What Difference Does It Make?

This question is one that I am sure each of us has asked at one time or another.  Perhaps it was out loud while talking with a trusted friend during a crossroads moment in your life or blurted out in frustration over a specific event. Maybe it was simply in a quiet moment of reflection.  

For each leader, there are three basic tools they have at their disposal:  power, authority, and influence.  Each of these is necessary to possess, but I think the one most needed at their disposal is influence.   Drew Dyck, managing editor of Leadership Journal shares how influence can impact others:

“Young people who have meaningful relationships with older Christians are much more likely to retain their faith into adulthood. I had those connections and have no doubt they were instrumental in my life.“

I know for myself I can look back and remember my first young adult bible study teacher.  His name might not mean anything to you, Tom Hinzman, but it does to me.  At the time, I lived in a small Western PA town, and Tom was your typical blue collar guy; worked in the local steel mill, wife, three sons.  I can only imagine his work environment – gritty, 100+ degrees in the mill, and by the time he hit the locker room to clock out, I would have to imagine many of his co-workers were mentally and physically exhausted and maybe a few choice words were flying around the room.  

However, he was a steady witness to his co-workers; when one of them was running short on food, he sent them down to the Salvation Army food pantry; if they needed a ride to work because the car wouldn’t start, he was outside their door waiting to pick them up – and the list goes on and on.  He not only shared the Bible in that teen class with me – he showed me how it influenced those around them. He taught me that where it mattered most was in the places God gives you influence. The point is this: He made an influence – on me and those God put in his path.

Tom was simply living out the gifts God had given him in the places of influence he naturally navigated.  The Bible talks about influence, both positive and otherwise many times.  Jesus used this in his ministry more often than power or authority.  Whether it was while talking with the Samaritan woman at the well, having dinner in the home of a tax collector who simply wanted, “to see who he was,”  the New Testament talks about each of us having gifts and using them to serve others.

It brings me 20+ years ahead to where I am now in my life.  As an adult, I see others in my own life living out their gifts, and it often manifests itself in simple ways.  I watch as one gentleman, formerly living on the streets, recruits people each week to help collect the offering in church on Sunday. 

Are you not sure of what your gifts might be or what difference you make?  We are all here with a purpose.  Try the test below to discover your spiritual gifts and how they can impact others:

Spiritual Gifts Test

Written by Chip Kelly
Territorial Lay Leader
Development Bureau Director

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An Act of God

An 'Act of God' is described as an extraordinary interruption that is beyond human control and can't be prevented! Years ago, this term would lead a person to think directly of insurance claims as the image of a neighbor's tree which was once upright now rest on the roof of what used to be a minivan. In more recent years, the mind might rush to scenes of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina or the faces of Indonesian children after the devastation of a tsunami.

In any case, we have been led to believe that an 'Act of God' is some sort of natural anomaly that leaves behind a trail of debris and tears. There can't be many things further from the truth!

Thousands of years ago, as the sequel to the fall of man, an 'Act of God' occurred. A Champion was born to an unaware world to a carpenter and his young wife. As the third installment to this spectacle, another 'Act of God' happened. About 33 years later, that same Champion reached out to the west, He grabbed hold of the east and announced His victory over that great adversary, "It is finished."

John 3:16 says, "For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life."

That may have been the greatest 'Act of God' of them all, but the truth is that it wasn't the last one. The truth is that they happen every day! Not every 'Act of God' has a star hovering over it. Not every 'Act of God' has a crowd gathered and ready to bear witness to it.

An 'Act of God' is when a police officer buys a pair of shoes for a homeless man and helps him put them on without knowing cameras are watching. An 'Act of God' is a teacher who shields her students from an attacker. An 'Act of God' isn't an unstoppable wildfire or an unimaginable storm. It's unstoppable love and unimaginable grace. An 'Act of God' is every image of love, compassion and justice we project in this world.

Written by Lt. Darell Houseton
Newark Ironbound 

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Hurricane Sandy: The Salvation Army Serving New Jersey

The Salvation Army New Jersey is dedicated to the long-term needs of Hurricane Sandy survivors. For more information, visit http://www.salvationarmynj.org

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HIS World: Flowers Grow in the City

Batty Hattie, they call her, as she waits in line for the hot food from our soup van's serving window. "Crazy as a loon …..and a thief too." That's what they say about her to our workers who visit the streets of the city nightly.

She wears dated but dressy church hats from the thrift shop. The kind you see on older matriarchs as they go to Ebenezer Baptist on Sunday...Except these have street dirt and years of dust layered on the felt and satin ribbon. Along with her tattered man's sport coat, ("big pockets"), they form her street clothes ensemble.

"Gave up her own children, so she could walk around the streets talking to herself and screaming at the passing cars" the street wise said, "Don't mess with her" "She'll cut you soon as she looks at you" they warned us when she first started coming around, "Threw her out of the psycho ward for threatening the doctors."

"Where do you sleep?" one of our staff ask her when she didn't list an address on the meal sheet. No answer, just the vacant stare of one who is somewhere else...Somewhere you can't touch her with your words.

One night while she was getting her helping of rice, stew and vegetables, gravy splashed onto her hand. Volunteer Carol quickly took her hand and gently wiped the warm gravy from her knuckles and wrist. Their eyes met and somewhere, from that distant place, her eyes lit with the warmth of a human touch. "Thank you," spoke a soft quiet voice that none of us had ever heard from Hattie. Wise beyond her 28 years, volunteer Carol smiled and said, "You’re very welcome, Hattie...Can we sit down and just talk?"

That's how we got to actually see Hattie's place - In the midst of cracked cement walks and the mud lawns of the projects that hadn't seen grass in years, there was a somewhat, still slightly-white, little piece of dollar store fence that bordered a tiny garden. No food growing (it wouldn't last till it was ripe in that neighborhood), just flowers crowded between the building wall and the cement curb of the dumpster. Nothing you'd see at the Home and Garden Expo. No, their beauty far exceeds pampered, sheltered "miracle grow" blossoms; for they reflect the beauty of a soul that, though hidden, will not die, and somehow still clings to memories of beauty.

I wish I could tell you that Hattie has turned her life around, become an upstanding citizen, a "success" story, but I cannot. In a crowd, she still gets the little "Right of way path" of a "crazy woman;" still dines, sidewalk café, at the Army van.

But she has found a place where she can sit down for a few moments, let the wildness fade from her eyes and talk to another human being. She lets us touch, gently; the soul that still lives deep inside nourished by a small patch of beauty next to a dumpster.

We pray that the food of the soul, given in the form of Christ-like love, will blossom someday into a new creation in her life. Until then, we talk, pray, and serve meat with gravy over rice...in faith.

Written by Major Charles Kelly
Spiritual Formation Officer
Men's Fellowship Officer

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