Building Integrity for Life:
See Also Fusion Maxims at http://www.gofusion.ws/Fusion-Maxims
And Fusion Videos at http://www.gofusion.ws/Videos
Fusion builds a young person’s personal responsibility and self confidence in themselves and their team through the use of significant tasks. That is, completing tasks that are of significant purpose or scope. These types of responsibilities bring gratitude and praise from one’s peers, leaders or society. However when one fails to complete such a task, others suffer as a consequence. Learning to complete significant tasks is no small thing; the Bible is clear on this issue: if a person can be trusted with the small tasks or responsibilities, then ultimately they can be trusted with great things (Luke 16; 19).
Many times these types of tasks may actually seem menial or of little consequence to the one assigned to accomplish them but failure to follow through can have disastrous results both for the person charged with the task and those the task impacts.
Unfortunately in today’s society many young people have not learned to take responsibility for their own actions, let alone being responsible enough to see to the needs of others. Many well meaning parents have interceded for their children when they failed to complete a significant task; only to see later that their son or daughter learned nothing from the incident that should have cost them dearly in the short term and been a good life lesson. It can start young: a child forgets to bring home a permission slip for a class trip. On the day of the event, he or she calls their parents frantically for a signature requiring mom or dad to drop everything they are doing to rescue their child. Later the youth may get caught stealing or committing vandalism and, again, mom and dad are there to bail out their child so as to “protect” them from the consequences of their actions. These delayed or avoided consequences for personal actions has catastrophic impact on what the young person sees as valuable or important to them. Many times parents will see their child’s lack of responsibility and lack of enduring consequences coalesce in college when this child, now an “adult” in the legal sense (over 18 years of age) heads to college and cannot get out of bed and to class, forgets to pay his bills (or worse, runs up a tremendous credit card debt) and mom and dad are still there to bail him out. The burgeoning adult has still learned nothing other than when in trouble to call the parents because they will get them out of it!
Fusion utilizes significant tasks a means to an end: teaching personal responsibility to the individual so that they will develop the personal integrity to “do the right thing” when faced with important decisions that will impact their lives for the long term. This means not only providing our participants with significant tasks,
but also providing them with the option for failure and suffering the consequences thereof!
At this young age, failure is a part of life for our students and as such can be a great teacher and motivator for future actions and decisions. Therefore, Fusion strives to provide in the first semester a safe
environment for failure and ultimate restoration. That means, every student will be assigned specific significant tasks throughout the process that, if completed successfully, will lead to praise, encouragement, and commendation. However if they fail (and many do…) the consequences can be heavy for not only them but their team mates.
For example, during Ground School students are broken into teams and required to guard their guidons (flags). Throughout the night, there are individuals who are looking for every opportunity to steal the flag if the guard falls asleep. If the flag is stolen, there will be a great consequence not only for the individual who fell asleep to pay but also those in his or her cohort to pay (there is a saying in Fusion: “You can either get smart or strong…”).
Additionally, once a person is on guard duty, he or she must wait for their replacement to come to the flag and replace them. The one guarding the guidon cannot abandon their post to wake up their relief. That means that the one replacing the current guard must demonstrate the wherewithal (personal responsibility) to wake themselves up and get to the guidon on time; otherwise that person on guard duty all night is going to have a serious issue with his replacement! Complicating matters, if the person left on guard duty is not replaced on time, that person now has a personal ethical issue to deal with: Does that person stay up all night waiting in vain for someone to relieve him or does he throw his hand in the air and say “forget it” and go on to bed leave the guidon to be stolen and subsequent punishment to be handed down in the morning. After all
he was the last one on guard duty regardless of who was to relieve him…
The environment that has thus been created is a safe place to fail because no one can get physically hurt but the issue of failure can be clearly dealt with. Additionally, the stage is now set for a confrontation which can get heated and messy. Therefore, teaching young people to deal positively with conflict according to Matthew 18 is a necessity. This means everyone in Fusion personally learns to walk through the process of confrontation, repentance, forgiveness and restoration; a process that many in our churches seem to have forgotten!
From these simple learning experiences Fusion students move on to greater responsibilities and tasks in the ministry. These include responsibilities where they literally hold each others’ lives in their hands. This can include rock climbing and rappelling opportunities, significant team building opportunities, ultimately finding true illustration demonstrating itself in missionary service in some of the most demanding places around the world. This is why Fusion graduates demonstrate maturity in Christ and the ability to handle responsibilities others their age are not capable of handling.