Hospitable Leaders Make a Difference
Hospitable Leaders Make a Difference
It seems like everyone is outraged—outraged!—by any number of things going on in our world today. And we probably should be. The question that interests me most is how can I lead effectively in this environment? How can I best affect positive change?
Henri Nouwen said that we need to move from hostility to hospitality. I think this is the best approach to tackle problems small and large and to expand our influence for good in ever-widening circles.
Each of us must find areas in our world to draw a circle around—where we can say, “There . . . I can make a difference . . . there.”
The Reverend Dr. Wilson Goode drew a circle around children who have an incarcerated parent. Dr. Goode, a Baptist minister, was the first African American mayor of Philadelphia. He served two terms. Then President Bill Clinton appointed him deputy assistant secretary of education.
In spite of his historic personal success, he became more and more aware and concerned that generations of young people were in a crisis that threatened their futures, their families and communities, and our entire society. Incredible numbers of the children of incarcerated people were following their parents into prison.
Dr. Goode tells a heartrending story of a prison that houses a man, his son, and his grandson. The grandson never met his grandfather—until they met in prison. Wilson Goode decided to be more than heartbroken, though. He decided to draw a circle around this devastating problem. Then to enter it. And to change it. He chose to practice proactive transcendence.
So, in 2000, he left the comfort and status of the Department of Education and founded a nonprofit called Amachi. Amachi is a Nigerian word that means “who knows but what God has brought us through this child.” Amachi is a partnership of secular and faith-based organizations working together to identify children of prisoners and match them with caring adults. More than 350 agencies have served more than 300,000 children all across the United States!
I was with Dr. Goode one day when a young man who was leading a community nonprofit came to ask the great man for advice. The first thing Mayor Goode told him—with great passion—was that most nonprofits try to do too many things: “Figure out your mission and do that. Period. Amachi exists to mentor young people whose parents are incarcerated. That’s it.”
“We are not God. We can’t practice transcendence over everything and maybe not even many things. But each of us can find something to draw a circle around and say, “I can change that.””
Dr. Goode is involved in many important causes. But he drew a circle around this one. And the future will be different because he did.
It amazes me how passively many people of faith live—as if we have no control over anything, no ability to make even the slightest difference. One reason is that many are unknowingly fatalistic in their worldview. Fatalism is the opposite of faith.
Buddha summarized his views in the Four Noble Truths. The first of these four statements, which can be translated in many ways, is “Life is suffering.” Vishal Mangalwadi—a well-known author, lecturer, and development worker in India—has been frustrated that many people in developing countries have adopted this worldview and mantra, which he believes has promoted a cycle of poverty.
Mangalwadi says, “Life need not be suffering. A great deal of suffering is avoidable if we know what life is and how it ought to be lived.”1 His experience has been that many people who have embraced these ideas are taught to accept suffering and manage it by practicing some form of meditation or other means of spiritual escapism.
Folks spend an enormous amount of time and energy trying to achieve nirvana instead of drawing a circle around suffering and taking action to make things better.
“We must care enough, believe enough, and risk enough to alleviate suffering where possible.”
A fatalistic worldview also explains how someone like Osho—a spiritual guru and founder of a commune in Oregon—would write in his book God Is Dead, “If God is a reality, then man is a slave, a puppet. All the strings are in his hands, even your life. He pulls the strings, you dance; he pulls the strings, you cry; he pulls the strings, you start murders, suicide, war. You are just a puppet and he is the puppeteer.”2
Many of us do live as if God is the master puppeteer and we are His mindless puppets. How sad. And how wrong. God gave us the ability to do or not to do.
Right now, touch your forehead. Touch your arm. Who did this? God? No, you did.
Many of us falsely assume that every time we reach our arms out to do anything, God moved them for us. Absolutely not! God gives us the ability to move our arms. God willed that we can will. The Bible affirms this: “It is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose” (Phil. 2:13)!
Hospitable leaders have a job to do. In our own way, we each have a world to save.
Ask yourself: What am I waiting for? How can I get involved in what God is doing in the world now? The Bible leaves no question that “we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Eph. 2:10). As people of faith, we were not created to be passive, small-brained, tiny-hearted believers.
We must view life expansively.
We must draw big circles around large areas of potential impact.
We were made to make a difference.
1. Vishal Mangalwadi, foreword to Discipling Nations: The Power of Truth to Transform Cultures by Darrow L. Miller with Stan Guthrie (Seattle: YWAM, 2001), 14.
2. Osho, God Is Dead: Now Zen Is the Only Living Truth (India: Rebel, 1997).
Adapted from Live Ten (Thomas Nelson) and The Hospitable Leader (Baker Publishing Group) by Terry A. Smith. All rights reserved.
What have you drawn a circle around? Drop a comment and tell us about how you’re making a difference.
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