PAUL TUDOR JONES IS A Wall Street legend.
The founder of the Tudor Investment Corporation made his mark on Black Monday, October 19, 1987. It still ranks as the largest one-day percentage drop of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, yet Jones managed to triple his investment value by shorting his portfolio. And he’s no one-hit wonder. Jones has defied financial gravity ever since, earning positive returns for twenty-eight consecutive years. As a contrarian, he looks for opportunities where others see red flags. When investors bail out on a bear market, he goes bear hunting. And he’s not afraid of grabbing a bull market by the horns and taking a wild ride.1
Paul Tudor Jones lives by a few market maxims: always have a mental stop, never average losers, and let go of mistakes you made three seconds ago. But his investment philosophy is epitomized by one guiding principle: stay in the game for as long as you can. Few people play the investment game better than Jones, but becoming a billionaire wasn’t the five-hundred-pound lion he was chasing. Jones set his sights much higher than that.
In 1986 Jones adopted a sixth-grade class at an underperforming public school in New York City. Despite his guaranteeing a college scholarship to every high school graduate, only one-third of those kids got their high school diplomas. Jones admittedly had underestimated the environmental challenges that inner-city kids face, but that failure fueled his passion to fight poverty. Instead of giving up the fight, Jones started the Robin Hood Foundation. Since its inception in 1988, Robin Hood has channeled $1.45 billion to the cause Jones cares so deeply about. It’s also inspired other venture philanthropists. Fortune magazine has called the Robin Hood Foundation “one of the most innovative and influential philanthropic organizations of our time.”2
Paul Tudor Jones is as competitive as they come, evidenced by the welterweight boxing championship he won in his twenties. He’s a fighter. But like the warrior-poet David, he has another side to his personality. The driving engine of his life is one act of kindness. When he was a child, Jones was at an outdoor vegetable market with his mother one day and got lost.
When you’re four years old, your mother is everything. And this extraordinarily kind, very old, very tall black man came over and said, “Don’t worry. We’re going to find your momma. Don’t cry, we’re going to find her. You’re going to be happy in a minute.”
You never forget stuff like that. God’s every action, those little actions become so much bigger, and then they become multiplicative. We forget how important the smallest action can be. For me, I think, it kind of spawned a lifetime of trying to always repay that kindness.3
What was the name of that very old, very tall black man? I have no idea, and neither does Paul Tudor Jones. And he’s probably been dead for quite some time. But that one act of kindness inspired a lifetime of philanthropy! Paul Tudor Jones may have founded the Robin Hood Foundation, but it was a complete stranger who provided the inspiration. Every grant the foundation gives is a gift within a gift.
“In one encounter.”
That little phrase in 2 Samuel 23 is so simple yet so powerful. That’s all it takes! You are one encounter away from your destiny. One off-the-cuff conversation, one crazy idea, or one glance across a crowded room can change everything.
What’s true for Josheb-Basshebeth is true for you. Just like the highest-ranking member of David’s mighty men, you might need to make a move.
Epic Challenges
A few years ago I spent two formative days in New York City with screenwriting sage Robert McKee. His Story Seminar is like a postgraduate education in storytelling. We dissected text and subtext, story and backstory, setup and payoff, beat and arc, conflict and resolution.
I originally signed up for the seminar because I thought I might want to try my hand at screenwriting, but the process totally reframed the way I see my own storyline. One overarching observation was a game changer:
No conflict. No story.
We accept that fact when it comes to movies. Epic movies demand epic conflict. That’s what makes them epic! And what’s true of great movies is true of great lives. Great conflict cultivates great character. Of course, it’s easier to watch on the screen than it is to walk through it.
If you want to live an epic life, you have to overcome some epic challenges. You have to take some epic risks, make some epic sacrifices.
For David it was picking a fight with Goliath.
For Benaiah it was chasing the lion.
For Josheb it was taking his stand when the rest of the army retreated.
In every storyline there are defining moments. The technical term, in terms of plot structure, is “inciting incident.” It’s a turning point, a tipping point. It’s a point of no return.
Inciting incidents come in two basic varieties: things that happen to you that you cannot control and things you make happen that you can control. Of course, even if something is out of your control, you still control your reaction. You might not be responsible, but you are response-able. And it’s the ability to choose your response that will likely determine your destiny.
Some inciting incidents are perceived as positive, like a college scholarship or a job promotion. Others are perceived as negative, like a pink slip or a positive diagnosis. But don’t be too quick to judge a blessing or a curse by its cover. What we perceive as positive sometimes turns out to have negative side effects, and what we perceive as negative often turns out to be the best thing that ever happened to us.
After an unsuccessful attempt at church planting in Chicago, I felt like a complete failure. But if that church plant had succeeded, we never would have made the move to Washington, DC. So in hindsight, that failure was one of the best things that ever happened to me.
Mismanaged success is the leading cause of failure.
Well-managed failure is the leading cause of success.
I haven’t won the war with pride—it’s a daily battle. But failure is one key to winning that war. It shows us what we’re capable of, and in my case it’s not much! Without God’s help, I’m below average. That failed church plant taught me an invaluable lesson: unless the Lord builds the house, we labor in vain.4 Of course, the flip side is true too. If God builds it, nothing can hinder it.
I’ve pastored National Community Church in Washington, DC, for two decades now. We’ve had the privilege of touching tens of thousands of lives, and the best is yet to come. It’s hard to imagine what our lives would be like if we hadn’t taken that step of faith and moved to Washington, DC. We would have forfeited so many blessings. But like every dream journey, it traces back to an inciting incident—a 595-mile step of faith from Chicago to DC. We had no place to live and no guaranteed salary when we packed all our belongings into a fifteen-foot U-Haul truck, but we knew God was calling us.
What do you need to do to make your dream happen? Maybe it’s taking that first step of faith or burning some bridges behind you. After all, you can’t steal second base if you keep your foot on first. Maybe it’s taking response-ability for something that has handicapped you for far too long. The one thing I’m certain of is this: it’ll take some two-o’clock-in-the-morning courage!
The Ripple Effect
Inciting incidents come in lots of sizes, shapes, and colors. Some are as bold and brash as Benaiah chasing a lion. Others are as subtle and gentle as the act of kindness that influenced Paul Tudor Jones. But either way, never underestimate the power of one act of kindness, one act of courage, one act of generosity.
The Battle of Jericho ranks as one of the most significant turning points in the Jewish storyline. It was the first victory in the Promised Land, but the key to victory was an act of kindness. And that act of kindness is the key to your salvation.
When the Israelites sent two spies into Jericho to do reconnaissance, they were nearly captured. It was a prostitute named Rahab who saved their lives by risking hers. Harboring Jewish spies was akin to treason. So before helping them escape, Rahab cut a deal. She simply asked them to return the favor: “Please swear to me by the LORD that you will show kindness to my family, because I have shown kindness to you.”5
Rahab was thinking exclusively of her immediate family. It was a present-tense request, but it had future-tense ramifications. By showing kindness to Rahab, those Jewish spies were also showing kindness to her great-great-grandson David. That one act of kindness had a ripple effect across nations and generations.
According to rabbinic tradition, Rahab was one of the four most beautiful women in Scripture. The other three were Sarai, Abigail, and Esther. And according to tradition, Rahab converted to Judaism at the age of fifty. She fell in love with Salmon, a Jewish man from the tribe of Judah. They had a son named Boaz, who had a son named Obed, who had a son named Jesse, who had a son named David.
You never know whom you are showing kindness to. It might be the great-great-grandmother of a king. It might be a future billionaire who will become a venture philanthropist. Or it might be your future son-in-law.
When I was thirteen years old, I was in the intensive care unit at Edward Hospital in Naperville, Illinois. Around two o’clock in the morning, I felt as if I was taking my final breath. The doctors called code blue, and my parents called our pastor, Bob Schmidgall. We had just started going to the church he pastored, and it was a church of thousands, so he didn’t even know us. But that didn’t keep him from coming to the hospital in the middle of the night to pray for me. He didn’t know it at the time, but he was praying for his future son-in-law. I married his daughter nine years later, and we gave him his first grandchild.
Sometimes the seeds of our dreams don’t germinate for months or years or decades. But if we plant and water, God will give the increase in due time. Why? Because you cannot break the law of sowing and reaping. It will make or break you.
Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people.6
When it comes to the ripple effect, Rahab is exhibit A.
She wasn’t just King David’s great-great-grandmother. She’s also listed in the genealogy of Jesus. It might sound like a stretch, but one act of kindness had something to do with your salvation. If Rahab hadn’t saved the lives of the spies, and if the spies hadn’t saved the life of Rahab, she would have missed the opportunity to be part of the line and lineage of Jesus. That line and lineage would have been cut off eighteen generations before His birth in Bethlehem.
You’re a secondary beneficiary of that act of kindness!
One Raspberry
On September 3, 1939, German troops invaded Bielsko, Poland. A fifteen-year-old girl, Gerda Weissman, and her family survived in a Jewish ghetto until June of 1942. That’s when Gerda was torn from her mother. Her mother, Helene, was sent to a death camp. Gerda would spend three years in a Nazi concentration camp, followed by a 350-mile death march that she somehow survived. By the time she was liberated by American troops, Gerda was a sixty-eight-pound skeleton. And in what must rank as one of the most improbable love stories ever, Gerda actually married the soldier who found her, Lieutenant Kurt Klein.7
There are six glass towers at the Holocaust Memorial in Boston, Massachusetts, representing the six extermination camps where six million Jews lost their lives. Five towers tell the story of unconscionable cruelty and unimaginable suffering, but the sixth tower stands as a testimony to hope. Inscribed on it is a short story titled “One Raspberry,” written by Gerda Weissman Klein.
Ilse, a childhood friend of mine, once found a raspberry in the camp and carried it in her pocket all day to present to me that night on a leaf. Imagine a world in which your entire possession is one raspberry and you gave it to your friend.8
The true measure of a gift is what you gave up to give it. One raspberry isn’t much unless it’s all you have! Then it’s not next to nothing; it’s everything. The same is true of two billion dollars or two mites. Big dreams often start with small acts of kindness. It’s powerful when we’re on the receiving end, but it’s even more wonderful when we’re on the giving end.
Every act of kindness creates a ripple effect. When you make someone’s day, you don’t just make his or her day, because there’s a good chance that he or she will make someone else’s day. Where the ripple effect of kindness ends, no one knows. And the same is true of love and grace and courage. Give it a generation or two or eighteen, and it might just be the inciting incident that changes the course of history.
Inciting Incidents
Most of us don’t run billion-dollar foundations like Paul Tudor Jones or aid and abet international spies like Rahab, so let me bring this idea down to earth. Some inciting incidents are obvious, like renting a U-Haul and moving to Washington, DC. But many inciting incidents fly under the radar of our consciousness. We don’t realize the impact they had on us until many years later.
One of my earliest memories is a four-year-old friend telling me I couldn’t ride his bike anymore because his dad had taken off the training wheels. After making his proclamation, he rode his bike back to his house three doors down. I immediately marched down to his house, pedaled his bike back to my house, and triumphantly kicked down the kickstand in my driveway.
If you want me to do something, don’t tell me to do it. That’s not motivating to me. Tell me it can’t be done. That’s the way I’m wired. I have this subliminal, and sometimes unsanctified, impulse to prove prognosticators wrong. I’m drawn to overwhelming odds, impossible challenges.
Another one of my inciting incidents is a movie called The Hiding Place, a Billy Graham film about another Holocaust survivor named Corrie ten Boom. I was only five years old when I saw it, which makes me wonder why my parents took me. But that film was the beginning of my faith journey. Is it any coincidence that I pastor a multisite church that meets in movie theaters and produces trailers for its sermon series? Is it any coincidence that one of my life goals is to produce a film? We try to influence others the way we were influenced. For me it was a film. And where that ripple effect ends, only God knows.
One of the best ways to discover your destiny is to study your history. The seeds of your dreams are often buried in your memory, three levels down.
Take inventory.
Subliminal Messages
Some of my earliest memories are of sitting in services at Trinity Covenant Church in Crystal, Minnesota. The order of service was printed on the bulletin every week, and I distinctly remember checking them off one by one with the pew pencil. Honestly, I was bored stiff by church. Of course, I was also six years old. One way I entertained myself was by filling out offering envelopes and dropping them in the plate as it passed by. Trinity Covenant got quite a few multimillion-dollar gifts from superheroes with childlike handwriting.
My most memorable church service was the day my dad picked up a pack of Topps football cards and let me open them during church. Revival almost broke out when I got two Vikings receivers, Ahmad Rashad and Sammy White.
Those memories may seem like minor incidents in my ancient past, but they were inciting incidents. As a pastor, I have a subliminal fear of people just checking off an order of service. I believe church should be anything but boring! When people miss church they should actually miss church.
Did you know that your eye makes tiny movements called microsaccades almost constantly? They are the fastest movements executed by the human body, so fast that they can be observed only with special instrumentation. The six muscles controlling your eyeball twitch about a hundred thousand times each day!9
In much the same way, there are a hundred thousand subliminal motivations that control our everyday movements. They operate below the level of consciousness, but they dictate why we do what we do more than we are aware of.
In the second grade you excitedly raised your hand, only to give the wrong answer. Thirty years later you hesitate to interject your ideas in the boardroom because your classmates laughed at you and you’re afraid of the same thing happening again. Or flip the script. You have measured confidence in critical situations because you hit a game-winning free throw in junior high. Big or small, good or bad, a handful of experiences influence the way we see ourselves, the way we see life. It’s not until we inventory our inciting incidents that we begin to see why we do what we do.
Here’s what I’m sure of. If you’ve overcome eight-hundred-to-one odds, like Josheb, not much overwhelms you after that. If you’ve chased a lion into a pit on a snowy day, like Benaiah, not much scares you after that. If you’ve defeated a Philistine giant on the field of battle, like David, not much intimidates you after that.
You have to inventory God’s faithfulness so you can draw faith from those past successes, past miracles, past blessings. And the good news is that God’s faithfulness cannot be overdrawn!
Better Stories
I was first introduced to the idea of inciting incidents in Donald Miller’s brilliant book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. In fact, that’s what inspired me to take Robert McKee’s Story Seminar. As an offshoot of that book, Don started a company called Storyline, and I love its mission: to help people tell better stories with their lives.
Are you living your life in a way that is worth telling stories about?
When Don spoke at National Community Church a few years ago, he shared one of his inciting incidents. Don is a New York Times best-selling author who has sold millions of books, but during his younger years he was somewhat of a misfit. Actually, his self-assessment is a little more brutal: “I wasn’t good at anything.”
Then Don was asked to write a short article for his high school youth group newsletter. That’s when one unscripted encounter, one compliment rewrote his storyline. Someone said, “Don, you’re a really good writer.”
It was the first time anyone had told Don he was good at anything.
That punch line punctuates Don’s life. It put a period on his feelings of incompetence and began a new sentence, a new chapter in his life.
God wants to write His story through your life. And if you give Him complete editorial control, He’ll write an epic. Of course, it’ll involve some epic conflict. But the God who began a good work in you will carry it to completion, even if it takes eighteen generations!
Telling a better story with your life begins with identifying the inciting incidents in your past. That’s your backstory. Then you start creating incidents with intentionality. That’s the rest of the story.