Matt Short

With only one week left of lectures and the teams leaving for outreach nerves are tense and anxiety high. Everyone’s stoked for a change of pace but unsure of what will come of the next two months. And though for the most part I am describe my own feelings there I know that at least 80% of the school’s in the same boat.

The students are in a season of shaking right now. The past three weeks have revealed many things to them. The most obvious things are poor attitudes and spiritual struggles, however many good things have also become evident. There was a word spoken by this past week’s speaker referring to “God shakes what can be shaken, that afterwards only what is unshakable will remain” and this describes exactly what is needed among the school right now.

Last week we had a rather eccentric local pastor speak on the Holy Spirit which raddled peoples cages a bit. Nothing “crazy” or “weird” happened the entire week, even though we may have needed it, but that was more due to the reluctance of the school. Then after the last lecture on Friday Bobby, a student who’s carried a hematoma in his leg since the second week of lectures, tripped tearing the hematoma. Everyone gathered around and began to pray, but soon it became evident that this time wasn’t needed for Bobby’s sake but the school’s. The floor was opened up for people to share, confess things, and ask for forgiveness… and let me tell you, we needed it! The school needed to experience a bit of deeper unity and we found it there, being humble, being open, and straight forward with each other.

I’ll admit, I hardly knew what to do at the time, but as I’ve said before, “I am SO grateful for my staff!” I didn’t want to nor felt the need to “lead” that time. Even though I did share some things the Lord lead me to say, I mostly allowed my staff to run things. They stepped up to the plate and proved their maturity in that time, leading as they felt the Lord’s guidance.

My staff and I later met to share our feelings on what happened that afternoon and that too was a great time. We spent a good couple hours just hanging out, praying for each other, and discussing how to lead the rest of the school in this humility and unity. I LOVE IT! I am going to miss my staff GREATLY when they leave for outreach but have COMPLETE faith in them.

In conclusion, the school has one final week of lectures taught by Graeme and Sabrina Walsh on “Healing and Deliverance” then they’ll clean up the base and leave on the 20th. There are four teams: one going to Thailand, one going to Australia, and two others remaining in NZ reaching out to two different genres of backpackers. My role during these next two months is to provide the teams with pastoral help. I’ll be visiting each team at some point, but I’m not there to lead. I’ll be there to support them, challenge them, encourage them or deal with any major problems if they arise.

Please keep me in your prayers as I attempt to walk in the Lords wisdom and challenge these young adults to move by faith. I am SO grateful for your prayers. Our God has blessed me greatly with a wonderful support group. May the Lord bless you for your commitment and support of this ministry. And glory be to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as these twenty students take the good news into this practically unreached people group, defined by the name Global Nomadic Youth (more commonly known as Backpackers). May the Lord bless them with safe travels and grace as they speak.

Amen

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 13th, 2008 at 5:24 pm and is filed under BDTS '08 Leading. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.