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As young boys growing up in Zimbabwe, my cousin Ben and I would often make our own toys out of sticks, wire, tin cans, anything we could get our hands on.    Once I made myself a bow, and using wire-tipped bamboo sticks as arrows and trees as targets, I soon discovered that I was a natural archer.  Before long, I was not just hitting the tree, but the same spot on a tree consistently from 50 feet away.

As good a “marksman” as I became however, I never was a good hunter.   It was particularly discouraging that while I could win any tree shooting contest, my friends who were much “poorer” archers could hit a bird in midflight with the greatest of ease.    I have also since learned that in firearms training, shooters trained in “precision shooting” have “historically not fared well in actual gun battles” (www.rogersshootingschool.com).

Those who are involved in efforts to eliminate urban and global poverty know that what they are involved in is not a precision shooting contest, but a war.    A war needs soldiers.  While all soldiers can be marksmen, not all marksmen are soldiers.  Soldiers don’t just have skill.  They have courage and are willing to get dirty, and to even die for the cause.  They are not only good shots when they are firing at a tree, but also when they are shooting at a moving target which is firing at them.  

It will take soldiers to win the war against urban/global poverty and dysfunction.   It will also take a greater commitment to bring every resource and tool into the battlefield to achieve victory and bring about meaningful systemic change.    As we all know, wars are expensive, even when they are just.   Unfortunately, games have become expensive too: just look at the contracts offered to NBA free agents this summer.    Indeed the Miami Heat might end up winning championship with their dream NBA team, even as they are losing the war against youth crimes, poverty and dysfunction in the inner city communities of Miami.

The economic downturn in the country is exerting enormous pressure on organizations serving the poor to clarify their missions and be efficient in the use of scarce resources.     While mission clarity and efficiency are great ideals, what we may end up with are many efficient organizations that will still lose the war.   

And a war lost efficiently is still lost.

I have been struggling to shake myself out of a depression ever since I finished reading John Crosland’s white paper titled: “The Affordable Housing Dream: How We Can Make It Happen”.    Ordinarily I would be inspired since Mr. Crosland is championing an issue close to my heart.   What is depressing is the thought that Mr. Crosland is likely to be dismissed – even by some of my friends - as an unrealistic “shoot for the moon” kind of guy, a latter-day Arnold Toynbee who believes that “the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at the goal itself but at some ambitious goal beyond it”.
 
It feels like there is a whole industry out there that is built on clipping the wings of dreamers, particularly when they choose to champion the cause of the poor.  When developers were selling the vision for mixed income communities which resulted in the demolition of several neighborhoods serving the poor, their vision was not considered overly ambitious.   It was acceptable to shoot for the moon then, just as it was acceptable to dream big to clinch two national sports franchises, to build the Whitewater rafting project, two uptown arenas and the NASCAR museum in our community.  Some even continue to dream today about an uptown baseball stadium. 
 
While Mr. Crosland’s dream is a big dream, it is certainly no bigger than the problem, and certainly worthy of our community’s support.  I agree with him that we can achieve adequate housing for all our citizens over the next 12 to 15 years if we put our minds and resources to it.  What is disheartening is that the voice of the poor and their champions will not necessarily be heard because their cause is just.    While we have seen the impossible become possible in Charlotte in the past largely due to the arbitrage and “house/real-estate flipping” opportunities some of the projects presented, and whereas we have seen huge projects being fast-tracked because some powerful citizens wanted them, the cause of the poor is unlikely to be treated with the urgency it deserves without someone putting up a fight or our community being shamed into significant action.
 
It is disheartening to think that an obviously just cause would require a fight.  Unfortunately those of us in the faith community who are being invited by Mr. Crosland to be part of a significant “civic constituency of citizens, churches and businesses who are insistent activists for moving from dream to reality” might not have much to bring to the fight, being battle-weary ourselves from fighting over the colors of our sanctuaries, the acceptable decibel level of our worship music, and whether or not its good stewardship to violate our outreach focus by welcoming the poor into our worship services.    If we are not too weary to fight, we are like deer caught in headlights, frozen between the call of a just cause and what is demanded by the organizational monstrosities we have built in the name of Christ.    Our well-intentioned sermons and ritualistic acts of charity notwithstanding, we are incapable of responding with urgency and providing significant and decisive leadership when the cause requires it.  
 
I realize that what this cause needs is not a bunch of people who are too depressed to engage…so I will snap out of it right now.  I also realize that the “Christian thing” of waiting for all my brothers and sisters in the faith to be ready is truly bad stewardship of God’s time.  We must redeem the times now because the days are as evil as the cause of the poor and the homeless child is just.
 
So Mr. Crosland Sir…this is Noah Manyika reporting for duty Sir!

It’s easier to make the case for helping the homeless when it’s cold, and much harder to engage those who have the means to help during the summer when the beach and other vacation spots beckon.  Last week those responsible for winding down the Critical Need Response Fund showed that they understood life does not become any easier for homeless children simply because the sun is shining.  They must be commended for the investments they made to support programs that serve homeless children over the summer.

A recent report on homelessness in Charlotte shows a significant increase in numbers of homeless children in CMS in the past few months.  As the summer approaches, there has also been a dramatic spike in incidents of student misconduct, much of it directly attributable to the heightened stress of not knowing where their meals are going to come from or where they are going to lay their heads when school is out.  While the left-over funds from the Critical Need Response Fund being disbursed to summer programs will help, the extent of the need suggest that our city needs some significant summer generosity…something not less significant than what the Levines did in December.   We need significant resources to stabilize the lives of homeless kids over the summer so that they can begin the next school year prepared and full of hope. 

Charlotte has done some incredible things in the past six months, including opening up Hall House to homeless kids and their parents.   The truth, however, is that we have only rolled the boulder halfway up the hill.    While that is significant, we cannot afford to take a break now and return from our vacations, as we have in times past, to start all over again and to face bigger problems in our schools and communities.  

I am convinced both by the size of their donation to the Critical Need Response Fund and the other investments they have made to improve our community that the Levines intended to challenge our community to go beyond seasonal (winter) charity and take things to the next level.   While it is great to provide funding for summer camps and other supportive services, stabilizing the lives of homeless kids in the summer will require strategic investments such as housing for homeless women and children.  This cannot wait until summer is over.  It has to begin now.

My late aunt was known for a couple things:  One was the irresistible cornmeal pottage with a hint of lemon that drew her nephews and nieces like flies to her home each morning when school was out.  The other was her ability to create “unending” work for us once our bellies were full.   
 
I feel ashamed today that my aunt had to bribe us with food to work for her, considering that she was a single woman stricken with rheumatoid arthritis.  I feel ashamed that we only worked for her because of the promise of a meal cooked by hands that could hardly hold a cooking stick.    I feel most ashamed today that I not only listened, but actively contributed to conversations that suggested that she was mean and therefore deserved the arthritis.
 
Yes…as a child I was as mean as my worst cousins.   But Auntie D never gave up on us…she continued cooking the pottage and putting us to work.   We ate the food and worked…..until something curious started happening to a few of us: we began to love the work!
 
I am sure many of the agencies serving the poor in Charlotte have had their version of the Auntie D principle.   Lately however, an incredible thing has started happening in our community.  A growing number of people are making it clear they do not need a bribe to serve others.  While I do not believe the “bribe’ should be completely retired yet for the sake of those who need a little bit of encouragement, I believe as a community we have turned a corner.
 
Why have we turned the corner?  In one word: leadership.  It is because of people like David Chadwick, the senior pastor of Forest Hill Church and his team who for many years have insisted that serving others must be a core value of community.  It is because of people like Laurie Little at Matthews United Methodist Church, the leader of a youth ministry that in one weekend last month did 115 service projects in the inner city and with organizations serving the poor.
 
Every day I meet more people who are digging this thing, people who love to serve and who are actively looking for opportunities to invest in the lives of those who are less fortunate.  They are professionals in the corporate world, housewives, men and women, young and old, black, white, Asian, Latino, African, rich and poor, and they all have one thing in common: they have fallen in love with serving.
 
What can we do in Charlotte with this army, these people who are not lovers of self but who seek to please God by serving others?   Hmmm.    Why don’t we start by eliminating child homelessness in our city?   Once that is done, like Aunt D’s nephew that I am, I am sure I can help find something else to put all of us to work!!

Writing in the February 11, 2009 Charlotte Observer's business section about fund raising plans for the UNCC Charlotte football program, Stan Olson leads off with the question:  If not now, when?
 
Olson proceeds to relate how, despite the difficult economy, the 49ers Football Feasibility Committee is going forward with plans to raise $45 million to establish the program and build a stadium on campus.    He quotes Mac Everett, a respected business leader and honorary co-chairman of the school's fund raising committee as saying: 
 
"There will never be a time when the money required to launch football will be readily available.   It won't be an easy journey; it may be a long journey.  But at the end of the day, the destination will help transform this university and this whole community".
 
The fund raising goal for our own campaign to help end child homelessness through a family stabilization program and a transitional facility for families is less than a third of that.   I would borrow Olson's opening line and ask our community the same direct question:
 
If not now, when?   
 
Because the cause of eliminating homelessness for children is not any less compelling than a football program at UNCC Charlotte, I trust that our community will be ashamed to choose one over the other, or put off giving towards eliminating homelessness while we cheerfully plow ahead with the other.   Mac Everett suggests that we should endure the journey because a football program at UNCC will "help transform this university and this whole community".   Wouldn't it be truly exciting if in addition to having a football program at UNCC, we were to be known as the city where homelessness for children does not exist?
 
If we can endure the difficult and long journey of fund raising to launch a football program at UNCC, we can do the same to make sure there are no children sleeping on the streets of Charlotte.   If we are possessed with a sense of urgency about doing that for football now, we should feel equally compelled to help the children now.
 
I am convinced that the 49ers Football Feasibility Committee will meet its goals because despite the economic crisis, the Charlotte community has the wherewithal to make that happen.  I also believe we have the capacity to eliminate child homelessness in our city, and that we can, if we choose, begin doing something significant towards that goal now!

Ok…so the Charlotte community has done the right thing and provided temporary shelter at Hall House for the next six months for 300 homeless children and mothers.  While those who have given generously towards this cause deserve to be thanked, the second largest banking city in the United States (and one of the most churched in the country) has no business having 2400 children sleeping in cars, on the streets or in temporary shelters at any time. 

Those who say there isn't much else we can do about this problem now because we are in the middle of a crisis conveniently forget that we did not do anything about it before the crisis.  It is time for all of us to also face the uncomfortable truth that the plight of our community's most vulnerable worsened because we ignored it, and in some very significant ways even contributed to it as we continued to "improve" our city by demolishing public housing.  I have nothing against our efforts to build mixed-income neighborhoods, as long as we can at the very least 1. honestly admit that the problem of child-homelessness increased significantly over the years as more low-income neighborhoods disappeared and 2. treat eliminating child homelessness as a cause that is as just, urgent and compelling as deconcentrating poverty.   

Some will be tempted to say in an effort  to excuse us from doing more: "We have done what we can" because 300 children and mothers out of  a population of at least 2400 are now in Hall House for six months.   Others will try to hide behind theology and "remind" us that Jesus said "the poor you will always have", as though the Lord meant that its okay to have children sleeping on the streets.    

There is absolutely no theological justification for allowing the shame of child homelessness to continue, or being satisfied with the little that we have belatedly done with "what we have".    We can no longer do only what we can, but what we must.   We can no longer be limited by the resources that we have, but live out the kind of faith that pleases God and causes Him to extend our two loaves and five fishes to feed the multitudes even in times of famine.    

It is time to eliminate child homelessness in our city not because we can, but because we must.  I am convinced there are many people out there who are ready to join this cause.  What they are waiting for are the clear voices of those courageous leaders who will rally the troops to the frontlines with the clarion call: Yes we must!

Let me begin this blog with a disclaimer:  while I am the senior pastor of a church and the president of a faith-based organization, I am NOT, repeat NOT a Christian leader.    I may have claimed to be in times past or even in previous blogs, but I no longer consider myself to be one, and as of today, I refuse to accept that label. 
 
Am I still a Christian?  You betcha!  But today…I am defecting.   I am renouncing the endless chasing of my tail that I have been involved in in the name of Christian leadership, and I am joining those who believe, as one radio commentator put it, that "a crisis is too good a thing to waste".     I am defecting to the camp of those who are not overwhelmed in times of crisis but instead choose to lead through troubled times. 

It was the late President John F. Kennedy who observed that written in Chinese, "the word crisis is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity."    I am defecting to the camp of those who can read the word crisis in Chinese and refuse to have danger cancel out opportunity.

There.   It's out.   I feel paralyzed by the Christian leader label.   I feel like I am not expected to dare, to dream big,  to think that God can do anything when our favorite stocks have tanked.      I am an official defector today because I want to believe again in the God of the book of Judges who raised leaders in times of crisis, leaders who refused to be paralyzed by fear or neutralized by trouble.    I am defecting because the bible tells us that in the last days perilous times shall come, and we will have to lead in those times.

While those who remain on the other side might feel betrayed by my defection, I am happy to say I know I am now on the right side. 

    Some of the people we consider friends are in reality ferocious lions that ensure we don't even dare to get out 
    of the box to fulfil our destinies.

David woke up one day to a terrifying realization: his soul lay in the midst of lions, among ravenous beasts – "men whose teeth are spears and arrows, whose tongues are sharp swords" (Psalm 57:4).  Who were these lions, these ravenous beasts that were ready to tear his soul with their teeth and destroy him with the sharp swords of their tongues? 

The obvious suspects would have been the Philistines.   They had good reason to hate David and to desire his destruction.  After all, had David not killed Goliath their champion and caused them to be humiliated by Israel in battle? 

But the lions David spoke about were not the obvious enemies.  The beasts were his people, his comrades, his kinsmen and countrymen.  These were the enemies of his soul.  Somehow they had undergone this dramatic transformation from seeing David as a hero to whom they owed their very lives, to enemies who were determined to destroy him.     

There are disturbing moments in life when, like David, we discover we are surrounded by lions, when we find out our friends, brothers, kinsmen, countrymen have become ravenous beasts that are ready to do more than just roar against us.    There are those chilling moments when the Spirit of the Lord warns us that we dream in the presence of our friends at the risk of our dreams,  that our friends have become the dragon of Revelation 12:4 which "stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born." 

Who are the enemies of your dreams, the lions at the gates of your life that are determined to stop you from becoming the person God wants you to be?   For Joseph it was his brothers.  It was those who knew him most who were determined to stop God's plan for his life.   For you it might be the wise counselors who caution you to be "practical", but who become ferocious opponents when you do not take their "advice".    For the young boy out there, it might be the "homies" in your gang who jump you because you express a desire for a different and better lifestyle.   

The lesson we learn from Jesus is that life is too short to allow our friends to be in the way.   When Peter tried to stand between him and the fulfillment of his call in Matthew 16, the Lord was quick to call Peter out, telling him in the 23rd verse:    "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men."

Are your friends real friends?  If they are, they will let God be God in your life, and will get out of the way so God's purpose can be fulfilled.

I am sure it is going to take me a while to fully process my “conversion” experience on Thanksgiving Day.   What I know for sure is that before that, I was a leader in chains.  To dignify my bondage (which increased with each leadership conference I attended and each new leadership concept I internalized), I had even taken to calling myself “a student of leadership”.      I am a free man now.    Free at last.  Free at last.   Thank God Almighty I have rediscovered the instinct to lead. 

The practice of leadership has undoubtedly gained from the exchange of ideas at leadership conferences, and from the writings of some of our best thinkers on the subject of leadership.   The phenomenal growth of annual leadership gatherings such as the Global Leadership Summit pioneered by Bill Hybels of the Willow Creek Association suggests a serious desire by leaders to know how to lead.  Testimonials abound of many who have become better leaders today because of these conferences.    While I have also benefited from these conferences and become a better student of leadership over the years, I believe I have also become sidetracked.   While God expects me to be a life-long learner, He did not call me to be a student of leadership.  God called me to lead.   

Somehow, I had undergone this transmutation from a leader to a “student of leadership”.  The more I knew, the less I was able to lead.  I know now more than ever that it is critically important for a leader to know when he knows enough.   Our inability to walk away from the veritable feast of ideas society places before us everyday causes us to be addicts rather than healthy leaders, and can have tragic consequences on our ability to effectively fulfill our calls.   The addiction can cause us to lose our ability to trust our leadership instinct.  Once that is gone, we lose the ability to call “God plays”,   to follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit, to see that the surf is up so we can catch the wave of God opportunities.

I am free.  I am free at last. Thank God Almighty I am free at last.

Today I went back to visit Double Oaks, the low-income community in North Chalotte that was my home for three years from 1995-1998.   What is left of Double Oaks is what you see in the picture on the left.    Double Oaks has gone the way of the other low-income communities such as Piedmont Courts, Belvedere Homes, Earl Village etc.   Soon it will be replaced by mixed-income apartments as Charlotte continues its aggressive policy of deconcentrating poverty.

I am certain that anyone trying to stop the gentrification train would not succeed.  Neither do I think that would be the right thing to do, particularly if the new communities truly become mixed-income communities that welcome the poor along with others who have more means.    The troubling question is: during these times of transition as we build new communities, what is happenning to the people who used to live in these communities today?  Where are the children from Double Oaks today?  

What stares us in the face, and should shame us as a city, is that there are over 2,000 children that are homeless in Charlotte every night.     The deafening silence of the citizenry of Charlotte, Churches, agencies etc, is puzzling and indicates fear that if we talk about this openly, then we will somehow be seen as being against progress.     I am convinced that if we tried, we would find that we can chew gum and walk at the same time, that we can support progress while at the same time showing that we truly care for the least among us, particularly the children.

Can we eliminate homelessness for Children?  YES WE CAN!  It is a cause worth your investment.   To join the movement, visit www.nexusnews.org and go to the campaign page.