[TEAMspinella] Assessing the damages, budgeting for the costs

Do you remember the story about the person who built a tower without counting the cost? Well, started to, anyway?

When I was growing up in Dallas, Texas, there was a tower downtown that continually remained unfinished. My dad would tell me about how the ambitious builder had even gone so far as to gather precious furnishings from around the world for his tower, but ran out of money before he finished the structure. There it stood, a useless and expensive place marker amid the Dallas skyline.

In Taiwan, we would frequently walk to the natural science museum, about 15 blocks from our house. Over the years it became a rather nice walk through a parkway over a buried canal, but we would look out at a large 14 story or so building that went unfinished for many years. 

After the big earthquake, I actually watched large digger shovels with jack hammers on the end of their cranes destroy a condemned 20 story building floor by floor from the top down, while large trucks carried away the debris until it was only a mound of rubble in a very large hole in the ground. (To start, a large crane would lift a couple digger shovels/scoops/bulldozers onto the top of the building, then they would take it from there. They collected the steel rebar from the concrete into a giant wad for recycling.) Unfortunately we had a perfect view (and earful) from the TGIFriday's next door that offered the lunchtime hamburger special.

There were other buildings that never got off the ground. In Taiwan, you have to sell some 25% of the units in a building before you can begin construction. I watched a beautiful lion dance, which must not have conferred enough good luck, because that site was never built, instead becoming our favorite fruit market for years in a large, open-sided temporary building.

I think Laura feared our unfinished basement might be such a project as well this last year.

But in many ways, the readiness assessments TEAM does for people passionate about and called to international ministry are the same. Every one has a beautiful end in mind, but not all are ready to make the journey. In doing assessment we look at testimonies, references, personal histories, and personal inventories. We do interviews, spend time, and seek to listen well. But in the end, we don't know for sure which journeys will result in people staying, flourishing, and contributing, we can only assess the risks. The recommendations we make run the gamut from obvious to greatly uncertain. We know that God can do anything, but we also know that every journey involves sacrifice, and some risks in life are better not taken just like some risks in the financial markets.

For the past year, I've been responsible to lead the TEAM Counseling Office's part in these assessments. It's a hard job, but I am part of a good team with a great heart to care for each person and family in their journey, no matter how TEAM as an organization participates or intersects that journey. We need your intercession as we relate to applicants, appointees, missions coaches, appointee mentors, ministry area leaders, sending communities, and all the other partners and players in these journeys.

When we make an assessment, we make one of five recommendations: yes, on the path, not now, can't tell, or no. As you might guess, the middle options are actually the hardest. If there is a path, we need to say what still needs to happen. If not now, we need to say what would have to change. If we say we can't tell, we need to say what else we need to better assess readiness. And then we want to walk with people through that messy middle. (Well, no is not an easy recommendation to give either!) Father God is at work in all of us. None of us can get by on our own--I believe we all need grace and mercy more than anything, So we are left with assessing readiness and then communicating as well as possible what readiness might look like and how one might get there, knowing that we don't know what we don't know and so forth and so on.

Thanks for sustaining us as we seek to be good contributors to this part of the journey as well.

Yours in the one who keeps us, Steve and Laura

PS A big shout out to anyone who's celebrating 10/10--a big holiday in Taiwan. We especially miss Taiwan this time of year.

By the way, the young adult Spinellas (and now Forceys) are doing well these days, John and Sarah Forcey in College Station, TX, working, teaching, and studying in their PhD programs, Joey and Laura Spinella in Austin, where Laura is the only anglo on a Chinese research team at UT and Joey is a product marketing specialist for National Instruments, and Robert Spinella here in Colorado Springs working for an optometrist. Later this month my wife Laura will be making a big trip east with her mom to see her mom's brother and family while I stay here with Laura's dad, staying up as late as we want, but eating more meagerly ;-).

Steve and Laura Spinella

street: 1930 Springcrest Rd, CO Springs 80920

mail: 9685 Otero Ave, Colorado Springs, CO 80920

Steve cell 719.355.4809, Laura cell 832.755.4261
TEAM, PO Box 969, Wheaton, IL 60187, 800 343-3144
<spinella@alumni.rice.edu> <lauraspinella@alumni.rice.edu>

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