by Eddie Pipkin

Photo by Pipkin

I had the good fortune to visit Costa Rica for 10 days – go if you get a chance.  It’s a wonderful country filled with wonderful people and wonderful wildlife.  The animals are spectacular.  But seeing them requires more than just careful planning and good luck.  It also takes expertise and familiarity with the terrain.  We booked multiple excursions with tour guides, and we speculated later about how many things we would have missed if we hadn’t made the decision to enlist an expert.  An experienced tour guide can make the difference between a good trip and a great trip, and that’s as true for ministry programming as it is for travel to exotic destinations.

The picture included with this article is one I took of a sloth we spotted on the grounds of the hotel where we were staying in La Fortuna.  This was a wild sloth.  He was not in a cage, and we were very lucky to see him this close up.  I use the term “spotted” loosely.  We had help.  We had heard reports he might be in this area of the thick treescape, and we had searched for him for a day-and-a-half to no avail.  One of the resort staff members who knew we were on the hunt came wheeling up in a golf cart to tell us our prize had been observed down low on a tree trunk and to give us a lift down the hill.  The area where we found him was an area we had checked repeatedly.  If he had been up high in the canopy, or if he had not been moving, it would have been impossible to see him.  Without a little help, we never would have had this encounter.

Although we did see other animals on our own as the week went by (like the capuchin monkeys who were animatedly looking for a handout), we calculated that without guidance we would likely have seen less than half the animals we were eventually able to observe.

It is hard to beat the wisdom of lived experience.  The insights of someone who has been there before are invaluable.

One of the excursions we undertook was a night hike, in the dark through the outer edge of the tropical cloud forest, in the rain.  We might have seen an animal if we had tripped over it.  Our guide, however, before the night was over, shined his light on an eyelash viper hanging from a banana bunch, a porcupine scaling a tree trunk, some colorful frogs in the underbrush, and a toucan perched in the dense branches overhead.  He knew their behaviors and their favorite spots.  We benefitted from his knowledge.

Ministry works in the same way.  The knowledge of others can enlighten our path, help us see things we would never see otherwise, and protect us from unexpected danger.

There are no missions we are liable to undertake that have not been undertaken by someone else before.  To quote the wise and venerable Solomon . . .

What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.  (Ecclesiastes 1:9)

It is one of the enduring mysteries of the human heart (or perhaps head) that we insist on reinventing the wheel.  Anything ministry-wise we trying to figure out how to do, someone has figured out before us.  Probably exactly what we’re trying to do.  Yet we so often are so confident of our own capabilities and ideas that we plunge ahead with limited consultation or research beyond that of our own regular confidantes.  Sure, we will have a distinct context in which we are working, and we may even have a unique take on an old familiar thing, but even in those cases the insights of someone who has done similar work or had similar experiences will be invaluable.

And if you have truly conceived a new idea, unique in all history, we definitely all want to hear about it!

On that note, in fact, it is worth remembering that shared experience is by definition a two-way street.  We will seek out the wisdom of those who have already travelled where we are headed, and we will share our own travels with those who seek to go where we have previously been.

Sometimes the insights can keep us from making dangerous mistakes.  I received this advice: “Don’t show your teeth to the capuchin mokeys.  They take it as a sign of aggression and will react accordingly.”  Good to know.  Also, I was warned of a slippery trail section in the wet and dark, so that I knew to be extra careful.  Also, that howler mokeys will throw their poop at you: best not to stand directly under them.  A person who has such knowledge is keen to share it — they want to keep you from doing harm to yourself or others.  I used to say to a youth leader I was training, “Look, sometimes you are going to pitch an idea to me that sounds great to you, and I’m just going to say, ‘No, we’re not doing that,’ and the reason will be that I’ve made mistakes every way they can be made so I’m going to save you from the same mistake.”

We are loathe to ask for help from others, but think about how willing you are to offer help to someone who needs it.  It is uniquely fulfilling to share our wisdom with those who can clearly benefit from our knowledge and experience.  We love to be useful in this way.  It is a gift we are eager to share with others.  We should remind ourselves that people often feel exactly the same way about extending their wisdom and experience to us.

It is good to get beyond the boundaries of our own self-contained worlds to seek out such wisdom and experience.  One of the benefits in expanding our network of contacts is that we have a wider range of organizational narratives from which to draw.  Such knowledge extends beyond denominations, geographic territories, socio-economic situations, and life stages.  One of the gifts of technology is that it allows us so many opportunities to expand our contacts.

Of course, while direct conversations are the best way to get insights that can help us, the Internet is filled with articles and blogs that empower meaningful research, and there are plenty of books out there for a reasonable price that deal with every ministry subject under the heavens.  Take the time to find the one that aligns with your current project, read it, and share it with your team.  If nothing else, it will confirm that you are on the right track.

How do you do at turning to others for insights when you are undertaking a new project or trying to solve an intractable problem?  Do you have the healthy habit of turning to an expert guide or do you tend to wing things or on your own, consulting with the same old inner circle?  How might your next endeavor be different if you widened the available arc of wisom and expertise?  Share your thoughts below.

And what wild, exotic animals have you been fortuate enough to see in this wide, wonderful world  I’d love to hear about those, too!