“Come on,” Jeff said encouragingly as we prepared to trudge outside in the pouring rain and commence our “crucible” event during the Irish Project’s intern training. “This is a good day for teambuilding,” he continued cheerily. “Never mind the weather!” Four interns, Jeff and I geared up and started our adventure, gingerly clambering over a slippery fence and trudging through a field, avoiding animal droppings. Over another fence and into the forest, our adventure really began. I was eager to see how we would all fare in this dense woodland with brambles and stinging nettles.
Jeff gathered us together and explained, “We will each be leading the team through portions of this woodland, but some areas are more challenging than others. We have one three-inch-wide plank of wood about six feet long that can be used to cross some of the ditches we will meet. So who will take the lead first?”
It wasn’t long before we reached the first ditch, which turned out to be wider than the length of our plank! We gathered together, and our leader asked for ideas about how to cross the deep, murky waters below. It was at this point that we realized one of the team members was missing! Looking around, we saw he had already crossed the ditch and was on the other side. We challenged him as to why he had left the team behind. Jeff asked our team leader how she felt, and we all learned a lesson in the importance of staying together as a team.
“Which way do we go now?” we frequently asked Jeff as we traversed through the woods, and he would point us in the right direction. At long last we came out of the woods onto a narrow road not far from where we had started, and we took time to pick up trash along the roadside. Eventually we arrived back at the house soaking wet and tired but encouraged by our teamwork.
This experience reminded me of some spiritual lessons. We embarked on our orienteering adventure without a map but with someone who professed to know the way. Thankfully, he did know the way, and we eventually arrived safely at our destination. Spiritually speaking, there are many leaders who profess to know the way. “Just follow me,” they say. However, Jesus identified Himself as the only Way. We have the Bible as our map to guide us to our eternal destination, and we need to always check the directions others give us against the Word of God.
Everyone who accepts Jesus as Lord of their lives will, without exception, experience challenges, crises and trauma at various times. We may not even know the way forward and be completely baffled as to how we even got into situations. As brothers and sisters in Christ, and as spiritual parents to those who are new (or old) in the faith, we need to show the same love, care, compassion, empathy and grace to each other that Jesus shows us. As we begin to work together as a team, united in faith and fervent in reaching the unreached, we will see the Lord working tremendously among us to expand His heavenly kingdom. I guess the real question is this: Are we only fair-weather Christians, or do we continue to love, trust and follow Jesus even when the way is rough, painful and challenging, and are we willing to lean on the support of fellow believers to help us reach our destination?
