I’m not sure how many of you will know this but the summer before last I was applying to go on a team to Canada with a christian organization. It was quite a lengthy process, first of all I had to fill out a pretty in depth application form, I then had an interview with two of the local reps, at this point everything was going great, the guys from the organization seemed pretty excited for having be on board and the interview went really well.
I then had to have an interview on Skype with the workers in Canada, it was a bit awkward but I got to tell them why I wanted to do the team and they got to tell me more about it.
The thing is though that was the last I heard from them in months. After 3 or 4 months I guessed the application had been unsuccessful and I forgot all about it. I then got contacted by the guy who runs the Northern Ireland team and he was interested in having me on board here at home. It was only when we met up for coffee that he discovered that no one had bothered to tell me that my application hadn’t been successful. I wanted to know why not and the reason he gave was interesting…the guys in Canada didn’t feel I had enough passion… my thoughts on this might be a bit biased but the way I see it is that they just wanted me to put on the big youth worker act. They wanted me to be over the top loud and use phrases like…On fire…Shining Light….a real heart for young people etc. I don’t like these things so I didn’t say them, I told them how I thought God would teach and use me a lot, I told them that I thought really great things could come from me being on the team, heck I told them I was willing to move to Canada but that’s not what they were interested in.
It is safe to say I was not interested in joining the Northern Ireland team, I didn’t want to use a year of my life in an organization that weren’t organised enough to tell me what was going on. I was planning on taking a gap year, it’s actually pretty important that you know what is happening so you can plan around it. Since this I have been put off the idea of doing something like this because I know i’m not the kind of person they are looking for, I can’t take part in all the cliches and if you can’t do that, well then good luck trying to find somewhere who will have you.
