Paul Porter

I recently read a sermon from Bill Hybels, the leader of a church outside of Chicago called Willow Creek. He was sharing from the passage in Luke where Jesus was preaching to the crowds and selecting his first group of Disciples. Hybels noted that Jesus tested these guys to see if they would be followers. I don’t know why, I just have a partiality to this story and reading this sermon made me draw a corollary to Paul and Margaret Porter and the work we do at the YMCA.

Hybels wrote that once the buzz of this great catch of fish happens, you would think that everyone would just go home and the whole event would be over, but Jesus poses a test. And His timing is impeccable. There is still the buzz in the air for the catch of all this fish, and Hybels imagined it unfolding kind of this way, it’s like Jesus says to Peter and James and John, “Wasn’t that a ball? Wasn’t that great? To gather all those fish, to do it in team. You did it together. You got them all ashore. Wasn’t that a ball?”

Hybels puts out there that Jesus maybe said, “Well think for just a moment. Think a grander thought. You’ve got a kick out of netting a bunch of fish. Think what it would be like to catch or to redirect the lives and eternities of hundreds of thousands of people. Wouldn’t that even be more fun? Nothing against fishing, you understand, but just compare the stakes. You bring the fish in and you take them to the market and you get some dollars. Nothing against dollars. But just take a moment and compare the value of a dollar against the value of someone’s destiny! Think about that. You can continue to just catch fish for dollars, or you can accept my invitation to go after people’s destinies. You want to catch fish or you want to catch people? You want to do dollars or do you want to do destinies?”

Now it’s very important that you understand there was no shaming going on here. The test was not if you are a bad person you will keep doing this, and if you’re a better person you will do the other. It wasn’t about that. It was just a vision test. In other words, He was saying, “If you see it as I’m describing it, if you get it as I’m explaining it, if you understand the value of a destiny versus the value of a dollar, you will want to orient more of your life around destinies instead of dollars.” You’ll want to. It’s not any nobler, necessarily. It’s just smarter. It’s destinies over dollars.

Now, here is the application for our YMCA today.

Paul and Margaret Porter were solicited to give money all of the time. They have resources. Their gift mattered. Their gift had impact. Their gift had value. It had so much value that their name has appeared somewhere on a building or in a brochure many times. It had so much value that their picture and even a newspaper article was written about their support. Their gift was so important that many people publicly thanked them for what they had done. They have prepared for it. For them, it is their personal mission to support philanthropic causes. It is their calling, and they believe it is what you are supposed to do with the great resources that you have been blessed.

That kind of giving is fun! They got impact, they got recognition, and they got satisfaction. But I want to draw you closer to the dollars and destinies discussion. I believe that Paul and Margaret understood that their giving was not about bricks and mortar, naming opportunities, and economic development. They understood that their philanthropy was more about destinies.

They knew about the lives that may be saved because the Y taught kids how to swim or taught people how to be great lifeguards, and then they went on to save a life.

They thought about that teenager from a broken home. She has no one to talk to about the changes in her life and even the changes in her teenage feelings and emotions. But she finds a Y staff person who listens, guides, advises, and just shares with her. That teen is going to grow up and be the same mentor for her own daughter or even her neighbor’s children.

They understood the importance of a father who gets to live 25 more years and see his children graduate high school and college. He gets to walk his daughter down the aisle at a wedding and he gets to hold his grandchildren. All made possible by the life change that happened when the doctor prescribed a new wellness plan at the Y so he won’t have a second heart attack.

They could see the 10 year old child that sits with his after school counselor and ask questions about Jesus.

They could see life changes. They can see that their check was more than just bricks and mortar; more than just a feeling of civic pride. I have witnessed that at the core of who they are, what they really care about, is big fish, its human beings. Over the past few years I have been able to see it more clearly.

I think God puts this vision test in front of us virtually every day. You go through your life and you can get completely engrossed into just living life. That everyday stuff that keeps our engines running. You don’t really look at the bigger redemptive picture during the day. You’re looking at little fish and just the same day after day, life every day, all day long. And then God reminds us we don’t understand this grander vision and we are missing out? So God is now inviting us into a grander vision saying, “I invite you in to people catching and destiny altering.”

So the next time I write a check I need to think about the grander vision. I will write that check with the understanding that I am prepared to go after big fish and bigger destinies.

This is not a guilt thing not this test, it’s just about getting it, seeing it, being seized by it and going throughout my day saying, “I know I have to pay the rent. So I want to honor God with doing well in my job, but the affection of my heart is on the destinies that I can alter, and I can see that clearly!”

Paul and Margaret passed this test. I hope I score as well on my final exams!

Teen Challenge

I know many of you have experienced graduation in the last few weeks. You know someone who graduated college or high school. Just send them cash! And even today we have 8th grade graduations to high school, these kids are registered at Circuit City, and 5th grade graduations to middle school, get them a Y membership and kindergarten graduations to 1st grade, they’re registered at Toys R Us. Our church even had a pre-school graduation to kindergarten. They were registered at Wal-Mart. Hey, I’m from Shelby, what can I say.

But I had the distinct honor and privilege to attend a friend’s graduation from Rehab. Most graduations have the graduate stroll across the stage, grab a diploma, shake a hand and turn a tassel. This graduation from a program called Teen Challenge (it is for adults too) had the graduate stroll across the stage to a microphone and tell how they had hit rock bottom. 22 of the most heart wrenching and emotional stories you can ever imagine. Mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, and even friends often stood beside them on stage and also shared the affects on the family, but also their immense pride in the grad’s accomplishment, and their complete thankfulness for God for restoring the graduate.

Just a few random thoughts about what stood out during these life stories.

* Experimentation often started at 13 and 14
* Drinking and smoking led to marijuana use, which lead to harder drugs. Marijuana is a gateway drug
* These people grew up in the church and were members of the youth group and choir. They had scholarships for academics and athletics
* Addiction crosses all economic levels
* These addictive lives crippled families. Financially destroying parents and emotionally scarring everyone around the addict
* The detachment and downward spirals of these people lasted 10 plus years! Think about that, 10 years of drug use, in and out of jails, in and out of rehabs.
* Methamphetamine is a BAD BAD drug!
* There is only one true way out of the addictive control of drugs and alcohol – GOD

Teen Challenge is a faith based rehab program that most people attend because they are court ordered. My friend graduated from the Minnesota Teen Challenge. There are hundreds of Teen Challenge Programs around the country. It is a 13 month, very strict program. Most of the graduates actually were in longer than 13 months. It seems that they spend the first 6 to 7 months fighting it and then the last 6 months trying to put it all back into focus. Teen Challenge notes that it has a 90% success rate meaning that only 10% of their graduates have a relapse. A comparison is AA has only a 10% success rate. Could that be a God thing?

My wish is that every 13 or 14 year old could sit and listen to these stories. This kind of “scared straight” would be powerful. As a parent, watching fathers stand on stage and just quake because their emotions are so strong that they cannot speak had my head about to explode. Listening to these men and having them look into the audience of their children and apologize would stir the emotions of even the most stoic person. Witnessing these ladies share how they have destroyed their relationships with parents and siblings left me at times heartbroken. But the joy in their transformation always “restoreth” my soul.

At the end of the day I stood around with this family as their daughter, the graduate, went around the room and thanked everyone; her parents, her brother, aunts and uncles, family friends, cousins, great uncles and aunts, and me. These people drove hours for this girl to share with her graduation. Their lives affected during the last 15 years too. I am sure thankful they were blessed and lucky enough that it wasn’t their kid. I am sure thankful and blessed that their 15 years of prayers continue to be answered. I am sure thankful that they were blessed by God and their faith strengthened by the power of what was witnessed.

This was a great graduation. If you want to get her a gift you can go online and talk to God, She is registered in Heaven!

High School Hoops

When you can’t dunk, you seem to be obsessed with dunking. As a teenager with keys to the Y gym, I would open up after the Y closed, and my friends and I would jump off the gymnastics springboard and dunk. Floating through the air I would imagine I was…..well really I was just hoping too land without hurting myself or catching a nosebleed.

But my dunking fantasy came to reality pretty much every day after school. That is when my best friends in the entire world would gather at the driveway of Frank Selvy. Frank was an ex-NBA player with the Lakers, the only person to ever score 100 points in a NCAA game and the hero to all of us neighborhood NBA wannabees. Frank was also the father to Mike Selvy, maybe the only real basketball player in our group.

The court was our haven. It had an 8 ½ foot goal at one end of the driveway and a regulation 10 ft goal at the other. The entire court was a little shorter than a real half court. And this 8 ½ foot goal was no adjustable job that these spoiled neighborhood kids get today. This goal was held together with about 6000 nails, two rolls of duct tape and four gallons of paint.

These games daily were not just a bunch of white boys lined up practicing our dunks. We had a team, the Honolulu Surf. David Catron, was our center, our tallest player and started as the ‘A Train’ Artis Gilmore. Sean DeVine was our power forward and a great role player so we made him Buck Williams. William Poole was that annoying point guard so he became Mo Cheeks. Selvy was younger than us and he wanted to be George Gervin but we made him Danny Ainge. I was the oldest and the loudest so I anointed myself Bernard King. (To this day, I feel like I single-handedly beat the Pistons in a 1984 playoff series.)

Other kids from the neighborhood wanted to play, and we always needed one more to give us three on three. So we would call Larry ‘Tree Rollins’ Jones. Or Ken ‘Jon Koncack’ Binkley. High School friends like Scott ‘Kelly Tripucka’ Cochrane and Lee ‘Danny Vranes’ Lester would show up begging to play and to be on the Surf.

We played so much at the Selvy Back Yard Arena that we really became instinctive. Our real high school basketball team was awful and David Catron and I were the only ones that got to play any significant time. One day at our real high school practice I asked our coach to let our neighborhood play the rest of the team. So the bet was that if we won he would put us on the court together during the next game. We killed them. But then again what NBA team could match up against Gilmore, Williams, King, Ainge and Cheeks. But that noble coach never lived up to his end of the bargain.

The competition in the back yard was the best. In the winter we might have to play around some icy patches. During the summer we may have to jump over the garden hose watering Mrs. Selvy’s flowers. One afternoon the Selvy’s left there VW bus parked on the court. We weren’t old enough to drive, so we played around the vehicle. That led to one of the greatest plays in the history of the Honolulu Surf. (At least in my record book) Mike Selvy took an ill advised jumper on the 10 ft goal. William Poole got the rebound and just as somebody screams, “Where’s Cam?” I came running out from behind the bus on a fast break and caught a full court ally-oop pass for the game winner.

Another memorable moment came weeks after Daryl Dawkins shattered his first back board. David Catron went baseline with a thunderous dunk that brought down the 8 ½ foot goal. And brought it down on my head. Even though the play was really cool, it took the better part of that Saturday afternoon to get the goal back together. In all honesty the goal was never the same.

I look back at those days with great memories. A yard full of bikes and a driveway full of dreamers. Mrs Selvy would come home and always greet us with “Hey Girls.” We would only hope that Frank would come outside and watch just some of our game.

It was a sad day when I graduated and went off to college. The days of basketball in the Selvy driveway ended for me. Kind of felt like Dr J’s retiring!
I don’t even watch the NBA today. If I did I would probably sit around and tell my kids that Shaq wasn’t half as strong as the A Train. And if Ben Wallace could shoot he might be as good as Buck Williams. None of these teams have a point guard and leader like Mo Cheeks. And there aren’t competitors like Danny Ainge anymore. And then I would get the far off look and say, “Kids, did I ever tell you about the time I single handedly beat the Pistons in a 5 game series?”