Frustration Stations and Feet Washing

It’s Wednesday afternoon of our first official week of the second semester.  Summer here is in full force (thank goodness our fans are as well!).  The weather now makes me pine for a hint of the winter that many of you are experiencing right now.  Nevertheless, we forge ahead, and somehow being able to run on the white-sand beach alongside the ocean water that glistens in the summer sun makes me more equipped to handle the heat.  Go, figure.

The team is back into their ministries again, and I believe that it’s because of the amazing things that the Lord did last week.  As a result of the way in which last semester ended (and reinforced by the attitude that some brought back with them from the break), we decided that some time away for long-term team-building was in order.  Whenever you throw thirteen strangers into one house for any period of time, regardless of where it is, you’re going to find that, sooner or later, tensions build, feelings get hurt, and walls are erected to guard from the pain. 

The same was true with our team, and something needed to be done.  An intervention of sorts, if you will.  So as our leadership team was talking and praying, Gail brought up an exercise that she had done with teams in the past.  In a nutshell, the team would sit in a circle and, one by one, would discuss the things that frustrated them over the past semester.  After each person had a chance to speak their heart, our “talking spoon” would be passed around again and people could respond however they felt led.  Now, without some ground rules this time might have easily turned to WWF Smackdown.  But we instructed each team member that whatever was said needed to be spoken in love for the purpose of reconciliation. 

With confidence that the Lord was up to something incredible, we forged ahead on our first morning on the farm in Colesburg, which is in the Northern Cape.  Each person spoke things that were on their heart – some general frustrations, some pretty specific towards another team member.  But we began to see the Lord soften hearts and break down those walls that some had spend three months building up.  It was absolutely amazing.  You could feel the Spirit move in that time and the unity that followed was the fruit of that movement.

The time the next evening just cemented it all.  After a time of worship and prayer led by Gail and Virgil, they invited everyone to wash each others’ feet, harkening back to the place in the gospels where Jesus washes his disciples’ feet, as a final act of service and challenge for them.  Needless to say, there were some pretty nasty feet that had to be washed, not to mention some pride that had to be swallowed.  But again, the work of the Spirit was tangible at that time as, one by one, each team member sat down in front of one of their co-laborers and performed this simple, yet powerful, act of service.

And so as we returned to J-Bay on Sunday, we returned with a new spirit of unity and reconciliation, made real by the God who is in the business of those exact things.  Not that Christina and I are expecting to have everything go smoothly from here on out, but we are confident that the Lord is, indeed, with us, and are excited that He is for us in our work down here in Jeffreys Bay.