A Wealthy Man in Church - - - or "Ummm . . . Seriously?"

I am engaged in a rather enlightening and challenging voyage of personal self-discovery. I recently decided to commence what my wisest of friends have affirmed is an act of courage. It is just this: To realize that I cannot do it alone, and that I must ask for help.

My non-profit, the Hudson Education Center (HECMusic.org) is an innovative after-school program that develops local youth into teams of performing artists that go out into the community, sharing their gifts at senior retirements residences, youth camps, and highly specialized schools for special needs students. Our young members gain leadership and team-building experience. They get better as performers, and build their resumes.

My Board of Directors is excellent. We are growing. And ultimately we will go into other areas: environmental education, local economic development. We will serve public schools, private and charter schools, even home schools, with self-funded teaching resources that can create highly-qualified team-teaching environments in schools and programs that are constantly being de-funded.

Great idea, right?

It depends on who you talk to.

At the present time, my role as Managing Director of HEC involves a lot of hours, at a very low pay rate. My heart and my passion is in building HEC. I believe that my unique gifts are very well-utilized in building these programs. I believe that, by following my heart and my gifts, the rewards will follow. The Lord, that can count the decreasing number of hairs on my head, notices, and He will take care of me.

As my hours go up, and my hourly rate goes down, my bills do not change at all, and if they move in any direction, it is "up." And this is where the "Ask for help " comes in .

I spoke to a pastor. I spoke to some of my board members. I asked a Christian friend or two. I looked at what the experts say. And the consensus is . . . "Ask for help." The decision made, I felt liberated. Within five minutes of making the decision, and telling a confidante about it, one of my creditors came to me and told me they were canceling my debt, so that I could take care of my bills and build the Hudson Center. This person did not know about my decision.

So, at this point of early momentum, I went to someone that knows how to grow money: a banker, a friend, and a leader in a very large local church. With enthusiasm and a positive outlook, I told him, in our initial phone conversation: "I need help, and would like to meet with you for advice." My goal was to get some ideas from him on increasing the cash into HEC. But before I could finish my sentence, he said:

"The first thing you've got to do is get a job."

Huh? I have a job.

I selected this kind (or so I thought) man, because I thought he understands money. I know that he and his circle of professional contacts could have financed one month of our operations with very little sacrifice. They can help us build awareness of our programs. They can do a number of things that don't involve writing a check!

But I was floored.

A man that can personally ensure the success of a $1 Million capital improvement campaign, can't even entertain helping raise a couple hundred dollars, for a program that operates without a facility, but that is specifically focused on living, breathing, thinking, loving, needing, hurting, senior citizens and children. And it is done through the gift of . . . music.

Help me understand.

Network Marketing, and Me

Well - I started this blog with a lot of specific details about a network marketing program I was active in some five years ago. The company in question is now immersed in legal troubles with several state attorneys general. I think the Federal courts are involved, as well.

My first draft told of my general belief in the value of well-run network marketing companies. I shared my vision that network marketing is a wave of the future. When they get the kinks worked out (and nobody has yet, really), it will be something that is very present in every household. It will become the most efficient way to spread around the wealth of the American economy. But that's another topic . . .

But as I read through it, I realized that I was telling too much. A class-action lawsuit is in process, and the World Wide Web is no place for me to start getting all candid about my experience in the matter.

Here is my position:

* Network Marketing is an excellent model, if it is built around a good product and/or service, if people are valued, and if their talents and passions are honored.
* The company I joined five years ago had what appeared to be an excellent mix of legitimate products.
* My approach was to stress product and develop market presence. We would recruit others once we had too much business for us alone to handle.
* My team grew, rapidly, around that approach.
* I was told by the higher-ups to cease and desist. They basically warned me, that if I continued to talk about product, and not focus on recruiting people, they would make it so I would fail.
* They undermined me to my team. They warned them all, likewise, not to listen to me.
* I got out.
* Now today, five years later, the company is being investigated for operating a Ponzi scheme that, you guessed it, was more focused on recruiting than it was on selling products.

Can you tell that I feel vindicated? I'm not sure where to go from here. But here, on this blog that nobody reads, is my statement that hopefully summarizes my position: where I started, why I did what I did, and why in the end I think I was right and a whole lot of wealthy people were wrong.

If I had been supported in doing it my way . . . it is my firm conviction that the plan would have succeeded. But now we'll never know.

Music, Ministry, and Teaching

I was talking to an elder, or steward, or some other type of leader in the church, about young people and their career choices.

I said "I always tell kids to consider ministry, teaching, or some career that develops their talents, as in music." Before I could finish the sentence, his face took on an expression of clear disdain and effected good humor.

"Well, you've got to be realistic."

I said, "There will always be a need for more ministers. And we do not have enough good people going into teaching. And nobody likes second-guessing their career choices at mid-life." The meeting ended on a awkward "agree-to-disagree" kind of note.

I heard about an adult Sunday School class, where the same topic came up. The group was asked the question:

"What would you do if your child told you they were considering the foreign mission field?"

The consensus response was "I'd try to talk her (or him) out of it."

Uh-huh.

You've heard of the "Culture of death?" Well, we have an equivalent problem - the "Culture of Life." We say one thing, but act like this life is all we've got. We act like things are so good in the world that we all can afford to have our cushy six-figure incomes, our early retirement, and our $10,000 vacations.

Be realistic? Here's reality: global starvation in the tens of millions. Epidemic rate of latch-key kids. Employees (and spouses, and friends, and parents, and children) that are less important than my own "quality of life." 

Yet we're all headed to the same place. If you really have faith that there is life beyond this one, then why are you so obsessed with having this home, that vacation, this car, that expensive toy? I think that you supposedly believe that you will get all of that, and more, in the next life?

Ministry - If you are a Christian, or any religion, for that matter, it's supposed to be the highest calling, to lead a life devoted to serving others (which is what ministers are supposed to do). Why therefore, don't we first say to our young people: "Please be sure to consider the ministry, or mission field."

Teaching - An ancient figure, Aristotle, maybe, said "The two questions are: Who is teaching the children, and what are they teaching them?" You can't complain about public schools, while urging your talented (and possibly gifted as a teacher) child to take up a career that "pays better." We should be disappointed when our kids don't want to teach. 

Music (or other talent) - Come on. It's the Information Age. All you need are about a thousand fans, globally, in order to make a living in music. And speaking of "quality of life," why do we kill ourselves in the search for it, and then urge our children, who bring so much joy to others with their artistic gifts, to snub those gifts until they have enough money to do all they want to with it (i.e., when they're too old to be as effective any more). Become your child's biggest fan and promoter! Help him or her create a non-profit built around their talent and passion. The tools are there. And there's no business like the arts - where the only asset you need to bring to the start of the business is yourself, and your gifts. What's unrealistic about that?

I think it speaks to an insecurity on our own part, that makes money our true idol, despite what we profess to believe about it.

A Television

They say leadership is a lonely place. I understand this. Yet I have also observed that there are those who, as leaders, seem to get more automatic deferential treatment, no matter what the circumstance.

I was always groomed to be a leader. My parents, and even my older siblings, set me up into positions where I could shine. The encouragement was subtle, but unmistakable. In fifth grade, lacking a formal student council and class officers, a few of my friends concocted an election to choose our class President. Out of some 100 total votes, I got all but about a dozen, that were scattered among three other candidates.

My Dad always stressed how his generation needed to prepare to get out of the way for future leaders. He would say this with a twinkle in his eye and a nod my way. Friends and family would tend to defer to my ideas for what we should do next. In a church planting scenario, I was the default visionary. As my prior post indicates, everybody encouraged me to become a minister. My teachers thought I should teach. People here and there knew I would get into politics one day, and probably do very well. 

At a church camp in the early 1990s, the program almost fell apart over a personal rift between the Camp Master and most of the staff. The Camp Master threatened to walk away from the camp at mid-week. I was recruited to go talk to him. As he jabbed a finger in my chest and recounted all the ways he had been disrespected and mistreated, I stood my ground and got  him to a prayer circle with the rest of the staff. I woke them all up at 2AM and the camp finished on a positive note.

In social situations that made others nervous and awkward, everybody could always count on me to provide cover until they got more comfortable.

With all this confidence that has been placed in me, I could never understand why it all would fall apart at the slightest, most ridiculous things. The net effect has been for me to freeze at critical points in my life. Made by God to be a risk-taker and innovator, I was repeatedly and predictably pounded down at junctures in my life that required steadiness and confidence. By the time I was 30, I was no longer the bold leader I had been before. 

Take TVs.

I was a leader in a church planting project in the 1980s. We would meet at each other's homes. 

One morning, I was slated to be the speaker (or "preacher"). A family with pre-school aged children showed up early, and the kids went right in and turned the TV on, to cartoons. Now, this was Sunday morning, and I was in an adjoining room praying and preparing. I asked an elder if he could have them turn the TV off. Before I could finish my sentence, this leader in the church said "Why do you have to be so . . . ", except, in my memory, I don't remember how he finished that sentence. But the emotions I felt by mid-sentence are as clear to me now, as then. 

Moments later, I approached this same leader, and said "I have been asked to preach. Shouldn't there be some respect for my needs? Shouldn't I be allowed to prepare in whatever way suits me best? And can't I do this without being second-guessed?" Or - I said words to that effect.

This elder went away, and soon I heard him turning off the TV, and saying to the kids that we needed to have things quiet, since we were about to have church. Now, this should have been done in the first place - but by now the damage had been done. The fact that it is still clear in my memory should indicate that it was no small matter to me then, or now.

A similar thing, involving TVs, has happened this past week. I cannot go into details - but once again my desire, or vision, if you will, for establishing the right environment within a church or family setting has been called into question, and the main object is, once again, a television.

I wonder how many men and women have left the ministry, or the church entirely, because people do not know how to let leaders grow, develop, and finally, lead? You can't be all excited about someone's leadership potential, and then when the time comes for him or her to lead, make jokes or insult the person's intelligence. 

Don't let a television get in the way of some leader's forward movement.

Some day I will write about some other scenarios in which prospective leaders (or better yet, servants) were insulted into staying away from church work altogether: The Church camp kitchen incident; a parent's crying fit when faced with an adult child wanting to go away to college; the newlywed that was so jealous of her husband's church friends, that she underminded their devotional and prayer times. And maybe someday, others will actually read these blogs and share their own stories.

Important? Well, that's how people made me feel. But they were the first to turn on me when I actually began to lead. 

But to God, I stayed, always, important - but for entirely different reasons.

Hospitality and Disillusionment

My sense of self-importance was tested early on. My master career plan had me earning an MBA. Yet, I would not have an MBA for the money I could earn. I would have it so that I could flaunt my talents and credentials, without any regard towards meeting my material needs. I would be a talented leader and visionary. I would be an ethical manager. I would make my business career secondary to my calling in the Lord.

So, with an eye toward launching ministry as I approached the age of 25, I would select an MBA program that would give me the best opportunities to grow as a minister. The MBA was not the goal. It was only a means to achieving spiritual success with a worldly title.

Two factors made my decision to go to Texas Christian University: a full-ride scholarship, and an offer from several families in the Fort Worth area, for me to live with them, free of charge. I had both of these conditions satisfied, before accepting the offer from TCU. It would be a cost-free, worry-free way to serve God while winning a graduate degree in management.

The free room and board was an affirmation, and a confirmation, that I was making the right move. Soon, I was made the youth minister of this particular church. With a lot of inexperience, but a hearty vote of confidence from TCU and a body of believers, I was ready to move forward. In a few short years I would be a rising pastor with an MBA.

I really felt I had nothing to fear. My basic needs were being met. I had a lot riding on the assurance that my tuition, and room and board, would not be worries to slow me down.

After all, did not the early Church, in the Second Chapter of Acts, share "all things" in common? Was it not the whole point of Kingdom living, in this age, that we support one another, and bear with one another, as one family of the Lord? We are but a spot on the eternal timeline, if that. Those with Kingdom hearts should believe, and behave, as though their material possessions are best put to use in helping those that want to serve the Lord full time! And this was my intent.

And also, didn't the Apostle Paul write, in First Corinthians 9: That was also the Lord's instruction to those bringing the good word, that they should live off the good word.

I naively believed that a few years focused on developing as a minister, while doing the work of a full-time student, was something that others would value enough, to share of their possessions for a short time.

I should say that, at the same time, my funds that would have been used for room and board, were put in the collection plate of the respective church.

But my sense that I was due this kind of help from a body of fellow believers, was based more on a sense of self-importance, than on any humble and sincere desire to work out my salvation the right way. In less than a year, the hospitality once offered me began to crumble, and the MBA focus weakened. I made a few youthful errors in judgment, but none harmful, or outright sinful. Mostly, my hosts forgot that they had offered me their homes, and that my decision to come to Ft Worth was based on this assumption. I began to feel that there was no support for me at all, and that people couldn't care less whether or not I got my MBA, or if I ever became a minister.

But it was all about me, and that was the problem.

It was like love being offered, then taken away. It was putting my trust in people, and then feeling betrayed by them. It was trying to do the right thing, even heroically, and then feeling as though God was looking away, and did not care whether I succeeded or failed. It was a pattern to be repeated throughout my life.

I was talented. Success came easy to me. Therefore, people, and God, owed it to me to continue to make things easy.

Important? No, not at all. I made little difference in the lives of the kids that were my charge, and the congregation in question did fine without me.

Today, I am focusing on doing important work, without thinking of myself as instrumental in its success.

The congregation in question has mostly dissipated. Most of those that attended it at the time have left it for bigger, more visibly successful churches.

The idea that we should share our goods, especially with those involved in God's work, is still good and right. For ministers to get MBAs, is still a commendable aspiration.

But the idea that I am important and that for that reason alone, I should be taken care of, has been debunked.