This article was originally published in the Jan. 2007 edition of Perspective 33.
The symbol of the YMCA mission is the inverted red triangle.
It was put forth by Luther Gulick in the late 19th century as a summation of the mission of the YMCA and has been adopted worldwide.
Luther Gulick was the first director of the physical education department at Springfield College. While at the college, he inspired James Naismith to devise the game of basketball and was responsible for the creation and adoption of the inverted triangle used by Springfield College and the YMCA as their seals and symbols. Gulick felt the inverted triangle was the perfect symbol to represent the whole man, denoting the perfect balance of the spirit, mind and body. After leaving the Training School, Gulick served as physical education director at the Pratt Institute High School in Brooklyn and later became first director of physical education for the New York public schools.
I came across the inverted triangle carved into stone one day on a walk on the Springfield College campus.
It was above the entrance to the Administration Building (one of the oldest on campus). The carving held a big surprise.
The triangle contained an open Bible; no surprise there.
The surprise was that the passage listed was Ephesians 4:13, not John 17:21.
What was Gulick trying to advance in selecting this passage?
I read Ephesians 4:13 – “until we all reach unity in the faith and knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”
Then I read on in the chapter where the author calls to having the “body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grow and build itself up in love as each part does its work.”
Still more, the author calls on all to be children of light and details all that means.
It was a call to fullness of life and being that the triangle symbolized and Gulick advocated, rediscovered and taught, and with the YMCA incorporated into its mission and being.
This is the tap root of all the mission statements of the YMCA.
It is where we came from and articulates a wholeness that is advocated and sought for all who enter the association.
There has been drift over the years. Let’s look at it.
There has been great concern about openness.
Some attack the word “Christian” in our name as a denial of openness.
Yet the Christian faith, is by its own documentation, open.
Listen to the words of Saint Paul: “In Christ there is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, circumcised or uncircumcised, bond nor free.”
That is universal, and that was the root of YMCA openness and of the most Christian aspects of the Movement worldwide.
There is a real danger to openness and that shows itself in some mission statements and drift.
It is far too easy for people to come to the YMCA with no knowledge of the organization or its mission and attempt to capture and /or redefine it.
It is easy to ignore one or more of the aspects of the fullness of life that the YMCA stands for and to emphasize only body or mind or spirit, although the latter two are not usually culprits in this mission distortion.
There is still another danger – the danger of selling the mission.
The YMCA puts its emphasis on buildings and plant far too often, and not on people, and what happens to people, in plants.
The results can be, and far too often is a distortion of mission for the sake of the marginal membership and the marginal contribution and source of revenue.
The temptation is to be all things to all people and winding up as nothing to anyone.
I have sat on YMCA boards that put people on the board that knew nothing about the YMCA or its mission (for them this was another form of compulsory community service to look good on their resume and to their employer), and who cared less.
They were on the board to raise money and only for that reason.
Their board attendance was marginal, and their lack of understanding the YMCA when they did attend meetings did little or nothing to further the mission or ends of the YMCA.
Instead, they often undermined the nature and very purpose of the organization and led it away from both the inclusiveness it stands for and the wholeness it attempts to bring to the lives of its members.
Here I bring out a fact that is basic to the mission and nature of the YMCA.
It is an association, a member association.
The members are the association.
This undermines efforts that you see to say that this is a community organization or to make broad claims which facts and realities do not and cannot support.
Since people and communities are different, YMCAs will be different and this leads to an important aspect of considering mission.
Each YMCA will state its mission and realize its mission in its own way in its own time and place.
This variety is both a strength and a weakness.
The strength is that this leaves room for mission interpretation, creativity, and experimentation.
The weakness is that we can lose sight of the great heritage in which we stand and the great mission that we inherit and pass along; to help people rise to the fullness of being children of God.
Chief Investment Officer of the YMCA Retirement Fund (1983-2000), pastor of Unity Hill Church in Connecticut, and the HCS Foundation.
