A DAY OF TEAM BUILDING

Written by Mark Haskin

We started the day by hoping into a church van and headed up to Grace Adventures, a wonderful camp that has been doing youth and team building ministry for years.  Our leader for the day did a great job helping us think through what it will take for us to be the best team possible as we minister to others.  We set some expectations and personal goals for the day as well as goals for each specific team building exercise we attempted.

Some of the expectations for the day were:

• Learn how to work together knowing we each have different leadership types
• Know that we are all in this together
• Have a common sense of mission
• Listen to each other, not just what is being said, but what is not being said, which was explained as being a ‘Jesus Listener’

Our personal goals were:

• Even when I am afraid, I’m going to go for it!
• Push myself farther than I would like to
• Keep getting better at the task at hand
• Give everything I’ve got and encourage others to do the same

It was very helpful that we would revisit our goals and keep them as our focus point throughout the day as it helped us continually evaluate whether or not we were keeping our goals in mind, not just accomplishing the task at hand.  We learned that there was a difference between the two, accomplishing our goals and completing the task.  For one of our tasks our goal was to have effective communication between the members of our team and the task was to get from one side of a “river” to the other by using planks of wood and bricks.  We completed the task, but our communication was not as effective as it could have been during the entire activity, but by the end, it had improved greatly.

At the end of our day at Grace Adventures we each wrote down things that are going to be important to keep in mind and practice during our summer here at Calvary.

They were:

• Be flexible
• Continually challenge ourselves, wisely challenge each other and be open to accept those challenges
• Incorporating everyone on the team into what we are doing
• Talk about what we are thinking and what our plans are for the next step

Some other highlights for the day: On the ropes course, completing an element that we were not sure we could do. Completing our ‘log across the river’ puzzle

Experiencing this all with “Stand in Jake”.  I didn’t mention this earlier, but we brought a Stand in Jake since the real Jake was in Israel during our time at Grace.  We brought along a life-size foam man and named him Jake so he could experience all of the team building exercises with us.  Taking him along on the ropes course as well as the ‘logs across the river’ exercise served as a metaphor making us include a team member even if they were not able to come up with ideas or physically help with the problem solving.
All in all the day was a great success, we met all of our expectations for the day, grew closer at a team, learned how to work together and how our different leadership styles complement one another.  I am very excited for the rest of the summer as grow closer as friends and a team and as we work together to show God’s love to others.