Team Leader App - My Answers

Some people have been asking what are the right answers to some of the questions on the team leader app for this year. Here are my answers. Of course, they aren't right either...

:: Describe all cross cultural ministry experience you have had. How did these experiences change you?
Summer 1992 – 6 weeks of student missions around the east coast including inner city summer camp, VBS in the coal mine community in KY, beach outreach
Summer 1993 – 4 weeks in the DR working with an orphanage
Summer 1995 – 2 weeks in the UK - vacation
Spring 2003 – Perspectives class
Summer 2004 – 1 week in NYC working with immigrant populations
Summer 2005 – 10 days in Brasil working with GCC family McMs
Summer 2006 – 10 days in Cameroon working with GCC family Nens

All of these experiences have continued to solidify my convictions about the following:
The need for two-way partnerships in the context of short term missions that capitalize on local and indigenous leadership and ownership on the host side and a utilization of talents and strengths on the visiting side; the need to catalyze and mobilize students to reach the nations; and how important culture and context are to living a life that others want to emulate.

:: You are leading a group of 12 passengers on a 3 day trek in a remote area. One of the group falls and breaks their leg and needs to be evacuated. The rest of the group needs to continue or they will miss their connecting train and flights home. Your mobile phone is not working so you can't call for assistance. What would you do and how do you meet all the group's needs?
[question via Intrepid Travel]
The two smartest guys rig up a stretcher from whatever they can find in the woods – branches, leaves, vines, etc. The two biggest guys carry the wounded as far as they can. We go together as a group as far as we can and do the best we can. If we miss the connection, so be it. I implore to be as engaging as I can in light of plan B – who knows what else we might experience that we would have otherwise missed.

:: Predict 500 years from this summer – what will be the impact of your leadership?
We will have catalyzed a team of leaders to do change their day to day thinking to be based around culture and worldview. We will have launched a group of students to seriously pursue cross cultural contexts for life. My children will have impacted some other kids and gained life long friends that will rally around Jesus and His mission for humanity.

:: Describe the riskiest - but not necessarily successful - endeavor you have ever attempted.
Either:
1 - Taking a team of students to Cameroon in the summer of 2006. Risky because of the travel, locale, intimidation effect. It ended up being not too risky at all.
2 – Flying across the country in 2005 to work on a community outreach project with a youth pastor who I had never met face to face.

:: From any experience working with groups (eg. as part of your employment, school settings or student ministry), tell us about the role you played in the group, and how you dealt with any conflict.
I like to think that people are capable of resolving conflict when they need to. Most of the time, I will let it go until it reaches a boiling point at which point, it needs to be addressed because it hasn't worked itself out. I also believe that conflict always needs to be moderated within the context of two points of view - one person is never all the blame.

:: Describe a time when you birthed something (i.e. a club, a business, a team, etc). Experiences from childhood count.
[question via the International Mentoring Network]
I helped birth SPACE – the service/missions component of a student ministry.