Get out of the boat
We finished the first week of the fall 2026 co-hort at the Sow Project, a side note: a really great week, however it was also stressful as hell for everyone.
We had a whole new group of students this week with new personalities and tons of possibilities. I shared an interesting analogy with a friend this week, that every co-hort of students reminds me so much of the movie, Bad News Bears. It’s a divine, perfectly cast co-hort of humans. Each student is completely different from the other, unique, amazing but similar, like the movie each is connected with a common love for food (baseball) and the deep need and desire to belong to something bigger than themselves.
The uncomfortableness of the first week for everyone, really makes you want to stay in the boat.
Keeping everything manageable and guarding what we each have, a false sense of control, but a safe measure for everyone, and really just waiting until day two or three for things to settle down a touch before deciding what's safe and comfortable.
I really do, deeply understand that feeling of uncertainty more than I’d like to admit, but I've learned something important about prayer over the last year. Sometimes you start praying because you want God to make things feel easier and more manageable. But maybe, he is calling us to do the uncomfortable, something that feels impossible to strengthen us and get us out of the boat.
This really is the entire story of growth and faith, because Peter wasn't standing beside a calm lake when Jesus called him out. The weather he experienced was completely bottomed out, the boat felt like the smartest and safest place to stay, because the environment was totally unmanageable, and although it felt impossible, he went anyway.
I really don't believe we need to turn this weekly story into a theological lesson.
In life sometimes you are simply being asked to trust, with all of who you are, to just take the next step even when you don’t know where you are going to land, or how this will turn out.
That's what starting the Sow Project was all about this week for most of our Bad News Bears.
The new students marched through the door and landed safely in the Sow Project kitchen. I have no idea yet how all of their stories and talents will come together, but by the end of the first week, something beautiful has already happened.
People who didn't know each other Monday were laughing together, sharing flavors, dreams, past experiences and cooking ideas. Everyone was learning as they were working and they started finding a rhythm and confidence within the kitchen.
I found myself thinking about that boat again, and maybe the goal isn't to get to a place where this work stops being scary, possibly we are supposed to care enough that it scares us sometimes. The Sow Project as a mission has never really made much sense from inside the boat anyway, absolutely everything worthwhile about this work requires stepping into something before knowing exactly how it will turn out, so we'll start another week, and we will solve whatever needs solving and we will worry about some things we probably shouldn't give a second consideration, and just keep going. Because if you genuinely feel called to do something, you have to get out of the way and get out of the boat.
