Soul Care for Teammates
by Archie Chankin (Pioneer Bible Translators) and Andy Johnson (Director of Worker Care)
The two of us – Archie Chankin and Andy Johnson – were teammates on the field from 2001-2008. This spanned two countries, two languages learned, and a whole lot of water under a lot of bridges. We are both blessed to get to keep our heads and hearts wrapped up in global mission after we transitioned back to America (Archie through Pioneer Bible Translators and Andy through MRN). In the course of our roles, we frequently get to work alongside teams, both those in formation and those on the field. We’d like to speak today to the ways in which teammates can provide soul care for each other, leaning heavily on our experiences of actually being teammates and the perspective that two decades of being friends and coworkers in the Kingdom can bring.
We’d begin by saying that expectations matter. We encourage teammates only to expect from each other what they’ve set their team up to provide. From the outset, teams need to consider questions like:
What kind of team are you?
Are you a work group only?
Do you provide spiritual community for each other?
Particularly, are you each other’s primary outlet for worship?
Do you interact well with each other socially? If not, what would it take to get there?
Expecting more from your teammates than you have committed to give each other is unfair and only sets you up for disappointment and frustration.
Truthfully, we have seen a broad spectrum of teams and commitment levels both thrive and blow up. Commitments to love each other, to forgive in advance, and to assume the best of each other’s motives are some of the trademarks of teams that stand the test of time and opposition from the enemy. We don’t necessarily believe that everyone on a team must be good buddies before launching (or, frankly, even like each other that much), but you must be committed to loving each other as Jesus loves you, or the enemy will gain a foothold at some point in your working relationships.
In our setting, we chose to work to be community on multiple levels. Our team life included work, social, and spiritual commitments. This was beautiful and trust-producing when times were peaceful; during times of team conflict, it was challenging on many levels, as social conflict could lead to work conflict which could lead to spiritual conflict. However, tough times were also ultimately trust-producing as we sought each other out through intentional reconciliation. The pressure cooker of team life on the field provides ample opportunity for learning and practicing godly reconciliation!
Let’s zero in on a couple of specific ways in which we provided soul care for each other; first, our weekly men’s prayer times. From the moment we committed to be team (which includes a time during grad school when we had no clue about, well, most anything), the men (and women, too – we just weren’t invited to those!) met weekly for prayer and accountability.
There were both spiritual and social components to this time together, both of which were essential. We always had food, and we always had coffee. We almost never jumped straight into hard conversations, but always caught up with each other, with our favorite sports teams (we lived with spotty dial up internet, so news was sometimes a challenge to access), and with funny stories about life in a west African village. Having connected with each other, we then turned to more significant conversations, which varied by season. Sometimes we worked together through a resource, other times we zeroed in on a few questions we asked each other every week, while other times were more random than planned.
Looking back on that time, we’d say:
Consistency mattered. Showing up for each other (especially when we didn’t feel like it) created trust.
Connection time was not wasted time but essential to developing a trusted space for profound conversation.
Opportunities for confession among believers are essential, particularly for cross-cultural workers. It also meant that the same small group of people kept providing a space for growth when it would otherwise have stagnated.
Being faithful and trustworthy in one area of life (for instance, these weekly prayer times) grew trust in seemingly unrelated areas of our life together.
Before moving on, one quick note about welcoming new teammates: they cannot simply be parachuted into an existing system. After Archie and his family returned to the States, I (Andy) proved to be a challenging teammate to new workers joining our team on the field. I assumed (there’s that word grandpa warned me about…) that they would plug-and-play into the systems already in place. Instead, we eventually needed outside mentors to help us see that forcing old rhythms onto a changed system was not helpful! In fact, our efforts at soul care for new teammates in the ways we cared for old ones wound up hurting them and setting our relationship back.
Our second area of soul care sounds a little funny – conflict. As we mentioned earlier, team life provides loads of opportunity for reconciliation, which is hard, humbling (humiliating??) work. On the advice of those who shaped our team, we talked about different methods for conflict resolution before we went. We had any number of beautiful lists, matrices, and flow charts to help. Frankly, though, none of them is useful without a recognition that the relationship is worth the work of preserving.
The hard work of seeking forgiveness, of granting it, and of being reconciled is a part of soul care. If teammates are attempting anything worth doing, it will eventually lead to conflict. In those moments, engaging in the spiritual practices necessary to truly forgive and be reconciled stretches many new workers in surprising ways. The sad truth is that Christians living within their own culture, with an abundance of friends and churches and circles of relationships to choose from, rarely consider the preservation of any one relationship (outside of family) worth the work to reconcile. Landing on the field with a team may be the first time that work has been required of a new worker.
A related word about a really great word: decathecting. This is the process of withdrawing from someone emotionally (and, we would add, spiritually) in anticipation of a loss. This is something teammates often experience in the lead up to someone’s departure from the field (whether they are the one leaving or staying). Whether consciously or not, previously close coworkers, who often did the work to maintain relationship, find themselves tempted to withdraw just when they need each other the most! Pushing back against this tendency is a mini-rebellion, an act of defiance that continues to push each other toward spiritual growth right up through the end of being coworkers on the field.
A decision can be made to trust and love each other at the outset of team life; maintaining and developing that trust takes work. That said, the soul care that trusted teammates who have persevered through difficulties together provide can mean the difference between clinging tightly to the Father throughout or stumbling in our walk.
May the Father grant you the grace to experience the soul-strengthening privilege of providing and experiencing soul-care within a team!
Peace.
Archie and Andy