“And then he told them, Go into all the world and preach the Good News to everyone.” Mark 16:15
I'll admit I came into the missionary field late in life. For one thing, I launched into being an adult way too fast. When I was 16 my high school sweetheart and I announced we were going to get married – but not until after we completed college. So I rushed through college, graduating in three years. Two weeks after graduation we got married. Two weeks later I began my business career. Now on the one hand, I would likely do it all over again if for no other reason than the way everything worked out. (And who am I kidding – that was God's plan all the time!).
But in hindsight if there was a World Race back in my day it might have saved me some heartbreak. Over the six years of what would become my “first” marriage we both grew and changed a lot, and ultimately grew apart. I remember the words of a counselor at the time saying that you can't change another person, you can only change yourself. So I changed me as best I could figure out at the time.
The changes led me to Karen – actually she is an angel sent by God via our mutual friend Tom. Tom said he held off introducing me to Karen until he thought I had my life straightened out. Within 9 months we were married, and a little over a year after that along came the first of our three kids. Next thing I knew I was deep into the American Dream – job, mortgage, and church on Sunday.
Fast forward to about two years ago when several of us from the office attended a John Maxwell Company seminar based on John's book The 5 Levels of Leadership. Shortly thereafter my boss decided “we” should teach the course to our management people. I should have seen this one coming: I had worked for John's company for a while years ago and have taught a lot of leadership classes, so it turns out “I” led most of the course for our management team.
One member of the management team at the time was my friend Dave who has long had a heart for missionary work in Liberia – on his own and through our church, 12Stone. Dave asked me to teach the 5 Levels course to an upcoming missionary team who would then teach the material to a team of community and church leaders in Liberia. During the initial training session Dave and I huddled a bit and talked about how to get the most power out of this class in Liberia and I blurted out that if he could get me there I could go to Liberia with the team and teach it myself.
The 2013 12Stone Liberia Mission Team (minus Rodney)
Liberia turned out to be a life-changing experience in many ways. Most too involved to try to include in this blog! But chief among them, it did start me thinking that there was more God could be (should be!) doing through me.
Coincidentally about the same time this was going on Karen got asked to serve as a coach for The World Race. Karen joined Carol, an experienced coach, and together they coached the 2012 E Squad.
That's probably just enough to get you to come back for the next part – the part where I say “Yes” to World Race, wherein you'll hear my friend Dave (from above) say, “But you can't coach. You can't pray!”
