Unstoppable (28 page)

For reasons that he never revealed to Leon, the gruff-talking Robert had been taking doughnuts and coffee to feed the homeless in downtown Dallas every Saturday morning for a couple of years.

“How do you do that when you can hardly walk?” Leon asked.

“People help me, and now you’ll help me,” he said.

“I don’t think so. What time do you do this?” Leon asked.

“Five thirty in the morning.”

“I am not going to drive you, especially at that hour,” Leon said. “Even the Lord isn’t up at five thirty in the morning.”

Robert would not take no for an answer. He told Leon where to pick him up.

“You’ll be there,” he said.

“Don’t count on it,” Leon replied.

The next Saturday, Leon awakened at five o’clock in the morning, worried that Robert might be waiting for him on a street corner. He feared for Robert’s safety since the location that he’d suggested for their meeting was a rough part of the city.

Once again, the Holy Spirit seemed to be working through him.

Before sunrise he found Robert standing on a street corner with a thermos filled with five gallons of hot coffee. Robert asked Leon to drive him to a doughnut shop, where they loaded up on pastries. They then proceeded to downtown Dallas. The streets were empty.

“Just wait,” Robert told Leon.

With the big thermos of steaming coffee on the curb, they waited. As the sun rose, homeless people appeared one by one. Nearly fifty of them assembled for Robert’s coffee and doughnuts. Although Robert had a
rough way of talking to the people he served, they welcomed the warm coffee and doughnuts. Leon, who had given his life to Christ a couple of years earlier, saw that Robert was sowing good seeds and that he clearly needed help. So he began assisting him each Saturday morning after that. In the months that followed, Robert’s health declined.

“Robert, what happens when you can’t do this anymore?” Leon asked one day as they packed up.

“You’ll do it,” Robert said.

“No, you really need to get someone else,” Leon insisted.

“You will do it,” Robert said again.

Robert was right. Leon Birdd became Pastor Birdd, an ordained minister with an inner-city mission supported by nine local churches and other donors. Although Robert died in 2009, the seeds he planted have been nurtured and grown by Pastor Birdd and his wife, Jennifer. Today, those street-corner meetings for coffee and doughnuts are full-blown, open-air services with music and celebrations of faith. Now, every Sunday morning, more than fifty volunteers join Pastor Birdd in feeding the bodies and ministering to the souls of hundreds of homeless in a downtown Dallas parking lot.

When I was invited to speak at one of their services, I was inspired by the Birdds and all the caring and comfort they provide to those most needy people. The leaders and volunteers at Pastor Birdd’s SOUL Church value every individual as a child of God. They understand that everyone needs love and encouragement, even if it is just a kind word or a smile to go with a doughnut and a cup of coffee.

Birdd considers himself the Lord’s servant and says that many of those who serve at his open-air church have been either homeless or struggling in their lives. “Then they were touched with the grace and forgiveness that is
found in Jesus. Therefore we love with no strings attached, as our Lord has loved us.”

You can sow good seeds, no matter where you are in life, no matter what your circumstances might be. Whether you are the founder or a volunteer aboard a huge charitable operation like the
Africa Mercy
ship, a national leader like President Sirleaf, or the pastor of a ministry to the homeless, the godly work that you do is magnified many times over because of the countless lives you touch.

All the servant leaders I’ve met in my travels share certain characteristics and attitudes that all of us should adopt and emulate. First, they are incredibly humble and selfless. Many of them give their lives to the service of others, and they don’t care if they receive any recognition. Instead of standing at the forefront, most would rather be at the back of the room, urging on their volunteers and encouraging those they serve. They would rather give credit than receive it.

Second, servant leaders are great listeners and empathizers. They listen to understand the needs of those they serve, and they observe and empathize to pick up on unexpressed needs. Usually people don’t have to come to them and ask for help, because they’ve already detected what is needed. Servant leaders operate with these thoughts in mind:
If I were in this person’s situation, what would comfort me? What would build me up? What would help me overcome my circumstances?

Third, they are healers. They provide solutions while others ponder problems. I’m sure other good people looked at the suffering and illnesses afflicting people in third-world countries and saw these immense problems.
How could you possibly build enough hospitals in those remote, impoverished areas to serve all those in need? Don and Deyon Stephens saw past the problem and came up with an ingenious solution: convert cruise ships into floating hospitals and staff them with volunteers who travel to wherever there is need.

Fourth, servant leaders also don’t bother with short-term fixes. They sow seeds that will have lasting, long-term, and ever-expanding impact. President Sirleaf established peace in her volatile homeland, and then she set about building schools and attracting foreign investments to create opportunities for future generations.

Planters of good seeds keep building upon what they’ve done, either by growing it themselves or inspiring others to join and surpass them, just as Robert Shumake did in passing on his work with the homeless to Leon and Jennifer Birdd.

Fifth, servant leaders are bridge builders who put aside narrow self-interests in favor of harnessing the power of many to bring about change for the benefit of all. They believe in abundance, that there are rewards enough for everyone when both goals and successes are shared. Where some leaders believe in divide and conquer, servant leaders believe in building a community of men and women with a common purpose.

I saw the power of this bridge-building trait exemplified most recently while attending an event called I Heart Central Oregon in which more than twenty-five hundred volunteers from three counties and seventy churches from a range of denominations came together to plant good seeds in their communities. The organizer of this event, Jay Smith, brought me in to speak to his volunteers and to schoolchildren in the region during an incredible week of faith in action.

Jay and members of the band Elliot have been organizing these events
for several years, and the great thing is that they bring all these people from several denominations together to serve people in the community. They don’t just talk the talk; they walk the walk. They go out on Saturdays in a mass volunteer movement and paint fire hydrants, repair homes, rake leaves, mow lawns, run errands, move furniture, and do whatever else they can to make a difference in the lives of their neighbors.

I told Jay that it’s really difficult to figure out who the organizers are at these events, because everyone takes a leadership role in whatever way they are willing to serve and care. It’s interesting that Jay came up with his multidenominational days of community service at a time in his life when he was hurting. He had been involved in missionary work around the world for fifteen years, traveling to twenty-four nations and working with innumerable young volunteers. Then, in 2006, Jay went through a difficult season and needed to stay closer to home where he could focus on his family, including his four young children. He was in what he called a “broken season,” and he realized his days of traveling the world as a missionary were over, at least for a time. He had moved back to his hometown—Bend, Oregon—where he decided to use at home the energy he’d devoted to doing good things in places like Uganda or Ukraine.

In his season of hardship, this servant leader didn’t dwell on his own hurt, but instead he reached out to help others. Bend is a relatively affluent resort and retirement town, but many of the outlying towns are struggling because of the economic downturn as well as drugs and violence. So Jay decided to focus his efforts in the needy areas.

“We had no money, but we went ahead and set up our first service project with one hundred fifty volunteers from several different churches—only to have it snow a foot that day,” he said. “So our service project plan was snowed out. Instead, we grabbed shovels, trucks, and snowplows and
spent the day clearing driveways and sidewalks for people. While doing this, we discovered and helped many elderly people who were shut-ins and others who couldn’t get out because of the snow.”

They were talking to one elderly man as he tried to shovel snow off his roof. While he was speaking, he fainted from exhaustion. Some of the volunteers took care of him and finished the job. The day of service and collaborative effort ended with a celebration: a concert by Elliot, which is a key element of these events. They drew nearly seven hundred teens. At an altar call that night, more than one hundred twenty received Christ.

The success of that first service event, despite the snowfall, put Jay’s and the band’s faith into action in a big way. Over the years that followed, they organized fifteen similar I Heart events in eleven Oregon cities, sometimes with as many as twenty-five hundred volunteers from seventy churches doing service work in their communities. I know, because I spoke at several of those events. In 2010 I appeared before more than eight thousand people for an I Heart Central Oregon event at the Expo Center.

We added to that event with a little I Hug fun prior to my speech, setting the world record for the most hugs in sixty minutes. I managed to hug 1,749 people in one hour. You can see the video on
YouTube.com
. Comedian Nick Cannon, who is married to singer Mariah Carey, tried to break our record, but he couldn’t do it. I guess he just wasn’t properly armed to take me on!

Jay’s more serious goal in these I Heart events is to show the power of Christian faith in action by serving the community while also opening up lines of communication and breaking down walls between churches and church denominations. “Sometimes churches tend to look at all other denominations as different. They don’t often interact. But I have many friends across church lines, and I see the value of all denominations,” he said. “We
can never contain Christ in one church, and together we can show the different facets of faith, whether it’s Nazarenes, Baptists, Foursquares, Catholics, Presbyterians, Methodists, and everything in between. I think it’s hard for people to listen to Christians if they don’t see us living our faith, so our model is love in action.”

Like me, Jay believes that our churches hold the hope of the world. While I can come into a place as an evangelist and offer inspiration, motivation, and hope, it is the church and its ministry that is there day in and day out to serve and love the people of their community. That’s why it bothers us that too often churches don’t work together to multiply their blessings.

“Jesus said, ‘By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another,’ and I feel it is in His heart that we come together,” Jay said. “We are better together than we are apart, and churches are realizing that their doctrinal differences are less important. The main thing is that we believe Jesus Christ is the way to salvation. That is our most important similarity. If we are humble enough, we can work past our differences and come together for the good of all.”

Along with humility and a focus on the common good, a big part of being a servant leader is listening to what others need rather than imposing on them what you want for them. Jay is sensitive to the fact that some churches have fewer resources than others, so he always tries to keep costs down by getting grants to avoid putting any financial pressure on the participants.

In one Oregon city with many living in poverty, Jay and his team raised more than enough money through grants and donations for their project. In fact, they had seven hundred dollars left over from the event. One of the church pastors involved suggested a novel idea for using that
money during the Christmas season: they disbursed the money in five-dollar increments to church members and gave them the mission to grow and multiply that seed money for charitable purposes any way they could, whether it was buying candy at a discount and selling it, using it to make lemonade for a lemonade stand, or buying gas for mowing lawns.

The seven hundred dollars was multiplied into
ten thousand
dollars and used to fund projects like care packages for the homeless, helping single moms buy Christmas presents, providing stuffed animals for abused children, and other creative acts of kindness.

“We do this to show our love through serving others. It’s a way of letting communities know that their churches care. We’re not preaching down to them, we are serving up to them,” Jay said. “And we don’t intend for our days of service to be a one-time event. Often, after we’ve gone, the relationship continues to grow between the churches and cities. We’ve seen it develop where mayors can call pastors and ask for a congregation to put on their work clothes and lend a hand. Once people have tasted the joy of service, they want to stay involved.”

Jay and his army of servant leaders have had some unusual requests when they offer their services. “We tell them we have five hundred volunteers, so what can we do for their city? One town couldn’t afford to mow its overgrown cemeteries because of budget cuts, so the churches did it, and now they have taken on that responsibility. It’s opened up new ways for churches to serve their communities.”

Officials in the city of Bend said they couldn’t afford to repaint their fire hydrants, which is necessary every few years so that they can be quickly spotted in an emergency. During three I Heart events over two years, volunteers repainted thirty-six hundred hydrants, saving the city thousands of dollars. The idea is to let each city determine how it can be served, which
helps build enthusiasm and goodwill. In some cities Jay and his crew also partner with nonprofits like local food banks, soup kitchens, women’s shelters, Head Start, or Habitat for Humanity.