The Power of Shared Experiences
In response to the question in my last post – “the beach or the mountains or somewhere else?” my good friend Tony Voisin answered “honestly wherever my family and friends are. I’d hate to be either place without them.” I love Tony’s answer because it highlights the powerful impact shared experiences have on relationships.
At SpringHill we define a shared experience as any new, challenging and adventuresome activity shared within the context of a small community of people, be it a cabin group, a family or small group of friends. It’s within this context that the building of the lasting foundations of life time relationships happen.
This is why my friend Tony wants to have these experiences with those he loves and it’s why shared experiences are integral to the SpringHill Experience. We feel so strongly about shared experiences that we assure all our campers participate in all camp activities together with their cabin groups. It’s why our ziplines have 6 or 8 lines so entire cabins can go down together. It’s why we have ropes courses that can accommodate an entire cabin and why we have small distinct and creative housing villages. We want to create shared experiences because we believe they build powerful and lasting relationships with others, and most importantly with Jesus.
Over the last few years we’ve also come to believe that these same shared experiences can create power relationship building opportunities for families. We’ve witnessed God using shared experiences to heal wounded families, lay the foundation for lifelong relationships and build families able to weather the storms that will inevitably come. As a result we’ve added additional summer family camp experiences at both our overnight camps.
So plan a family vacation or attend a SpringHill family camp this summer and create some powerful and lasting shared experiences. Your family will be stronger for it.
An Antidote to Signing Day
Jonathan I began writing this post on the most overhyped and, in some ways, the saddest day in our sports calendar – the college football “signing day”, where kids become national heroes based on nothing more than their potential.
So as an antidote for yesterday’s craziness, here’s a snapshot of high school athletics which, no doubt, reflects the experiences of most student-athletes and their parents.
My wife and I have watched lots of high school basketball over the years, but this season has been one of the most enjoyable. The reason is, for the first time, we have two of our sons playing together on the same team.
Our sons, Mitch and Jonathan, play for the Northern Michigan Christian School’s junior varsity team. Mitch plays up front and Jonathan plays guard so they’re often on the court at the same time.
Seeing them interact in such a competitive, high pressure and public situation as a high school basketball game, tells us a lot about their relationship as brothers. And here’s what we seen – they’re completely honest in their communication with each other. We’ve watched them have intense discussions after a bad play in a way only brothers can and we’ve also seen them affirm each other after a good play with what can only be described as brotherly love (not a bad model for our working relationships).
Mitch We’ve also have daily talks around the kitchen table about their team, the practices and the games. There have been challenges, heartbreak and victories, all of which they’re sharing together and we’re sharing with them as parents (what will I do in a few years when this is all over?).
So if you’ve been doubting the sanity of high school sports, remember ESPN has nothing on local, home town high school sports and the lifelong learning experiences they give young people like our sons Mitch and Jonathan.
The Blessings of Integrating Our Personal and Professional Lives
Saturday night Denise and I had a chance to bring parts of our two families together – our immediate and our SpringHill families. In particular we had 18 members of the SpringHill family from the Indianapolis area join us to watch our daughter Christina dance in her first Butler ballet – The Nutcracker.
We had dinner together at a local Butler hangout, Binkley’s, and then went to the evening show at Clowes Hall on Butler’s campus. For Denise and me the entire evening was a blessing and a blast.
Afterwards I thought about how so many people seek a separation between their work and their personal lives. I understand this desire but not always the degree people can take it.
Because there’s something wonderful (maybe sacred is a better word?) when there’s a healthy integration between our work and personal lives. It’s what Denise and I experienced Saturday night. We experienced a great blessing when SpringHill staff, board members and other supporters enthusiastically celebrated with us Christina’s first Butler Ballet.
And it turns out to be more than just one evening, because we have these incredible friends who now know Christina, live near her and will be available to her (and us) during the rest of her years at Butler.
And this would not be possible if I kept a strict separation between my work and personal life.
Yes, it’s healthy to be able to step away from our work, but to build artificial walls between work and personal life isn’t, and often keeps us from receiving the blessings of an integrated life.
To strike the right balance between these two parts of our life requires wisdom, prayer and reflection. But when the right balance is struck, as it was on Saturday evening, it’s hard to imagine living any other way.
Telling the Story
This past week I had the chance to do a part of my job that I just love – telling the SpringHill story by giving golf cart tours of our camps. Actually I got to do it twice. The reason I love doing tours is because we don’t just show off our property, instead we use the property to “tell the story” and show how we create the SpringHill Experience.And what made these two tours even more fun were the people I had the chance to share the SpringHill story with.
The first tour was with my former boss, mentor and longtime friend from Steelcase, John Fynewever. He made an effort to reconnect with me by offering to ride his Harley up to Evart to see SpringHill. I learned more from John about organizational leadership than anyone else I worked for at Steelcase. So for part of our tour I was able to share with him how we’ve implemented many of the leadership practices he taught me.
The second tour was for my parents and their life-long college friends Art and Judy Koller and Ken and Jeneanne Reasor. Like John, the Koller’s and the Reasor’s have never been to SpringHill and didn’t know much about our work, so the tour provided me an opportunity to introduce them to SpringHill.
My Mom and Dad (left) with the Reasor's and Koller's Because my goal for any tour’s for people to understand SpringHill I look to see whether at some point they “catch” the essence of our ministry. I know this is happening because people will start to anticipate what I’m going to say at a given stop on the tour. Thankfully in both cases I believe we meet the goal.
So as summer comes to a close it blessed me to be able to “tell the story” to longtime friends and in process, maybe make new friends for SpringHill.
