Mentoring Lessons- CreativitySample

The Counterintuitive Place To Begin

When starting a new project have you ever considered beginning in the hardest place?

Perhaps you have access to facilities, staff, and funding in one part of your city. It makes sense to give birth to your vision there. Right? No! If you desire a movement to result from your idea, the easiest location is likely the poorest choice.

It is better to start a new idea in a place where there are no facilities, staff or funding. Why? A strategy you believe can be used by everyone can go from the least likely location to the most likely location, but seldom from the most likely to the least likely. This is because those in the least likely will say, ‘if we had your facilities, staff, and money, we could do this, but we don’t, so we can’t.’

Several of us believed a sport and play strategy had emerged that could change the world. We searched for one of the least likely locations for success. We decided on a region in which the body of Christ had never integrated sport and faith with children, had no equipment, no facilities, no staff, and the local leaders believed there was little to no chance of success. But they were willing to give it a try.

The small number of volunteers in this region tried the impossible with outcomes far beyond expectations. Tens of thousands of children took part. Groups worked together for the first time.

Within five years, approximately 175 countries and islands had caught the vision and were using this strategy to serve millions of children. If it could work in the hardest location, it could work anywhere. Most locations also had limited facilities, staff, sports equipment, and funding.

Where in your community or city is the hardest locations? Should you pioneer and model your strategy there?

Acts 20:35

In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive’.

Movement thinking is counterintuitive. For real growth, start strategies in the hardest places; then they can work anywhere. A movement isn’t taught, it’s caught!