Friday, July 07, 2006

Justice and Mercy

Micah 6:8 reads, "He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. " These two words, justice and mercy are often used throughout the scriptures. Jack Jezreel, the Executive Director of Just Faith Ministries tells the following fictitious story to illustrate the difference between justice and mercy.

One day a farmer was out in his field weeding his crops when he noticed of the distance in his creek what appeared to be a body in the water. He dropped what he was doing and immediately ran to see what was going on. When he arrived just seconds later he found that indeed it was the body of a man badly beaten and barely alive. He lifted the man out of the water and carried him into his house. He called a doctor who later came and treated this beaten man. The farmer allowed the man to stay in his home for several days until he was healthy enough to go on his way.

The next month, this same farmer was weeding his crops when he saw what appeared to be two bodies floating in the creek behind his property. Off he ran to discover that in fact now there were two badly beaten men barely alive. He managed as quickly as possible to get these two men into his house. Again he called for the doctor in town who came as fast as he could to give emergency medical care to these two men. After several days, these two men were healthy enough to go on their way.

The following month, the farmer was weeding his crops when he saw what appeared to be the bodies of three men in the creek...It was then, and only then that the farmer concluded that there was a problem up stream. He decided to not only nurse these men back to health, but to go upstream in an effort to get the root cause of this growing problem.

Jack uses this story to illustrate the importance of mercy, which in the story is giving much needed care to people who need it. All of us need to be involved in acts of mercy in behalf of others who are desperately in need of it. Justice though looks not only at the individual sufferers, but more importantly at the root cause of the suffering. In the case of the story, what is going on up stream. Justice attempts to deal with the reasons for why so many people suffer in similar ways. Justice looks for deep highly leveraged ways of helping lots of people at the same time with sustainable solutions.

I believe this is a powerful message for many Americans over 50 who are scaling down their careers and looking for ways of making the second half of their lives count for something really significant. Many of these people have invested 30 to 40 years in a career and have learned and accomplished a ton of professional expertise, relational capacity, and leadership ability that is just waiting to be leveraged for the Kingdom of God. Could it be that the church's vision and goals are simply too small for some of these folks. Many will readily serve in the church as greeters, ushers, deacons, Sunday School teachers, parking lot attendants, etc.

I have to believe that if the church can envision and release these people to solve some of the justice issues that are causing so much suffering in this world, we would see our churches, cities, world, and nation transformed in ways we've never seen. Bob Buford, the founder and current Chairman of the Board of Leaderhip network wrote Halftime in 1995 in which he gives practial advice for successful people to make a mid-course correction of their lives so that they can invest the rest of their lives in something significant. The influence of his book goes beyond measure. Bob, and all of us who work with Leadership Network often hear the personal stories of so many men and women who have re-ordered their priorities in such a way to make a significant differenc in the lives of others.

I just received Bob's latest musing from his online website. I have excerpted much of his article below. I think you will find it to be a good read. He writes about Chuck Proudfit, whose life was profoundly influenced by reading Halftime.

Paradigm shifts are always led by exceptional people who choose “the road less traveled.” They get out ahead. They incarnate an idea. They prove the possibility that others can then follow. And follow they do. The year after Roger Bannister ran a mile in less than four minutes, a feat considered humanly impossible, thirty-seven other runners had broken that barrier. The following year 300 runners had broken the four minute mile!

Halftime was released in January 1995. The idea of success to significance in life’s second half has been written about by others and taken up by quite a few working people, not just the exceptional folks I sought out to interview in Finishing Well. It is an idea that’s now beginning to be embodied and practiced. Just look around. Here’s one such story adapted from the July issue of The Halftime Report (click on www.halftime.org to subscribe. It’s free.)

“The book Halftime hit in me hard in my 30s,” confessed Cincinnati business consultant Chuck Proudfit, now 41. “I couldn’t get it out of my head. I decided that I wanted to tackle Halftime issues before I hit my 40s.”
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“I’m a strategic thinker, and it was the strategic concept of significance versus success that really grabbed me,” Chuck said. “The world tells us there is a career path that makes us successful; Bob Buford taught me that God creates a calling that makes us significant.”
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Building People

In 1995 Chuck founded his consulting firm, SKILLSOURCE®, “on a kitchen table with little more than a PC and a file folder.” His business model was equally simple: deliver top quality consulting to small businesses at an affordable price. His slogan? Building sales, building profits, building people. The Halftime philosophy stuck to that last category like a magnet to steel. “[After I became a Christian], I became intentional about how I could help my clients build into people. I discovered some of the executives I was working with had climbed the ladder and were miserable. Building into them was giving them permission to start dreaming about a calling instead of career. In some instances, it meant allowing themselves permission to be a little less successful from the profit and sales standpoints and more successful at building people. Bottom line? Many of those clients now spend more time at their kids’ ballgames.”

Fishpond Mentality

Chuck also modeled for his clients the investment potential of strategic charities.

“I build businesses, but the focus of my company’s charity is to build livelihoods — to help disadvantaged people in underdeveloped areas launch small businesses of their own. In partnership with an innovative non-profit organization called Self Sustaining Enterprises, my colleagues and I teach people how to fish and how to buy the fishpond! We call this sustainable philanthropy, and we teach clients they can do this, too.”

And clients are jumping into fishponds with a vigor they haven’t felt in years. “I’ve seen grown men weep because they begin to feel again — to tap into a part of their hearts they believed they had to choke off to be successful in business,” Chuck said.

A great success story is H. J. Benken Floral, Home and Garden, one of largest florist and greenhouses in the state of Ohio. Chuck encouraged CEO Mike Benken to develop a charity that celebrated what Benkin does best—showcasing the beauty and bounty of nature. On Valentine’s Day, the company now delivers roses to battered women living in shelters. Employees also host handicapped children at the Benken facility, where they see [glorious] flowers, carve pumpkins, go on hayrides — things the children have never done. “That’s marketplace ministry!” Chuck declared. But getting Benken employees in touch with local needs was just the beginning.

“I then approached Mike about expanding his reach. ... Nigeria, one of the places where I’m involved philanthropically, is a country of 130 million people with no food-preservation technology. I told Mike: ‘I want you to build a food dehydrator with materials available [in Nigeria] because we’re going to teach them to do it.’ ” Mike created a simple [sun-based] dehydrator “that will literally transform the agricultural economy of Nigeria.” But the physical transformation that emerges when you build into people can’t compete with the spiritual transformation. “Mike [returns from Nigeria] so spiritually touched that he commits his life to Christ. That’s how powerful this stuff is! It bridges the gap that we’ve created in our world between marketplace and ministry,” Chuck said.

An Amazing Paradigm Shift

Chuck is adamant that the integration of marketplace and ministry is the right model for kingdom building. “Most Christians go to church on Sunday and to work on Monday,” he said. “They live separation instead of integration. But when you give yourself permission to break down those barriers, you can become God’s servant in the marketplace right now! It’s an amazing paradigm shift from what the world tells us is success to what God tells us is significance. What [the book Halftime taught me] and what I’m preaching and teaching, through SKILLSOURCE®and my non-profit marketplace ministry called At Work on Purpose®, is to shift from the current mindset of marketplace here and ministry over there to the strategic reality that marketplace and ministry can walk hand in hand — seven days a week!”

Isn't that a great story? Don't you think that there are thousands if not ten thousands of men and women just like Chuck Proudfit and Mike Benken that have the capacity to launch all kinds of new ministries and programs with the real potential to change not just a few, but hundreds and thousands of lives in our communities and around the world? These two men are younger and still working in their careers, and yet they are making a huge difference in the Kingdom. Think about the men and women in their 50's and 60's that are either retiring from their careers completely or working less so that they can have even more time to invest in significant kingdom ministry.

You can subscribe to Bob's Active Energy Newsletter at www.activeenergy.net


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