Paul DeCelles gave this talk at the 2002 Leaders’ Conference for Men about the results of a communitywide consultation about more purposeful action in the community. He talked about the prophetic word that came out of the second High Country Adventure (the community has to change), the ideas behind the consultation and the role of high school youth in this endeavor.
Transcript
This document is a direct transcript of an audio recording, and may contain transcription errors and other minor edits for the sake of clarity.
PAUL: This is a very wobbly platform, so if I fall down it will be its fault, not mine. Look at that [laughter and inaudible comments from audience].
Well. . . . Mary Radtke, in Servant Branch, sent me a letter recently which is just perfect as an introduction to what’s going on this weekend. She said:
About two or three years ago, at a public meeting, I had a vivid mental picture of a small child, a toddler, standing by a table, trying to climb onto the lap of Jesus and the Father, who were sitting at the table poring over maps, charts, and plans. One of them looked at the child, smiled, and said, “Oh, you want to sit with us and see what we’re doing,” and lifted the child up on his lap.
The child sat on the lap, unaware of what Jesus and the Father were doing, but enjoying being with them, playing with the pens and paper on the table, etc. All the while, Jesus and the Father talked to the child, telling him about what they were doing, even though this child didn’t understand them fully.
A few months later, at a public meeting, I had a vision of the same scene, except the child was older, seated on his own chair at the table, asking questions about what’s going on, able to understand some of the things Jesus and the Father were explaining.
These visions caused me to pray that God would teach me, would open my eyes to understand what he was doing, and caused me to think that he wanted us in on the planning, as well as on the execution of his will.
It started me thinking that intercession was like sitting at the table, participating in the planning. Intercession was a way of being with God and learning something about how he thinks and works.
So, since then, my experience of prayer has, many times, been something like this: I bring a situation, a need, a person to the Lord in prayer. Perhaps asking for something specific, perhaps just bringing the need to him without any specific request. It seems to me that he says to me, “What do you think we should do about this situation? What ideas do you have?” It seems that he wants me to consider it, to discuss it with him and, together, come up with a plan of action.
Other times, it’s more subtle than that. My prayer begins with me asking God to do something, and ends with me having an idea of some action I know I should take regarding the situation.
Then she goes on:
It seems to me that this may be something like what you were talking about, when you said we should approach our Father as sons who are conscious of the immeasurable greatness of his power in us who believe, and that our prayer should be so permeated with the consciousness that all things are possible to him who believes.
So, if you want to think of it—I’d like you to extend it beyond just intercessory prayer, or prayer. We’re here to sit at the table with the Father and the Son and, by the power of the Holy Spirit, participate in the planning of saving the world.
Let me begin the conference by giving you a little history of the last several years.
We began thinking about the stuff that we’re going to be dealing with here, on—this week, several years ago. We started by thinking about how it is that the community hasn’t been growing.
It’s—we were particularly struck, I think, by the fact that, especially so many of the mission branches have been so incredibly faithful, despite the fact that they’re so very small. It is a remarkable—I think it’s a miracle that, you know, a group of 25 adults can stay an active, full, functioning mission branch in the community for 25 years.You know, and it’s a sign of the loyalty, the brotherhood, the sisterhood, and the presence of the Spirit in that situation. But we did feel that it isn’t right that we are not growing, and that we need to figure out why that is.
So, we decided that one of the reasons was that we have had, operating at a very fundamental level in our approach to community life and community building, an idea that goes like this. It’s an old idea—philosophical opinion: that the way—it’s a sociological opinion, actually—that the way in which a group of human beings, anyway, should grow is this: you need to go into a given situation, size it up, see who the men are who are leading the social group you’re in, and bring that—convert that person. Bring that person to repentance, bring that person to see the presence of Christ, to accept Jesus as Lord, and to join you, and to join Christ.
So, if you do that, then that strong man would bring all his friends with him, of course. So, we had the notion of master/disciple operating in there, too, a little bit. But we—and, of course, they bring their wives and their children. And that’s the way in which we should grow.
Now—actually, it was our son John who pointed out, a year or so ago, to me that he had been walking downtown and he—this is just an example of this kind of thing. He wanted to talk to somebody about Christ as people were coming for him—forward, you know, toward him on the street. And he realized that there was just no way he could do that.
It wasn’t that he was inhibited partic- —I don’t know that he was or not; I would be. But it just wasn’t—there was no forum, there was no place to stop and talk; there was no way to exchange ideas, or to tell somebody about Christ. Everybody was busy; they were on their way! I mean, he could intrude and stop them—trip them, maybe—and then something—but. . . .
And it struck me how it is that we don’t have a place where we meet people, and—normally, in groups, and talk to them, And, in fact men—if you do get a man, all you get is that man; he will bring his wife and children, no doubt.
But men, in fact, are not that much connected—the men in the world. It’s not like it is in the People of Praise. Men are very much alone, very individualistic, and isolated. So you get one man, but that’s what you get. Which is wonderful, of course; I’m all for getting that man. But as far as growth is concerned, that’s a very slow way to grow.
In fact, it occurred to us that it would be—the only people who have time to talk, and—in groups—and this is increasingly not the case, because more and more women are working full time—but it is true that women are in social settings more frequently than men are. And if you wanted to reach a lot of people, what you ought to do is get the women, and they will bring their men!
It’s just the reverse. And of course, their children—but you can’t get women unless you get children. Unless the place, the community, is a place which is attractive to children, you won’t—there’s no way that women are going to want to be much involved with it.
So, this is just—it was just the reverse of what we had been thinking. If we want to grow, the way to grow is to make the community a good place for young men and women to belong, that they want to be in the community.
Now, let’s see—I mean there are—you can—you could also make a good case for everything else that you want to say about this subject. I’m just trying to give you kind of a line of thought as it developed among the head coordinators and at headquarters.
So, we took a turn to the youth and we began to consider just exactly why it is that so many of our young men and women have a hatred for the community, at some levels. By no means all the kids. But some—in fact, alarmingly, many do.
And we all know that it’s the case that sometimes kids—I’m—the kids I’m going to be talking about now are sophomores, juniors, and seniors in high school. So whenever—I’m not talking about what we could call “youth ministry” or something like that: youth. I’m talking about kids, teenagers—or we call them, sometimes, “SJs,” “SJSs.” Sophomores, juniors, seniors, okay?
But that’s—so all through the weekend, when we talk about youth, or kids, or kids participating, we’re talking about sophomores, juniors, and seniors. And sophomores are kids who have attained the September date of their sophomore year. Okay?
Okay. So, we started thinking more about the community and how it seems to be to the—to our kids. Now, we didn’t set out to do this, directly, but we decided that. . . .
(I should say, right at this point, clearly: because we didn’t start on time, the schedule has radically changed from the one that is printed, that you have. So we’re going to go a little while longer than the scheduled time here.)
The—as I said, we didn’t intend this—we didn’t realize that this was what was going to happen when we started talking to the youth: that, in a certain sense, we were performing, or getting, an independent audit on the community.
These kids are not members of the community. And now—you know, we don’t invite strangers into the community to examine everything and give us their opinion about whether we’re doing things right or wrong. We’ve never done that, and we’re not going to do that, but we sort of. . . .
[Presumably, in response to an inaudible comment:] Thank you, Thank you.
When we started talking to the kids that. . . . We got an audit. One we didn’t expect! [Paul chuckles.] One we weren’t, so to speak. . . . Let’s see. . . . We were trying to help the kids; and, instead, what happened is that the kids gave us this really vivid picture of what the community seems to be to them. Seems to them to be.
And, if you step back and look at their audit—their opinions, they were pretty accurate. That is to say, “Why would anybody want to join the community—if that’s what you see the community being?”
That had a very sobering effect on us. We’ve—we started looking at, more and more, “Well, what would the community have to be, or how would we have to change the community, such that it would be something that the kids would want to join?”
But—so we started thinking that way, and then, pretty soon, it became apparent that that was really not quite the issue, either. It evolved out of that into something which, we’ve realized, was a prophetic statement that was made by the kids at the High Country Adventure.
And it was—they were putting it in their light. What they said was, “The community’s gotta change if you want us to join it.” But, the—what it’s evolved to, simply, is: “The community’s got to change.”
So, it was at that point that we began to do the consultation on the—well, let me say a couple more things before I leave that issue. The result was that we had the consultation on the youth in the community. And what we were dealing with in that consultation, and got out of the consultation, was a clear understanding that we do have a lack of purposeful action in the community. The kids lack purposeful action, and the kids lack society. Those are the two biggest issues that came out of our understanding of the kids’ situation.
So, they want life, they want freedom, they want friends, and they want something to matter. They want purpose. And those are the things we all want!
So the heart of the Youth Division proposal was to give them—the proposal we presented for consultation, the heart of what we were doing—was giving the kids a chance to participate in purposeful action and to create a society with them, to give them society.
But then, at the Teaching Review Seminar, we had a very interesting turn as we were—we talked a great deal more about why we were doing and thinking about the youth, and Mike Freeman gave a word, which we recog- —everybody sensed immediately that it was a word of the Lord, which was: “Whatever it is, don’t call it an Action Division.” I’m sorry, a Youth Division. “Don’t call it a Youth Division.”
And he went on to explain it as: part of the problem with youth is that they’re concentrating on themselves, and that’s the very—one of the very things we were trying to get people—the kids out of. We would want to get them out of just focusing on themselves. We’re not at all in the amusement business, amusing kids, or babysitting teenagers. The—so he said it should be “Action,” or “Action Division.”
So there was a real solid turn to the—at that time—at the Teaching Review seminar— that the community itself needs to become more active-oriented. And when it—if that’s the case, not only will the kids want to join us, but a lot of other men and women will want to join us.
But then it evolved some more, because it was pretty clear that it isn’t just growth the Lord wants (but he certainly wants that). It is—he wants. . . . Let me see: he wants to save the world. And we’ve been sent into the world to save it. That’s what the Father’s plan is: to unite all things in Christ, which means, “Come, join the Body of Christ.” So our—what we do is, we build community. That’s our “action.” But we have been building it in such a way that it’s—we’ve been something like a sphere; we’ve become spheroidal.
Charlie Harris used to say, by the way, that the Greeks knew that the most perfect form was the sphere, and—the Greek Philosophers, the ancient philosophers—and he said, “I am becoming more perfect every day” [laughter].
So the community was getting more and more perfect, too, and has been. But they—this is another curious fact: that if you have a—in—any kind of volume in 3-dimensional space, the volume—for a given volume, the least surface area of the object will be a sphere.
So as we sort of focus on being community and focus on sort of turn- —I don’t mean turn in a negative way. We’ve been—this is—there’s no criticism in anything of what we have been on—by our—on our part. There’s no criticism whatsoever. We’re talking about a stage that the Lord’s got us in, and he’s changing us. But we have been, so to speak—we have a little surface area, too little surface area.
And we realized that there is a new idea here, which is that we need to go out; we need to create a larger surface area. We need to be in contact with a lot of other people, in a lot of other ways than we have been in the past.
Now, the public meetings have been a big help in that regard. It was at—in South Bend last Friday, there were something like—nobody did an accurate count, but let me—my estimate was (which is a disputed estimate, I must admit [laughter])—was that there were 300 people there and 200 of them were not in the community.
So that’s an example of something like—you know, here’s one—my fist is one figure with a little surface area, and this situation is a lot more surface area. And so the public meeting has given us a chance to meet all kinds of people that we don’t regularly meet—wouldn’t meet just in an ordinary community meeting setting, or meeting in our men’s and women’s groups, and so on. Or at funerals, and such.
So, we began to connect the two things: that Action and growth should go together. And that was already evident in our presentation for consultation: that we had made the connection of these two things.
So. . . . Let’s see. So, we want to increase our surface area. We want to do more—more, so to speak, outreach, if you want to call it that. Actually it’s good not to put too many names on things. But whatever we do, we are building community. And any action we’d take, we want to use as a screen, as a threshold for authentication, that it be something that our kids can be involved with. In us—join us in this enterprise. That’s our sophomores, juniors, and seniors.
So, we’ve come to some conclusions. The consultation itself was a huge success. We—it was very inspiring, and we learned, I just think, a tremendous amount. Everyone agreed that purposeful action was needed throughout the whole community.
So we have decided—the board of governors has decided. . . . Let’s see. You could, if you want to call this discernment, put this in our discernment language, okay? We have—we know, without a doubt, what it is that we have chosen to intend to do [laughter].
We know what God’s will is for us. And this is what we’re going to do: we’re going to become active.
We’re going to, first of all, in every branch and mission branch, establish a team that will collaborate with Habitat for Humanity, in the location, to build at least one house, or to participate—if we’re in a small mission branch and we have too few people to do it ourselves, we will join another group and we will do this together, with another group, to build a house.
We want to do this because, first of all, Habitat is a wonderful—Habitat for Humanity is a wonderful service, and—with a great vision. Is Ralph Whittenburg here? Ralph is going to explain more about that and our history with Habitat.
And—but our main reason, actually, aside from all those obviously good reasons, that you’ll hear more about, is that we want all of our kids, boys and girls, to pick up skills. We’d like them to learn how to use power saws, how to drive a nail, how to do some minor electrical work or, at least, how to avoid getting shocked [laughter]. And we’d like them to be e- —to get equipped.
So this would be kind of a certification process for all the kids who join us in our—on our teams. Which is—we want them to get certified at being able to handle the kinds of work of carpentry and building homes that we will do in the future by ourselves, without Habitat. We will start our own kind of—as somebody—this is not a good word to use, either, but it’s like a People of Praise VISTA [Volunteers in Service to America] or Ameri- —a People of Praise Corps, or something. Okay?
But the idea would be that we would be able to do that. That’s not going to be the entire focus. So the plan is: in some of the large branches, we would have more than one Habitat house, or one group of kids and adults working on this, because they’re—you know, they’ll be enough that you might want to build three houses, or something. At any rate, Ralph is going to give us more details about this.
So that’s the first thing: to equip our kids with certain skills for living in [a] difficult environment, in which they can do some simple building projects.
We are going to send a reconnaissance team to Grenada. It will include adults and children—kids, we’ll call ’em, or the SJSs—at a ratio of roughly 1:3 or 1:4. So we will be conscripting kids who are—who want to join us in this. And we will go to Grenada and examine whether we can establish a house and maintain an extension of our work in Grenville (in Grenada) to St. George’s, and see if we can establish a presence of the People of Praise in St. George’s, which is the more urban center in Grenada.
Third: we’re going to, this summer, send—we intend to, anyway—send a reconnaissance team with kids and adults to Jamaica, to Kingston. It may be that we can’t—won’t be able to do that, but we intend to do everything on [sic] our power to have that happen. We may be obstructed by the—there’s a call for a general election, and when a general election happens—when the date is set—prior to the election, there is often in Kingston—in Jamaica in general—terrible social chaos, and it’s too dangerous to go there during that time.
So they haven’t set the date for the general election. They’ve just said there’s gonna be one. So if the general election were set—you know, if the date were set in May, then they would get this out of their—out of—off the table, and we would be able to go there after, if—as I understand it. There would be—there are many details we have to work out with this. But that’s our intention, to get a—if not this summer, then the next summer, or some other time. Because we want to build the Kingston mission branch.
The fourth thing we are—want to do—we intend to do is to move to Ledbetter Heights [roughly, the Shreveport, LA neighborhood we now call Allendale–Lakeside]. As—some people refer to it as “The Heights,” in the—and on the Internet, sometimes it’s referred to as “The Bottoms” [laughter]. But the—we want to call it “The Heights.” And eventually want to call it whatever the people who are living there call it. The people—we’re going to have a presentation about the—Ledbetter Heights, which is an enclave in Shreveport.
We’re going to begin this summer—some people are going to move—we will move people into Ledbetter Heights this summer. We will do—we intend to do projects with the young kids, youth, in Ledbetter Heights by peop- —by our people who are living there. And we will do this, of course, with our kids’—our sophomores’, juniors’, and seniors’—participation.
One of the things that we probably will do is try to acquire some land or a building. Almost all—there’s hardly a building in the several mile—square mile—area that one would want to keep. I mean, the la- —any parcel of land is more valuable than any building on it there, except for a couple of churches. The—and we have no intention of tearing down a church [laughter].
The—no—so, the goal would be—we intend, anyway, to build something there: a structure that we could use for our public outreach, our public meetings. A place where we can pray with people, pray for healing; and a service center, out of which we’re going to accomplish. . . . We probably won’t call it a service center, either, but—we—it’s part of our life. We will be able to reach out to people, as we give them the opportunity to join this manifestation of the Kingdom of God.
The—we’re going to have a presentation, as I say, replete with a slide show here, in just a minute.
We also realize that the—of concern on a lot of—on the part of a lot of people, about employing youth in things that we do, was that the kids have to work for college—for—to save money so that they can go to college. It’s our intention, then, to—whenever we can, and to the degree we can—we actually want to hire the kids. We want to pay them what they would make if they were working someplace else. So we would—they would work on our projects.
We’re going to spend three days talking about all these things, so there’s a lot more to be said about the—so many of these areas.
But—if the kids don’t want to be there, for example, we do not want them there. This is not a hostile takeover. It’s not forcing anybody. This is a question of making sure that the kids measure up to our requirement for them to participate.
It would be—a demand—all these are demanding projects that we have decided to do. We are not interested—we are not going to start a social service agency. And, we’re not going to have the People of Praise hire some people over on the side to do our work. We want the People of Praise—the idea there is that we’re not doing social work. We’re not building the city. We’re not—is that clear? I mean, that’s not our goal. Our goal is to build the kingdom of God. But the kingdom of God, for us, means all things financial, material, and spiritual, for example, as we say in our covenant.
So we’re talking about real life, a real extension of life, including ours- —putting ourselves in a place where we have not been before: a neighborhood we’ve not been in before—but in a branch. Always where we have our branch. Okay.
It’s not a service or a mission project that we’re interested in. What we want to do is build the community, the way we build a community.
[Recording ends here.]
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