Guest post by Ryan Borowicz
In college, I had a point guard that I truly loved playing with. As a shooting guard who pretty much couldn’t do a whole lot else but come off of screens and shoot 3’s, I had to rely on others to get me open. So after running through a maze of screens, I would often flash open for only a brief second behind the 3 point line and have just moments to catch, square up, decide whether or not to shoot, and then actually shoot. But what I loved about my point guard was that he would tell me before I caught the ball and as he was passing it to me, if I was open and had the shot. So as I was in the act of catching, without even seeing the rim usually, he would yell “SHOT RYAN” so that all I had to do was find the rim and shoot it. I TRUSTED him so much that most of the time I would begin my shooting motion even before I was squared up because he could see my defender and knew if I was going to be able to get off a quality shot or not.
Recently, I had an off-site meeting with the four other members of my leadership team. They include my part-time assistant, and three volunteers who have been involved with this ministry since the beginning. Since all of them have young families and demanding jobs, I usually try to slip our meetings in over lunch during the work week, as well as accomplish as much as possible over the phone and email. But I really felt that going into the new year we really needed to sit down face to face, pray together, and just discuss things without being in a time crunch.
So we planned a meeting in which the families could also be involved having some fun at a local indoor waterpark while we were meeting. After a good three plus hour meeting, we joined the spouses and kids in the waterpark and then all went out for pizza afterwards. It was a great day and a productive meeting. But the real value of the meeting came from my team members being willing to challenge me. These people are part of this team because I TRUST them…plain and simple, just like I trusted my point guard. Of course, they have a passion for using sports to reach out to people, but what I value most about them is that they are willing to challenge me and push me out of my comfort zone, which recently, had gotten a little too big. I’d been spending the past few weeks planning things that either we have done before or things that I knew would come off well, but not necessarily things that would challenge me to step out in faith. But after our meeting, as well as some challenging by my wife about my own personal growth, I took some steps this week to make some things happen that I had been simply putting off for no good reason other than complacency.
So if you are choosing people to be part of your team or looking for someone new to give you a different perspective, don’t just look for someone you have things in common with or that you like. In fact, you might want to even look for someone that doesn’t know the first thing about sports. Instead, choose someone you TRUST that isn’t afraid to challenge you or push you to grow beyond your current, self-imposed, borders.
