I’ve been working too hard lately—deadlines, meetings, all too much.
So I’m escaping to the beach with some girlfriends this weekend. No casual acquaintances, these wonderful women formed the teaching team for a class at our church during the past school year. Pam, Wendy, Tahna and I will head to Florida for some relaxing fun this weekend. Our husbands and kids will hold down the fort while we moms are gone. What fun.
From Sept. to April, we taught a class, based on my book Listen at our church, Willow Creek Community Church. While I did some of the teaching, I also mentored the other three—giving them opportunity to teach all or part of the class, giving them feedback and suggestions.
We had fun, we learned. The women in our class loved it and learned so much about God and his amazing plan for their lives. But it was work—preparing to teach, organizing details.
So often I find that we women pull together in teams to collaborate and get things done. Even as we work in community, we are task-focused. And sometimes we forget to celebrate before moving on to the next task, the next thing to do.
So now, we are taking a weekend to refresh, reflect. To remember what God has done and be grateful in the extreme. And to dream about what next year’s class might look like.
The cool part about this class is that we put the audio tapes on the Internet (I should say, Tahna did, since she is the technical genius among us) so that people all over the country could experience the class. Which they did. How cool is that? When I traveled and led a retreat in Arkansas last winter, the team put on the class without me—and I met some women who had been downloading our audio and learning along with us. Tahna is a great teacher and an amazing administrator and very talented technically. She’s artistic and fun—what a great part of our team.
Wendy thought she was there to teach—but realized that she was a part of our team because God wanted her to learn to listen. Makes sense, since that was the name of the book we were studying. She is great with details. It’s her condo we’re staying in this weekend.
Pam continued to unpack an amazing teaching gift. I see God working in her life, honing this gift and opening doors for her to develop it. In fact, she’ll be teaching next year, while I take a break to just write.
Mostly, this year of teaching at Willow has been a chance for me to model what it means to use your gifts for the kingdom.
When Jesus sent out his disciples to minister, he did not send any of them alone. I think that’s important: ministry works best when we work together in teams. And also, celebration works best in teams, too.
Our girlfriends escape will be a time to rest, to have fun, but also to celebrate what God has done. To remember and notice what God is doing in each of our lives, as our gifts unfold and we serve the body, not alone but as a team.

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