the burden on the rest of the team. If MO Fast wants to do 1000 ask, I'll just do 200 of them so no one else has to work too hard. Our interns want to do 65 MPD asks in the next 7 weeks? Well, maybe I'll do 35 so they only need to do 15. It comes from a good place, wanting to help, but it's also not one of my healthiest qualities, especially if we miss our goal and I beat myself up for "not working hard enough."
Really, the key, as I've been learning, has been to listen to God as much as possible. I have to know when I'm making an ask, whether it be to a student, a ministry partner, or whomever, because I want to get the ask done or because Jesus is really leading me in that direction. There's an old saying that we have 2 ears and 1 mouth because we're supposed to listen twice as much as we speak. In this case, there is probably some truth to that.
So, dear friends, please be praying for our team as we prepare for all these great asks in the next few days, weeks, and months. Pray that God will be leading us to the right asks and that we'll have the boldness to take those risks. Pray that we will not be burdened by the goal but be encouraged and strengthened by knowing that we're a team.
Have an excellent day!
~Adam
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