Have you ever run a relay race?

If you have, you’ll know that how well your team passes the baton matters just as much as how fast you all run.

I participated in a few relay races during high school when I was on the track team, and learned that there’s a knack to it.

When passing the baton to your teammate, you have to make sure that they’re up to speed first: at a sprint. You can’t hand off the baton at a standstill or even at a jog or your team will fall behind.

Therefore, we were taught a method to use at track meets when coming up behind the next runner on our team. We would shout out the name of our particular school, then say, “Go!”

Our next runner would immediately start sprinting with one hand behind them, ready to grab the baton in the passing zone. They wouldn’t look back at us, but simply keep running and power forward once we’d put the baton in their hand.

I think some these tips can apply to how we “pass the baton” to the next generation of believers in our spiritual race.

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