Going Below the Surface

I have had many friendships over
the years. I love making new
friends. I have also been hurt by many
friends and new relationships. Some of
the times when I have been hurt have been nothing more than my feelings being
bruised. There have been other times in
relationships where I have been wounded very deeply. The pain I have experienced in relationships over the years has
caused me to have a wall-building defense response when I enter into new
relationships.

I seem to have
developed a reaction to people who want to go into deeper relationship. I desire to go deeper, but I place walls and
try to keep things on the surface. I
know that I do this to protect my heart.
I understand that in all relationships there needs to be a time of
building trust in order to go to the place of deeper community. I have come to realize that to get to a
place of deeper community it always requires me to take steps of risk. I have to put myself out there a bit and
trust people.

You may wonder
why I am sharing all of this. I think that these team blogs are a place where
each of you, along with your team leaders, can begin to build trust. Our desire as leaders at AIM is that your
teams would begin to build community through these team blogs.

I will be honest
with you, I have seen great words of encouragement, some prayer requests, and
some very active members on each team.
On the other side of things I don’t think that I have seen great
involvement from everyone. Maybe it is
that most of you don’t know what to say.
Or maybe it is that we are not ready to put ourselves out there for
everyone to read about. I am not sure
what it is, but I do know that before the end of this summer you are going to
be living 24/7 with the people on your team.
You will be facing many challenges together. You are going to have days when you are going to desperately
need the people on your team.

When you come to training camp we will put your team
through team building, team time, and a bunch of other things to make sure that
you become the team that God wants you to be.
We will not let you keep everything at a surface level. So if you know that is where your team is
going to end up, why not start working towards it now? I want to challenge you to begin sharing
your hopes, fears, prayer requests, and the ways that God is working in your
life with the members of your team. I
know that God is working in each of you individually and corporately as
well. My prayer is that you will begin
going beyond surface relationships. I
pray that you will take the risk and trust one another, so that when you arrive
here in Georgia for training camp your team will have a depth of love and
relationship with each other that will speak the Gospel to the nations that you
are going to.