The year of Discover 2011/2012 is about to start. After making it through one year of the internship my perspective is a bit different. Last year God taught me many new things which I hope to apply. This summer He got me started down a few different paths which I see as being very relevant as I go into this year. Through combining what I’ve learned with where I see myself headed I will attempt to cast a vision for this year.
A major lesson I came away from last year with was this importance of listening to God and to people. When I’m not listening closely for God’s voice as I live my life or as I lead in the internship I begin to forget about His sovereignty in all situations and become anxious as I try to take control. I believe God has given us the Holy Spirit to help and guide us through life. Listening to God helps me remember my place in the larger scheme of things. God is choosing to use me to carry out His will on earth. He has given me this life to use and invest as a small, but significant part of His meta-narrative. I am not in control of or responsible for the larger outcome. As a leader I want my students to get a lot out of the year, and I am responsible to invest in them, but I don’t know what plans God has for them, and cannot try to force my own agenda of life lessons on them. I can also be confident in what I do, even if it initially displeases those I’m leading.
This brings me to the second half of the lesson which I mentioned before: listening to people. In working to develop third world countries one of the main principles is the idea of empowering people to develop themselves. The approach of coming in and doing all the work for the people is actually disempowering and counter-productive in the long run. The basic principle of empowering others boils down to genuinely valuing who they are, their opinions and abilities, and just listening to them. I believe that the students coming into Discover this next year have many valuable things which I can learn and benefit from. I hope to listen to them and allow them to influence me even as I lead them throughout the year.
This summer God put me in various relationships and situations which started me down the path of wanting to be more in tune with the Holy Spirit. This path is flowing very nicely out of the lesson to listen to God. I have been exposed to more charismatic Christian circles and had new experiences with the supernatural side of reality. Prairie tends to be a very conservative place, but I feel God calling me to live out my charismatic side, being filled with the Holy Spirit and speaking the kingdom boldly into the world around me. I’m not sure exactly how this will look, but I am filled with excitement as I see God answering my prayers by expanding my understanding and experience of Him.
As I’ve walked down the path of listening to people God has put fire in my heart for the poor and oppressed people in the world. He has revived a spirit of compassion in me which I partially forgotten for a couple years, only this time it is accompanied by more wisdom and ability to act. It seems that this time in my life is mostly for me to deal with the oppressor within myself, and to acquire skills and knowledge which will render me useful in future work. I also hope to influence others around me to have the same zeal for justice and equality, as well as challenging them in their assumptions about how service works. I am particularly excited to have guys around me in whom I hope to cultivate mindsets of liberation towards women, the half of the population which has been oppressed since the fall.
In conjunction with a zeal for the Holy Spirit and liberation, I am coming into this year with a newly remembered interest in missions. The last two years in Discover taught me to critically reexamine my understanding of missions. This was an important phase, but now that I’ve gone through it I can again feel comfortable saying that I want to be a missionary. I, therefore, hope to instill the same desire for service in the Global community into my students along with pushing them into a phase of challenging their assumptions and re-working their definitions.
Finally, I and others in the program anticipate this year to be a new beginning for Discover. It has become apparent that we are suffering from an identity complex. There are a variety of contributors to this problem which have been removed. We now have new grounds to pursue self-awareness as a program. With that understanding will come an increased ability to do what we do even better. It’s quite exciting.
My pastor used an interesting image to describe the leadership of the small groups our church is divided into. He said it’s like we’re all sick and in the hospital being healed. It’s not the group leaders, however, who are the doctors. They are simply fellow patients who have been around the hospital awhile and can help others find their way. This is the image I would like to use to understand my role as an intern this year.
The students this year will be all different people coming from a variety of backgrounds. I can’t know each of their true needs even once they’re here and I get to know them, much less before they arrive. I do know, however, some general truths in regards to the setting in life most students coming into Discover tend to be in, and can extrapolate helpful insights. Many of them will most likely be entering, or already in, a stage of questioning what they have known. This is especially true for those who will be leaving their parents homes for the first time. I believe this stage in and of itself is a need and I plan on encouraging them to wrestle with what they believe and why. I also know it can be a very scary and difficult time. They may be in need of guidance, counsel, and company as they struggle through all the questions and confusion. This stage is also defined by taking responsibility for one’s own life. They will need to be given responsibility and not treated like children. There are also needs which are common to all humans. They will need to be loved, affirmed, encouraged, and rebuked.
Going into this year I know that I need help in the form of feedback from students and staff, guidance from older wiser figures around me, encouragement from my peers, and pushback to keep me in check. My main objective for the year is for students to have a genuine exposure to the brokenness of the world, creating strong desire to fix it, accompanied by awareness of the challenges, the need for preparation, and of our utter dependence on God’s grace.
As we lead our team we want to make sure we are doing our best to plan meetings and experiences that are relevant to where they are at. We will do this by communicating with each of our students each week about how they are doing. This will require some intentionality, especially with those students that are more socially active and not in dorms as often. We will also communicate with each other about how our students are doing. This will always be the basis from which we will plan our impact group times.
We want our Wednesday night impact group time to be somewhat fluid and flexible so that there is room for normal life stuff to take the place of what we had planned. In order for this to happen we will need to plan well. We want our times to have balance of fun and seriousness. This will require good planning, and creativity. We want the group to share life stories during the first semester, and we also would like to plan activities around specific things that each individual is passionate about (e.g. we find out Wade likes golfing, so we as a group go golfing). Other ideas include: Sports games, theme parties, open worship time, debriefing/processing how school/life is going, having a gender specific impact group. We would like to make a prayer wall on Facebook where our students can post prayer requests as they come up so the rest of the team can know to pray. We’d also like to try and be supportive of our school by informally attending sports events as a team.
At this stage our time in Guatemala is a bit up in the air. We discussed the idea of having Impact host families during our time at GBS. This would hopefully provide a space for students to feel more comfortable and North American.
We want to be careful about our interactions with students of the opposite gender. We will endeavor to ensure there will be no mixed gender one on one meetings conducted in private. We must be discerning even about the topics of conversation we discuss with students. If students seek consultation from the intern of the opposite gender on topics which are too intimate, then that intern will re-direct the student to the other intern and not feel obligated to continue with that discussion.
As leaders we plan on being honest with each other as well as with our students. Along with honesty we will learn the ability to accept constructive criticism, knowing that our partner has our best interest in mind.
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