Reading: Chapter 1: Beginnings

Chapter 1

BEGINNINGS

In 1993, the year of Denver’s “summer of violence,” there were 74 homicides in the city. The year before, there had been 95.

The year after, there were 81 murders—and 81 again the year after that. So in raw numbers, the “summer of violence” was an exaggeration. In raw fear, it wasn’t. Nearly half the murders that year—36 of 74—were of teenagers. Many of them were drive-by shootings. [Then-Governor Roy] Romer called the senselessness of such acts “an abandoning of our moral code.” ¹

n the fall of 1979, I moved into Denver’s Five Points area, which some historians have called the Harlem of the West. The juvenile court had referred into my care a neighborhood kid who happened to be a leader—he was the best thief on his block. Through him I began meeting with 15 high school-aged youth at my house. Our weekly meetings consisted of food, fun and a “rap session” where we would talk about issues impacting their lives, and I would try to present, in terms they could understand, God’s perspective on life.

I launched Neighborhood Ministries as a youth outreach ministry in the fall of 1980 and married the love of my life, Shelly, in 1981. The year after that, we were introduced to the founder of Christian community development, John Perkins. He quickly became a mentor and life-long friend. His books laying out his philosophy and ministry experience affirmed ideas that were already stirring my soul. I began what became a 30-year journey: applying John’s Christian community development concepts to youth ministry.

As a novice at leading a Christian organization, I had a lot of learning to do. The breadth of my ignorance was revealed every time I exclaimed: “I don’t know what ‘administration’ is, but I know it will put a hurtin’ on you if you don’t do it!”

I wanted to build a ministry that would last, so I researched how organizations work. Studying Charles Hobbs’s Time Power materials led to crafting a set of unifying principles and core values that would define our organization. Later Verley Sangster, then Na- tional Director for Urban Young Life, introduced us to Bobb Bie- hl’s Masterplanning materials. While Denver Seminary prepared me to think theologically, Masterplanning provided concepts and processes that were crucial to lead a Christian organization.

Because my interests centered on youth development, grasping the what and how-to of youth development became a defining quest. In particular, my staff and I pondered motivation: how a ministry might foster within youth incentives to learn and grow.

Above all we studied youth themselves. We taught them and they taught us. One of our early teachers was a young man named Jimmy.

A Lesson from Jimmy

Our ministry first encountered Jimmy when he was a sophomore in high school. He was an O.G. (Original Gangster). He, along with a few other members of his family, had helped transplant the Crips gang from Compton (Los Angeles) to northeast Denver.

Some of Jimmy’s neighbors and childhood friends were involved with our weekly youth club program, and Jimmy often tagged along. The following summer, Jimmy attended summer camp, where he prayed to receive Christ. Over the next few years, his attendance waned, and for a while we lost track of him. But then he reappeared, expressing a strong desire to get married (to a Christian girl he had met at camp), grow in his faith, and go into the ministry. So I led him and his girlfriend, Andrea, through premarital counseling, performed their wedding, and brought him onto the Neighborhood Ministries staff.

Jimmy was a Pied Piper with kids; they flocked to him, and he loved sharing the gospel with them. But, like many charismatic youth leaders, his organizational skills were lacking. An older staff member and trusted advisor (coincidentally also named Jim) and I debated whether we should steer Jimmy in the direction of ministry or toward a less demanding vocation.

“He has skills as a carpenter,” Jim would say. “Let him be a carpenter.”

“But what if this is an expression of what God really wants to do with his life?” I would counter.

The crucible of inner-city life often forces youth to focus not on their potential but on the pragmatics of survival. The simple fact of Jimmy’s aspiration toward vocational ministry made him an exception to that trend. “If this ministry desire is a reflection of God’s imprint,” I concluded, “then I’m obligated as a Christian leader to guide him in that direction.”

So I set out to teach Jimmy everything I knew about leading a nonprofit Christian ministry. He accompanied me to meetings with church mission boards. I showed him our financial systems and taught him about fundraising. I created opportunities for him to speak in churches, and I encouraged those who supported us to support him. His leadership capacities grew.

Then, in 1995, the Christian Community Development Association(a group comprised of various churches, ministries and individuals committed to the principles of Christian community development pioneered by John Perkins) held its national conference in Denver. Jimmy and I were awarded the Tom Skinner Leadership Award, in recognition of outstanding leadership development. The national exposure led to his being recruited by another ministry. The following year, Jimmy and his family moved to Dallas. A year later, he left that ministry and planted his own work, serving youth in a small under-resourced neighborhood in south Dallas.

When Jimmy left Denver, we both thought it was time for him to move on. Ours was a father/son kind of relationship, and the son needed to leave the nest and spread his wings. But we also felt that I had failed him in the area of discipleship. Our study times had been sporadic at best. I felt pangs of regret until Jimmy shared something about his first year as a ministry founder and director:

I left Denver disappointed that you had not discipled me. But when I became a ministry director, I found myself ask- ing almost daily: “What would Ted do in this situation?” I began to remember everything you ever taught me.

Jimmy taught us the importance of what I have come to see as an apprentice (i.e., learning while doing) approach to youth development. He also taught us to look beyond the damaging in- fluence of the ’hood and focus on animating—bringing to life—a young person’s divine imprint—God’s unique design.

To this day, Jimmy continues to minister among youth, building on the foundation we laid together during his time as an apprentice.

Perspectives on Leadership

These discoveries—an apprentice approach and a focus on the divine imprint—led to new perspectives on leadership. What does leadership look like in the youth ministry context?

Jesus spoke of leadership as servanthood:

Jesus called them together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:42-45).

1. D. E. Hoste, successor to renowned missionary Hudson Taylor as director of the China Inland Mission, was, through the booklet If I Am to Lead, one of my early mentors. In an excerpt taken from his biography, he describes spiritual leadership:

What is the essential difference between spurious and true Christian leadership? When a man, in virtue of an official position in the Church, demands the obedience of another, irrespective of the latter’s reason and conscience, this is the spirit of tyranny.

When, on the other hand, by the exercise of tact and sympathy, by prayer, spiritual power and sound wisdom, one Christian worker is able to influence and enlighten another, so that the latter, through the medium of his own reason and conscience, is led to alter one course and adopt another, this is true spiritual leadership.²

These ideas helped shape my concept of leadership: as servan- thood, and as the ability to influence, enlighten and motivate to change through the medium of one’s reason and conscience.

Dwight Eisenhower is often lauded for his definition of leadership: getting someone else to do something that you want done because he wants to do it. John Perkins frequently echoes this idea. For some, this “getting” degenerates into a sinister kind of coercion. It can feel like King Louis’s rant, as he sent his twin brother Philippe back to the dungeon and to the iron mask that hid his identity: “Wear it until you love it!”³

But Eisenhower understood servant leadership. Here is his full statement:

Now I think, speaking roughly, by leadership we mean the art of getting someone else to do something that you want done because he wants to do it, not because your position of power can compel him to do it, or your position of authority. A commander of a regiment is not necessarily a leader. He has all of the appurtenances of power given by a set of Army regulations by which he can compel unified action. He can say to a body such as this, “Rise,” and “Sit down.” You do it exactly. But that is not leadership.⁴ (emphasis added)

Leadership as the art of igniting internal motivations highlights the significance of identifying divine imprints. This idea was captured by a phrase of Walt Whitman: “I am the teacher of athletes, He that by me spreads a wider breast than my own proves the width of my own.”⁵

I have never been an athletic coach, but I imagine that coaches view young athletes in this way: I see potential in you. I make it my aim to maximize that potential. This will involve a measure ofpain, but my purpose is to draw out of you your very best. You will, through my influence, become the athlete you were created to be.

It eventually dawned on me that I too was a teacher of athletes. God had placed in my life young people created with potential and purpose. These youth were “emerging” leaders, for adolescents are most concerned about discovering who they are and why they exist. In a sense, the breadth of my leadership would become evident as they, through my influence, grew  in their capacity to lead. My role was not to lead in the traditional sense, but rather to develop—through a transformative process—emerging leaders.

Emerging Leaders

Toward the end of my second decade in Denver, out of a desire to pass on leadership of the local work, I sought out a new director for the ministry. In the summer of ’98, we hired someone I could groom to fill the director’s position. The plan was for me to transition into functioning more as an ambassador and advisor.

Then I contracted leukemia.

The decade ended with me recovering from a bone marrow transplant and leaving the ministry in the hands of a novice. The battle with leukemia shook my world. I no longer had the entrepreneurial strength I had once possessed. Economic fears associated with the new millennium, followed by the 9/11 terrorist attacks, triggered major losses of donor support. Some called the office assuming I was dead!

I remember sharing feelings of disorientation with fellow board members of the Christian Community Development Association, figuring if anyone could empathize with my struggles, it would be these fellow urban ministry practitioners. I will never forget Bob Lupton’s response:

You got sick at a time you moved from being a young man to an old(er) man. You also got sick at a time your community changed.⁶ You’re like Rip van Winkle: you fell asleep a few years, woke up, and discovered everything has changed.

Things had changed. Neighborhood Ministries’ director and other key staff had left. The organization was no longer guided by its core values. The high school group had been reshaped into an evangelistic program, where unruly youth played as they tolerated gospel messages. The whole operation was in disarray, led by adults with little understanding of evangelism through development.

I chose to reenter the ministry by directing the summer day camp—enlisting as my deputy a young woman named Raquel, whose family we had known since she was a child. (Shelly and I are godparents to her younger brother.) Raquel had served in various positions in the ministry since she was 16. With her help, I gathered a handful of high school students and designed a four-month process of preparing them to lead the summer day camp.

That summer, ministry leaders and parents visited and observed the camp. They marveled at the capacity and effectiveness of the youth leadership team. The relational dynamics between child and adolescent leader were different from anything any of us had ever observed. Potential and hope seemed to ignite within the children as they experienced being led by youth only a few years ahead of them in age. They could actually begin to envision leadership possibilities for their own lives.

By the end of the summer, the adult youth staff sought my help. The following year, we disbanded the high school club and replaced it with the Emerging Leaders Initiative—taking a crucial step toward a comprehensive philosophy of youth leadership development.

Notes

1.  Fred Brown, “Gang fear lurks in shadows,” in Denver Post, 7/15/2007, http://www. denverpost.com/brown/ci_6362438, accessed July 2015.
2. D. E. Hoste, If I Am to Lead (Singapore: OMF (IHQ) Ltd., 1987), p. 4.
3. The Man in the Iron Mask (United Artists, 1998), screenplay by Randall Wallace.
4. Dwight Eisenhower, Remarks at the Annual Conference of the Society for Personnel Administration, 5/12/54.
5. Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” in Leaves of Grass (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc., 2007), p. 62.
6. Bob was referring to a phenomenon known as gentrification, which involves more affluent people moving into a low-income community, bringing with them resources and development, but often displacing poorer residents in the process.