Walking Through Samaria

Meet Steve Haas. A catalyst for change, and a former vice president for World Vision in Federal Way, Wash., Haas has worked with church leaders, and poured a lot of sweat equity into serving the poor.

Haas believes in combining inspiration with perspiration, a concept he learned as a cross country runner at the University of Kansas, but which has served him well in his every endeavor, whether it was youth ministry in the Philippines or aiding Thai, Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees in southeast Asia. It also led him to Oregon’s annual Hood to the Coast relay race, which helps World Vision raise money to provide clean water for many without access to it.

“It just seems like God has this undeniable lean toward the poor and this undeniable lean toward those who are broken,” Haas says. “If that’s true, then it just, for me, it seemed to me I want to be at the heart of whatever that is, and I want to lean my energies and my gifts and my abilities toward constructing whatever it is God’s leading.”

His career also has included serving on the staff of Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago, one of America’s best-known megachurches, where he developed small group ministry and then local and international ministries. Mostly though, Haas is always seeking the heart of God and it keeps him moving from place to place and from task to task. He has learned that following the Holy Spirit makes an impact on lives not just of the people he helps, but on those who watch the helpers.

“When the Spirit takes on an obedient life and you actually follow those promptings to do things that you would not typically do in the natural, in the normal, I guarantee you there’s a following,” Haas says. “There’s a group of folks who are watching that life and taking notes.”

Meet Suzy Sammons. President of Hawkeye.pro, Sammons is a brand-strategy expert who learned how to help companies put their best foot forward by learning how to put her best foot forward.

She came to spiritual rebirth at the age of 40, following a series of broken relationships — her father cheated on her mother for years, she endured her own divorce and then lost her father in a tragic automobile accident with a truck that was so horrific, the mortician told her, “I don’t know if we can make him presentable.”

Those words stuck with her and became a way for her to not only make the companies she worked with presentable to the world, but to make faith in Christ presentable to those she influences. Some of those people feared that Sammons would shun them because of her faith, but her message to them wasn’t the judgmental response they’d come to expect from evangelicals.

“Jesus stepped in and put me back together,” said Sammons, now happily remarried. “The least we can do is offer that grace to others.”

Meet the Rev. Alvin C. Bibbs Sr. A native of Chicago who grew up in its tough Cabrini-Green public housing projects, Bibbs is a motivational speaker, author and mentor. He serves as an organizational coach/facilitator to congregations and not-for-profit organizations across North America and, in addition to serving as President and CEO of The Justice Journey Alliance, Bibbs is the Founder and Principal of The Obsidian Consulting Group, LLC.

Even Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. seemed to sense that Bibbs was destined for big things. When Bibbs was 6 years old, sporting an Afro that would’ve made young Michael Jackson proud, King spotted Bibbs during a church service at which the civil rights leader was preaching. Afterward, he asked Bibbs’ parents if he could pray with the young man. King laid his hand on the boy’s Afro, denting it, and prayed a prayer of dedication over him. When King was assassinated months later, that moment was seared into Bibbs’ heart.

“It’s no accident that God selected Dr. Martin Luther King to commission your life to do the work you’re called to do,” Bibbs said.

That set in motion his life’s work, which has been geared toward bringing multi-cultural and inter-generational leaders, churches and organizations together for honest dialogue on race and relevant issues on social justice. He’s challenging the Church to play a vital role in making that happen.

“The Bride of Christ, the light of the Church, is not shining as bright as it should,” Bibbs said. “We can’t stay in our comfort zones, we can’t stay in our holy huddles and we can’t stay in our holy tents. We have to go out on the other side.”

Meet Danielle Strickland. A well-known voice in Christianity, she is the author of six books and a major in the Salvation Army, which is a lot more than people ringing bells in front of stores at Christmastime. A proponent of what she calls “aggressive compassion,” Strickland trains, advocates and inspires people to live differently, in large part because she saw how the marginalized of society are treated.

Among other things, the Salvation Army is one of the largest providers of homeless shelters to the LGBTQ community, and her call to action was shaped by seeing a young person kicked out of his house for being transgender.

“I remember being horrified by a type of Christianity where people would prefer to see their kid on the street rather than wrestle through the realities of what’s going on,” she says.

In a time where that kind of division is more commonplace than ever, Strickland has one piece of advice, and it has nothing to do with more Bible studies or leadership conferences. “Get out of your head,” she says. “Practice what you already know. Serve and stop yelling at each other.”

Meet Dr. Anika Prather. She and her husband Damon are the founders of The Living Water School, located in southern Maryland near Washington D.C. It’s a unique Christian school for independent learners that she somewhat reluctantly launched when God answered her prayer about how to educate her firstborn son, who had one of the worst stuttering problems speech therapists had ever seen.

“I think this is crazy, I think this is impossible and … You understand I’m flat broke,” she argued with God from her prayer closet. “We had nothing! I’m not saying this to be dramatic — we had nothing!”

But Dr. Prather watched as God moved miraculously at every turn. The school was only supposed to be for her kindergarten-aged son and maybe a dozen others, but parents who couldn’t find answers in the public school flocked to her with their children. Retired educators willingly returned to the classroom when they heard about her vision, and she kept having to expand the vision — first to sixth-graders and then to high school seniors.

“In the first year of the school, we went to visit my mother-in-law, and this is how I knew God was at work,” Dr. Prather says. “My mother-law, who was a little suspect about me starting this unique Christian school that didn’t have traditional grade levels, she says to me, ‘Nika, did you notice that Dylan doesn’t stutter anymore?’ I hadn’t even noticed!”

As a result of being taught unscriptural things in her youth, such as that God made one race to be subordinate to another — and this in a “Christian school” — she uses her platform to be an agent of racial reconciliation. She tries to educate people that the road to healing isn’t paved by politics and division, but with love and diversity.

“If you look at the story of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, you see a God Who’s saying, ‘I want diversity! I want diversity!’ What did Peter say in Acts? ‘Of a truth, I see that God is no respecter of persons.’ “

Meet Batya Ungar-Sargon. She is the opinion editor of The Forward, a newspaper published out of New York City that is one of the most influential Jewish media outlets in the nation. In a short time, she has transformed its opinion pages into a space of radical diversity, publishing conversation-driving articles on a range of topics.

Just don’t try telling this Class of 2021 Civil Society Fellowship fellow how divided the country is, because she’s not buying it. A cause near and dear to her heart is “dispelling the illusion that we’re polarized. Our politicians are polarized because they get power out of being polarized. The media [are] polarized because [they] get money out of being polarized, but Americans are not.”

It takes effort because we are conditioned to think the worst. “When you see something about people you disagree with, that really fits the worst thing you were ready to think about them, take a minute and do a little research before arriving at your conclusion or allowing it to add to your confirmation bias,” she says. “Take a minute to see if there’s a way to give them the benefit of the doubt.”

Meet Nate Butler, songwriter, producer, preacher’s kid, and self-proclaimed thermostat — meaning that he figuratively changes the temperature of any room he inhabits. For eight years, he has headed Passion City Church’s college ministry, but God has used his experiences for so much more.

His background includes work with music luminaries like Luther Vandross, Bobby Brown and Sugarland, and television shows like “Showtime at the Apollo” and “America’s Got Talent,” among others. But there was a time he was poor. Here, Butler issues a small correction.

“We were po’ — we couldn’t afford the ‘o’ and the ‘r,’ ” he says. But that produced a sensitivity that drew him to World Vision’s efforts to eradicate global poverty. Butler hopes God gives him as much success there as He gave him in a bout with the coronavirus. He sees the hand of God in both the illness and the cure, because of what it reveals about citizen and country alike.

“The thing I love about COVID,” he says, “is it actually squeezes the breath out of your body. When something is squeezing you, you see what comes out and God will use it — all of it — for His glory.”

Meet King Randall, who at the ripe old age of 21 is the founder of the "X" for Boys organization in Albany, Ga., where the motto is, "Let US Make Man." 
 
That’s just one of the ways he’s trying to fulfill the word he stunned his grandmother with when he was just 2. “I’m here to finish what Dr. Martin Luther King started,” he told her. She had no idea he knew anything about Dr. King, but she never let him forget it. 

Taking the initiative to fill a void among young black men, Randall hosts a variety of automotive workshops to teach them how to change brakes and oil. He also has home improvement workshops to teach them how to replace light fixtures, toilets, and how to paint. He’s also a chef after graduating at the age of 17 with a degree in Culinary Arts from Albany Technical College — even before graduating Westover High School. He also hosts a weekly book club for boys to improve their literacy skills and also to teach them important life skills about growing into a young man. 

“Say, five to 10 years from now, when I’ve raised new doctors and lawyers and police officers and judges, you’ll see a shift in the atmosphere — or even the nation,” Randall says. “We have to train the replacements.” 

Meet Edward Graham. The grandson of the late evangelist Billy Graham, Edward is the Assistant to the Vice President of Programs & Government Relations at Samaritan’s Purse, a nondenominational evangelical Christian organization providing spiritual and physical aid to hurting people around the world since 1970. Samaritan’s Purse has been particularly active in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic, erecting emergency field hospitals all over the world to relieve overburdened medical centers. Their presence paid immediate dividends.

“When we showed up, we got to be a part of a miracle, and people started living,” Graham says.

Samaritan’s Purse also runs Operation Christmas Child, an outreach that provides God’s love in a tangible way to children in need around the world. Together, with local churches worldwide, it shares the Good News of Jesus Christ and has reached more than 178 million children in more than 150 countries over since 1993.

“It gives me kind of goosebumps because I’ve seen those children’s faces,” Graham said. “I’m all about the long term and that’s the Gospel. It’s about never passing up a ministry opportunity. You can do it right there in your own community.”

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Meet MaryAnn Osborn. She’s one of the key members of the Partnership Innovation Team at World Vision, a Christian humanitarian aid organization that, among other things, combats youth drug addiction in Ethiopia.

“My heart was broken for kids living in poverty, who had also lost their parents because of poverty,” she says. “The work World Vision does actually prevents kids from becoming orphans in the first place. And at that point, I thought this is where I need to be and what I need to be doing.”

Osborn has been on the front lines of this fight for nine years and testifies that how God has used World Vision is “a game-changer.” Through the organization’s efforts, more than 6,500 people, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, now have clean water for life where they lacked it before.

“What God is doing through World Vision is so cool to watch,” Osborn says. “World Vision reaches a new person with clean water every 10 seconds and three new schools a day with sanitation and hygiene facilities. And so there’s this just this beautiful ripple effect of unlocked potential in communities and it’s powerful.”