It’s more than a bike ride.
I’ve said it lots of times. The FRONT RANGE TOUR starts tomorrow, and we’ll say it to ourselves. We ride bikes, but the FREEDOM TOUR is more than a bike ride.
What makes it different? I thought of four key words: Service. Leadership. Share. Sacrifice.
However, almost any bike tour would involve those concepts. The distinguishing feature of the FREEDOM TOUR is a culture defined by combining these words into two central phrases.
Servant Leader. Shared Sacrifice.
Servant leaders operate from humility, confident enough to allow others to go first. They don’t point the way, they walk the difficult road, do the tough, thankless tasks, and invite others to follow. Servant leaders encourage. Their goal is building up and empowering others to be and do their best.
Servant leaders seek the success of the team, and don’t care who receives credit.
Shared sacrifice characterizes a team whose members carry more than their share of the load. They look for things that need doing and ways they can help. They seek to step outside their comfort zone in ways that advance the mission.
The “shared” part matters. On this kind of team, members know their teammates have their backs. They know they’re working together to write a story bigger than themselves, a story worth the effort.
When a team of authentic servant leaders embraces a spirit of shared sacrifice, remarkable things happen. It’s not easy (see “sacrifice”) and there’s not always a lot of glory (see “servant”). It’s often long-term, which requires disciplined, principled leadership and the encouragement that comes from willingly sharing the load.
It’s possible to ride bikes without this stuff. It’s even possible, I suppose, to have a big, successful bike tour without them. But we’re doing something different.
We’re bringing hope and freedom to some children born into despair and slavery. We’re shining light into a dark corner of the world. We’re building a community in which people try to build relationships centered on Jesus.
We’re changing the world, for 22 kids and for ourselves.