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Magestic Victoria Falls. (Jon Warren/WV)

What I’ve heard from bungee-jumpers and skydivers and other temporarily crazy people is that the first time is scary, but after that, you love it and want to do it again and again. I found that to be false with one of my Zambia trip mates. He’d signed up not just for bungee-jumping off the falls but also zip-lining and riding a swing that starts with a 200-foot free-fall. After he tried the bungee, he canceled the other stuff—one leap was enough.

There are obvious parallels here to the leap of faith. Most people don’t do it repeatedly—once in a lifetime is usually all you can handle. And God won’t usually ask for more. When you leap in faith, God will land you well, in the place where He wants you to be. And that’s solid ground, not dangling helplessly from a rope.

For me, the leap of faith was to answer God’s call on my life in 1998. What was your leap? What did you learn, and where did you land?

May you find new hope and fresh joy this Easter, celebrating the One who has overcome the world!

Lorraine Pierce, 1917-2011 (Greg Schneider for WV)

Sometimes I’ve looked back and wondered, what made World Vision special? How was it that this ministry survived the lean years and thrived to become what Christianity Today coined “The Colossus of Care,” a relief and development organization with 40,000 staff and a strong commitment to our Christian faith? One school of thought owes it all to Bob Pierce’s passion. But there’s another theory that it was Lorraine Pierce and her fervent prayers. 

Both Lorraine and Bob were ordinary people—they had no advanced degrees, nothing to prepare them for what they accomplished. So why did God use them? It’s simple: They had willing hearts. Jesus chose ordinary people for His earthly ministry, not the learned and celebrated folks of His day. The disciples were willing to serve. And more than that, they were willing to pay the price, which for most of them meant their lives. 

The Pierce family also sacrificed—Lorraine even more than Bob. And yet she never emphasized this; her constant refrain was how faithful God is, how loyal is God’s Word, how great is His love. 

Lorraine’s legacy is that obedience to God, while not painless, offers no better path in life and no greater reward in the end. This week I’ve often smiled while imagining the joyful chorus of saints welcoming her home. 

Please lift up the Pierce family in your prayers today as Lorraine is laid to rest in California. I will attend her memorial service and say a few words about what she meant to us at World Vision.

(Reuters/ Yomiuri, Courtesy alertnet.org)

So why is today any different? In a word, awareness. The connectedness of our world today brings the trauma and pain of Japan into our living rooms with gut wrenching emotional force. The result is that we cannot turn away. As human beings we are, by nature, empathetic to the suffering of others. But that empathy is not triggered as acutely by sterile newspaper articles, as it is by the vivid and shocking images of human suffering bombarding our TVs, computers, and iPads, causing even our children to ask what we can do to help. I think that most of us–as we have watched the events unfold in Japan–have thought to ourselves: “What if this had happened to us?”

Last night on our local news in Seattle, a rescue worker was interviewed as he prepared to leave for Japan. He had also deployed last year to Haiti. The reporter asked why he felt compelled to go, and he answered with words that many of us feel: “I just have to respond. The world is a smaller place today. It’s about ‘loving our neighbors as ourselves,’ and it doesn’t matter if they are right here or halfway around the world.”  Indeed, it is about “loving our neighbors as ourselves”–the very thing Jesus called “the second greatest commandment.”

Here on the northwest coast of the U.S., we live on the same volcanic, “ring of fire” as Japan, and are vulnerable in the same way to earthquakes. Driving to work this morning over our vital bridges and highways, I thought about what might happen if such an earthquake hit Seattle. I shuddered at the possibility. This really could happen to us, I thought. And if it does, I pray that the rest of the world will also see us as their neighbor. Because we will surely need some friends.

God has had a bigger plan for it. The Hole in Our Gospel has been translated into Korean, Portuguese, German, Chinese, and Spanish. It has been passed along hand-to-hand, placed in church libraries, added to college course reading, and transported to distant corners of the earth.

The response has been amazing and humbling. Just on this website alone, caring people have sponsored some 640 children and contributed more than $355,000 to World Vision. And two years later, nearly every day, people tell me how their hearts have been tugged by the question, “What does God expect of me?” They’re volunteering, changing jobs, adopting children, holding fundraisers, and mobilizing their networks to care for neighbors in need. Just this week, I learned that a billionaire in Malaysia gave World Vision $1 million after reading the book.

The Hole in Our Gospel is a small pebble tossed into God’s pond, creating ripples beyond anything I could have imagined. What a privilege it has been to be part of this movement of Christ’s ambassadors in the world!

If you’ve traveled in the developing world, though, you know that it isn’t the same story in some societies. Where women’s roles are strictly limited to domestic work, educating girls is considered unnecessary. This is a shame, and not just for the girls themselves. Study after study and expert after expert have noted the remarkable benefits to families’ well-being when mothers are educated.

Lorena, an admired doctor in this Bolivian community. (Jon Warren/WV)

In Bolivia, I met a young woman who beat the odds—Lorena, 25, a doctor serving in one of World Vision’s projects. She grew up poor, one of eight children in her family. But she became a sponsored child, and that, along with scholarships, helped her go all the way to medical school. “We want our daughters to be like Lorena,” say the women in this community.

Lorena told me that many of her brothers and sisters live with her. She’s helping support them as four are in university and a few are in high school. Ultimately, all eight children will hold college degrees.

Wow, I thought. I asked her, “What is it about your family that made education so important—for both the boys and the girls?” And she said it was her father, quoting him: “I will not die a happy man until all of my children are educated.”

That’s an important idea for International Women’s Day. It takes courageous women and men to change perceptions of gender and equality in societies. It takes us all seeing each other as God sees us—created in His image, each with a purpose and a role to play in His kingdom.

(Jon Warren/World Vision)

We ordinary people have these defining moments, too (mercifully untelevised). One of mine was a phone call from a recruiter 13 years ago, inviting me to consider a job with World Vision. The question he asked was unwelcome and uncomfortable, but it had the ring of truth: “Rich, are you willing to be open to God’s will in your life?”

It was really God’s question, and He was asking me to choose what kind of disciple I wanted to be. Help change the world!—an exciting offer. But it came with a catch; I had to be willing to be used, and I had to pay the price that comes with service. World change isn’t easy and it isn’t cheap. For me it meant giving up a lucrative job and a dream home and giving in to the world’s suffering.

Looking back on a defining moment can make you feel regretful or grateful, depending on the outcome. When you’re able to make the right decision, though, it’s because of a thousand smaller decisions you make every day—for athletes, the hours and hours of practice; for believers, daily time with God and His Word, prayer, church attendance, and other good choices.

Ultimately that phone call significantly changed me, my family, my faith, and my relationship with God. And it gave me the privilege of caring for the world’s poorest children.  

What’s your defining moment? Are you in one now, struggling with what to do? Look for God in the question or crisis and be open to where He is taking you. And remember that it’s being faithful in the small ways every day that equips you for the big decisions.

Then again, one of the bittersweet joys of working for a child-focused organization is occasionally having your world turned upside down by a little child. It happened to me just 60 days into my job here, as I encountered Richard, a boy orphaned by AIDS in Uganda. The global AIDS pandemic became starkly real and personal to me, and I was never the same. It happened again a few years later in India, which I visited after a major earthquake, when a desperate mother held up her badly injured child in front of me. Suddenly it struck me that was he not just “somebody else’s child;” in God’s eyes, all children are His, and He asks us to feel the same way. Every child in need I’ve met since—in quake-ravaged Haiti, water-scarce Ethiopia, deeply poor Bolivia—has affected me in this personal way.

As a father, I’ve found that you’re only as well as your least-well child, and it’s certainly true this week, as I worry about my expectant daughter. Now multiply that several million times, and you understand what drives us at World Vision. The world is full of unwell children. It keeps us busy even while it breaks our hearts.

Please pray with me for children around the world without the advantages my grandchild already has. Pray for World Vision workers and scores of other Christians who seek health, well-being, and fullness of life for these children. Never let us forget that these precious boys and girls are God’s—and ours.

Being a leader often means being a coach. You set the vision and strategy for the team, but you stay on the sidelines. And that can be hard, because you know how to play. Maybe you were the star quarterback once. But now, as the coach, you can’t go out onto the field, take the ball from the quarterback, put him on the bench, and say, “I’m going to run the next play.” You’ve got to mentor players and impart all of your knowledge the best you can. You recognize their gifts and help shape them. And then when the game starts, you can be there for a word of encouragement or strategy, but the ball’s out of your hands.

Centuries before football, Jesus modeled the best kind of coaching. I can’t think of a more visionary leader than the Lord. He invested in His team and allowed them to make mistakes, even to fail. He equipped them for the ultimate goal—to go into all the earth and make disciples of all the nations. Two thousands years later, there are 2 billion Christians. I’d call that a victory.

How has God called you to be a coach, either at work or in your community or family? What have you learned? How do Jesus’ teachings and the Holy Spirit’s leading help you?

By the way, did you know that Aaron Rodgers, quarterback for the Green Bay Packers, is a man with a strong Christian faith? See this article from Athletes in Action.