Tag: YMCA Mission

Discover & Read the First Nations Version :: an Indigenous Translation of the New Testament

Join the Morning Watch – an enduring YMCA invitation to start reading a fresh and inspired First Nations translation of the Bible in a way that will build up a healthy spirit and reinvigorate your faith, hope and love.

Been awhile since you read the Bible?

Sensing a call to renew your spirit?

Not sure what to do different with fueling your faith?

You are invited to start reading a fresh and inspired translation of the New Testament in a way that will build up a healthy spirit and reinvigorate your faith, hope and love.

In the YMCA we call it The Morning Watch, a call to disciplined action for Christians to start their day early and in God’s Word.

The First Nations Version Translation (FNVT) Council has given the world a refreshing and illuminating experience with the New Testament, written in a culturally relevant way, in the traditional heart language of over 6 million English speaking First Nations people of North America.

Click here to learn more about FNVT!

Consider this invitation: to hear the call of the Great Spirit and pledge to keep The Morning Watch for at least one month – two if you’re open to it.

  • Use the first 30 minutes of your day in the FNVT of the NT.
  • Begin and end that time with silence, gratitude, confession and repentance, forgiveness and commitment.
  • Have a plan for how much you will read each morning and what you will doing with it – journal your reflections or mark up the text or create artwork or memorize verses etc.
  • Trust that the 30 minutes will fly by!
  • Believe that these are the best 30 minutes of your day – and the most essential – for connecting with the Great Creator of the Heavens and the Earth – the Source of Courageous Faith amidst insurmountable challenges, of Enduring Hope amidst pervasive despair, and Reconciling Love amidst a broken-hearted world marred by evil but hand-crafted for Good.

Why is the FNVT compelling to me?

Though born in Indiana, and a resident now as an adult since 1992, I grew up as a child in Ontario, next to Lake Huron, and attended school with Chippewa Indian classmates. While both Canada and the USA have disgusting and inexcusable and wicked legacies for their treatment of First Nation communities, Canada is ahead of the USA regarding the core values of honesty and responsibility, respect and caring – and it’s noticeable – or lack of, here in Indiana.

The impulse and experience of the FNVT for me regrounds me, but also displaces me – upends my familiarity with the text, and opens me up to a world and culture of a people oppressed in the name of God – the same God who originally died for them. Oh the irony. Oh the complexity of the story. Oh the faithfulness of the Great Spirit and the reconciliation by the Chosen One.

It’s a simple invitation: buy a copy of the First Nations Version and pledge to keep The Morning Watch. Your YMCA, your church, your family, your community will be grateful.

Click here to learn more about FNVT and how to purchase your copy.

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

The C in the YMCA at 2001:: the 150th Anniversary Address by Dr. Ken Gladish [retired CEO of YUSA]

This address, dealing with the history ofthe YMCA in America, was delivered at a 2001 Massachusetts Meeting of The Newcomen Society of the United States held in Boston, when Dr. Kenneth L. Gladish and Mr. John M. Ferrell were guests of honor and speakers on October 25th, 2001.

In this brief speech, Dr. Gladish provides a compelling overview of the YMCA, it’s origins, accomplishments in the United States of America, and how the Christian faith is intregal to it all.

Enjoy this friendly, informative, personal accounting of the Y in 2001; see how the C is described and embodied in the YMCA history, institution, and future.

Click here to view the entire speech

Here is the concluding paragraphs to the speech:

Herein may lie the secret ofthe association’s success and the power of its impact on rising generations of Americans, their families and their communities.

The enterprise, openness, and values of the YMCA were seeded long ago in the American Christlan conscience which gave birth to our nation’s revolution in civic association, charitable action, and moral commitment.

If the “spirit of the Lord” was upon the founding generation of the YMCA, we might well ask where it is to be found today.

And today, of course, is a different day, both for America and for the YMCA.

In a complex and increasingly diverse America, the YMCA is still called to change lives.

In this work we are compelled by faith and history, as well as experience and conviction, to affirm what we know to be true – we are called at our best to do the work we were created to complete.

Like the prophet Isaiah in the Hebrew scriptures, and Jesus of Nazareth in the Christian gospels, we will find the right “spirit” in our own work when we:

“Preach good news to the poor; Proclaim release to the captives; Seek recovery of sight to the blind; and Set at liberty those who are oppressed.”

As students of these sacred texts understand, of course, we are all in some way poor, captive, blind, and oppressed.

The reversal of these conditions and the realization of our full and blessed potential as individuals depend on the unified development of our spiritual, intellectual, and physical personalities.

This has been and must remain the work ofthe YMCA as it touches thelives of men and women, boys and girls, in the new century which lies ahead.

Gladish, p18-19
Kenneth Gladish assumed the office of Executive Director of the YMCA of the USA in February 2000, becoming the twelfth national leader of the YMCA movement.

The YMCA of the USA, the national office responsible for supporting the nation’s 2,500-plus YMCAs, celebrated its 150th anniversary year in 2001. YMCAs serve over 18 million Americans, more than half of them children, and are collectively the nation’s largest charity and community-based service organization.

Gladish accepted the position of Executive Director following six years as executive director of the Indianapolis Foundation and three years as president of the Central Indiana Community Foundation. He previously served as president and chief executive officer of the Indiana Humanities Council and director of the Indiana Donors Alliance. A YMCA member from childhood in his hometown of Northbrook, IL, he volunteered and later held his first professional position as assistant director of youth and community programs at the North Suburban YMCA. He has served on the boards of local YMCAs in Virginia and Indiana and on the national board from 1977 to 1983.

He received a bachelor’s degree from Hanover College and master’s and doctorate degrees in foreign affairs from the University of Virginia. He has taught at the college level at the University of Virginia, Butler University and Indiana University. Active in civic and professional organizations, he serves as a trustee of Hanover and is a member of the boards of American Humanics, the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce and the National Assembly of non-profit agencies.