Strategy & Spirit

Arriving on the small island

On our previous team about 4 years ago a very exciting thing happened.  Women wanted to study with our teammates.  Naturally, our teammates, who had only been out for about a year came to us for advice.  What should we study?  Where should we begin?  What do you recommend? Do you have any tips?  I remember the feeling of being slightly overwhelmed by the questions and caught off guard.  I had no good answers.  I had suggestions, things others had done in the past, some possibilities of things they could try, but nothing more definite.  Though I had lived on the islands for many years and had more knowledge and cultural understanding, we had no plan—no way to transfer that knowledge and experience into a viable way to help others who are learning.  In short, we had no strategy.  Thankfully, we serve a very forgiving Boss who works through our failures. The women found a way forward that was blessed, but I never forgot that feeling.  They came asking for a plan and I had none.  I was not prepared.

Palm Sunday!

Fast forward to last month.  In the intervening years our leadership and teams on the islands have worked hard to create a strategy—a plan.  So when my new teammates came to me with the exciting news that they had some friends who wanted to learn, I could confidently give them a plan.  What a difference between then and now!  How thankful I am for a strategy.

But there is something in me that rebels against strategy.  Our hopes will not be achieved by to-do lists.  In fact, they are impossible hopes.  We can not make them happen with our own strength and abilities. There is no strategy that can achieve them.  The only way for them to be achieved is through supernatural power.  No strategy can harness that power, for it is not like light or gravity.  It cannot be manipulated or made to bend to our will.  In fact, as soon as we try to do these things, this supernatural power slips through our grasp.  So then, isn’t there something wrong in a strategy?  Isn’t it trying to do just that—manipulate in our own strength what cannot be manipulated?  And yet, I find myself appreciating having a strategy.  Without a strategy, it feels haphazard, unprepared, and irresponsible.  How do the two work together?

I was reminded in prayer of a vision a prophet of long ago had.  He was brought to a great valley full of dry bones.  He was told to prophecy over the bones.  He did so and the bones came together and flesh was put on them and a great army stood before him, but there was no breath in them.  Then he was told to prophecy again.  This time for the breath to fill them.  And so he did, and so it did, and there before him was a living breathing vast army.  Thinking about this story it occurred to me there may be an answer to my question.  That strategy and spirit go together.  For in the same way the breath gives life to the body, the spirit gives life to the strategy.  A strategy without spirit is lifeless and dead, but form and breath together make a great army.

So I’ve found some peace with strategy.  It is the form, the structure, the body.  But without that supernatural power—without the breath of life—it is nothing.  

Sunset from small island

PRAYERS ANSWERED
We were thankful for the visiting doctor and the opportunity to see how the medical work on the islands continues to change. Our travels to and from the smallest island went well and we had a very nice conference with teammates thinking about strategy and I believe the breath of life was there too! We also really enjoyed connecting and having fun with some colleagues on other islands whom we don’t get to see often.

PRAYERS REQUESTED
We said good bye to our short-term teammate.  She was a precious part of our team for the last month and will be sorely missed.  Pray for her as she processes all that she has experienced this past month and as she prepares to get married in June.   Pray that the coming of Easter will give us many good opportunities to share with friends. Our team is spending some time focused on local language learning (we do these pushes to keep us moving toward better fluency). Pray for Megan as she organizes and tries to motivate the team in the local language (which isn’t always a fun or encouraging activity for everyone). We’ve all been feeling a little sick and more tired— pray for health and good rest. We got to sit down and talk with the team leaders on the other islands, pray for a clear vision for each island in the coming years and for all the various workers as they seek direction for what those years will look like.