Category: YMCA + Christian Praxis

Happy Easter & YMCA Ukraine

Today on this Easter Sunday, join me in praying for YMCA Ukraine, for their faithful and brave service to their neighbors as they strive to overcome evil with good.

Today April 24 is Easter Sunday for Orthodox Christians around the world – here in Fort Wayne and in Ukraine.

What’s it mean to celebrate Easter when your nation is being brutally terrorized and violently decimated by the machines of war from your next door neighbor?

When horrific deaths mar the landscape of blasted cities, where does the courage and hope come from, that faith, hope and love can endure?

Even just briefly reflecting on how my pleasant Protestant Easter Sunday went last week compared to my fellow Ukrainian Christian’s celebrating Easter today in Kiev or Mariupol… it is humbling, it is grief-full, it is maddening really that such evil exists and devours the innocent.

What can YMCA Christians do – we who are known as the resurrection people – in the face of such madness, darkness, and violence?

Our name – “little Christ’s” implies that we are marked as such because of our loyalty, imitation, and love of Jesus, in particular how he was present to the weak and vulnerable, the innocent and the guilty, those with power and those praying for deliverance.

The YMCA has within its history a record of brave women and men who responded to the call of Christ upon their life, to serve Him through the Y as peacemakers, as mentors, as friends, as advocates for the oppressed, as allied for justice.

If you haven’t done it yet, please donate to the YMCA work in Ukraine.

Donate Today!
YUSA & YMCA World Service Check In with YMCA Europe & YMCA Ukraine

If you are a Christian in the Y, consider the call that Jesus Christ is making on your life these days: what are you doing about evil in the world, what is your Y doing about despair and violence in the world, what is your Y doing about peace and truth and reconciliation in the world, what is your Y doing about war and oppression?

It’s easy to try and avoid conflict, to keep my head down, eyes averted…until trouble comes near and then we are unprepared in spirit, mind and body. It’s hard to keep caring about our neighbors and fellow YMCA’s around the world. It’s also hard to become cynical, jaded, and hard-hearted…

Today on this Easter Sunday, join me in praying for YMCA Ukraine, for their faithful and brave service to their neighbors as they strive to overcome evil with good.

Pray for the Christians of Ukraine, that as they celebrate Easter amidst rubble and refugees, amidst terror and tyrants, that the Risen One would strengthen their spirit, that their love would breathe new life into their nation.

And today, pray for your neighbors facing darkness in your own community- and be willing to say “yes” to the call Christ is making on you to be present to those in pain, to be ready to be the hands and heart of Jesus, for all who are walking in darkness yet yearn to see a great light.

The Art of Being with People You Lead

In the ongoing work of the YMCA, everything we do is for people, we are a busy action-oriented organization.

But in the grind of getting stuff done, we have to be more intentional and present to those we are doing the work with and for.

Every once in awhile I need to read through some aphorisms (short, pithy sayings that capture a truth in a memorable and insightful way).

Here’s some aphorisms that struck me as timely and relevant regarding leadership, being with people, the art of presence.

In my work with the YMCA, everything we do is for people, we are a busy action-oriented organization.

But in the grind of getting stuff done, we have to be more intentional and present to those we are doing the work with and for.

Love is action. Love is also patient and kind.

When we get drained from doing, being authentically present and genuinely attentive to those in our midst can fill up our tank, and theirs too.

There is an art to learning how to be with the people you lead: you are to be there for them more than they are there for you – it’s about them, not you as the leader.

These aphorisms on leadership, presence, kindness and faith have been with me for over fifteen years, and I share them with you now, some may be familiar, some new.

Enjoy!

Appreciation is a wonderful thing: it makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.

Voltaire

We should ever conduct ourselves towards our enemies as if he were one day to be our friend.

Cardinal Newman

People are not motivated by failure; they are motivated by achievement and recognition.

F.F. Fournies

You can impress people from a distance. You can impact people only from up close.

Will Richert

You get more of the behavior you reward. You don’t get what you hope for, ask for, wish for, or beg for. You get what you reward.

Michel Le Boeuf

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.

George S. Patton

I will pay more for the ability to deal with people than any other ability under the sun.

John D. Rockefeller

I hold it more important to have the player’s confidence than their affection.

Vince Lombardi

Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.

John C. Maxwell

The art of dealing with people is the foremost secret of successful men. A man’s success in handling people is the very yardstick by which the outcome of his whole life’s work is measured.

Paul C. Packer

I’ll yet to find the man, however exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than under the spirit of criticism.

Charles Schwab

There are no ordinary people.

You have never talked to an ordinary mortal….

It is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors….

Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.

C.S. Lewis
*all quotes above taken from Never Scratch a Tiger with a Short Stick by Gordon S. Jackson

And some more quotes that I hold on to…

It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.

Soren Kierkegaard

In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don’t.

Blaise Pascal

For many of us, the great danger is not that we will renounce our faith. It is that we will become so distracted and rushed and preoccupied that we will settle for a mediocre version of it.

John Ortberg

When I was young, I used to admire intelligent people; as I grow older I admire kind people.

Abraham J. Heschel

The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them but to be indifferent to them; that’s the essence of inhumanity.

George Bernard Shaw

Remember there’s no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end.

Scott Adams

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

Bishop Desmond Tutu

I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.

Abraham Lincoln

Mercy, detached from justice, grows unmerciful.

C.S. Lewis

On Becoming an Adult & Being Fully Present

What kind of adult do you want to become? What are the youth around you learning about becoming an adult? What can we learn from Pastor Bonhoeffer on caring for youth, being present, and becoming a responsible adult?

“Adults may have their longings, but they keep them out of sight, and somehow master them; and the more they have to overcome in order to live fully in the present, the more they will have the respect and confidence of other people, especially the younger ones, who are still on the road that the adult has already travelled.”

How do you know when you are grown up? What makes an adult an “adult”?

In the YMCA, when we do youth development, how do we know when we’ve been successful? What do young men and women of character look like? Especially under pressure?

This extended quote from German Christian pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, taken from his Letters and Papers from Prison, resonated with me when it came to discerning some characteristics of being an adult.

Written while under duress during World War 2, his character tested daily, with time to reflect on his life, on humanity, on becoming a mature adult, Bonhoeffer writes this while in a Gestapo prison:

But is it not characteristic of adults, in contrast to an immature person, that their center of gravity is always where they actually are, and that the longing for their fulfillment of their wishes cannot prevent them from being their whole self, wherever they happen to be?

The adolescent is never wholly in one place; that is one of the essential characteristics of youth, else he would presumably be a dullard.

There is a wholeness about the fully grown adult which enables a person to face an existing situation squarely.

Adults may have their longings, but they keep them out of sight, and somehow master them; and the more they have to overcome in order to live fully in the present, the more they will have the respect and confidence of other people, especially the younger ones, who are still on the road that the adult has already travelled.

Desires to which we cling closely can easily prevent us from being what we ought to be and can be; and on the other hand, desires repeatedly mastered for the sake of present duty make us richer.

Lack of desire is poverty.

Almost all the people whom I find in my present surroundings in prison cling to their own desires, and so have no interest in others; they no longer listen, and they are incapable of loving their neighbor.

I think that even in this place we ought to live as if we had no wishes and no future, and just be our true selves.

For me: I am guided forward by Bonhoeffer’s comments on being an adult by becoming fully present with my whole self.

In whatever situation I find myself as a man, a dad and husband, a YMCA pastor or neighbor – being present as Tim is more vital than letting my desires wrench me a way from the present to the future.

And no greatness comes to from living in the past or the future.

In fact, at times, these desires have produced self-loathing and depression in me – for I felt that me being me would undermine my ability to fulfill my desires to great things.

On this side of that darkness, I am becoming more open to becoming more present by mastering my desires and focusing on the duties set out before me.

My future-oriented desires undermine the vitality of what is happening right now. I suppose the same would work for my past-oriented desires of regret or nostalgia.

I know that I don’t want to become the kind of person who takes no interest in others, doesn’t listen, and is incapable of loving my neighbor.

Learning to be aware of my desires, no matter how noble I think some of them feel, acknowledging them without fueling them, will help me live in the present; becoming aware of Christ’s presence in my life and embracing the duties that God and society have presented to me in the now is a sign of being a Christian adult.

May you continue to grow in spirit and character as an adult, becoming present now to the caring and responsibility set before you.

Or, in the words of St. Paul to the Church of Corinth:

“Love always bears up, always trusts, always hopes, always endures.

Love never ends; but prophecies will pass, tongues will cease, knowledge will pass.

For our knowledge is partial, and our prophecy partial; but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass.

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, thought like a child, argued like a child; now that I have become a man, I have finished with childish ways.

For now we see obscurely in a mirror, but then it will be face to face.

Now I know partly; then I will know fully, just as God has fully known me.

But for now, three things last — trust, hope, love; and the greatest of these is love.”

1 Corinthians 13:7-13‬ ‭CJB‬‬