A HUNDRED YEARS AGO Booker T. Washington was perhaps the most famous black man on the planet. He once shared a spot of tea with the queen of England. He was also the first black man invited to dine with the president at the White House. “To a very extraordinary degree,” said President Teddy Roosevelt, “he combined humility and dignity.” Then Roosevelt paid him perhaps the highest compliment any person can be paid: “As much as any man I’ve ever met, he lived up to Micah’s verse, ‘What more doth the Lord require of thee than to do justice and love mercy and walk humbly with thy God.’ ”1

That’s high praise from the president of the United States.

On March 12, 1911, Booker T. Washington was in Des Moines, Iowa, delivering several sermons and speeches on the same day. He spoke to standing-room-only crowds at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Plymouth Church, Foster’s Opera House, and a gathering of four African American churches.2 Booker T. was the talk of the town.

Later that day Washington was in the lobby of the hotel where he was staying when a white woman mistook him for hotel staff. She asked him for a glass of water, and instead of correcting her or identifying himself, he obliged. He got a glass of water, handed it to her, and asked, “Is there anything else I can get for you?”3

That one encounter encapsulates his character. Booker T. Washington was an advisor to presidents, but more important, he was a humble servant.

Fame

We live in a culture that aims at fifteen minutes of fame. We aim too low! Why aim at fame and fortune when eternal reward is on the table? I live in a city where every good deed seems to get a press release or a press conference, but Jesus red-flagged publicity stunts in the Sermon on the Mount: “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do.”4

Everyone knows the name Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, and Warren Buffett, the “Oracle of Omaha.” They rank as two of the wealthiest billionaires in the world. But have you ever heard of Chuck Feeney? That’s the man Gates and Buffett identify as their hero. Buffett goes so far as to say, “He should be everyone’s hero.”5

Forbes magazine dubbed Chuck Feeney “the James Bond of philanthropy.” Like a modern-day Saint Nicholas, the fourth-century bishop of Myra who would don a disguise and secretly give away gifts to the poor, for the last thirty years Feeney has “crisscrossed the globe conducting a clandestine operation to give away a $7.5 billion fortune.” His goal? To die broke! Feeney even sounds a little like Old Saint Nick: “People used to ask me how I got my jollies, and I guess I’m happy when what I’m doing is helping people and unhappy when what I’m doing isn’t helping people.”6

God-given dreams are more about others than they are about you. Selfish dreams always short-circuit, but dreams that involve and excite everyone else have a long tail.

There is a fine line between “Thy kingdom come” and “my kingdom come.” Ultimately, the goal of a God-given dream is to honor the God who gave it to you in the first place. A God-given dream doesn’t go after an earthly award. It aims at the eternal reward Jesus promised right after He red-flagged hypocrisy: “Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”7

Are you living for the applause of people or the applause of nail-scarred hands? Are you trying to make a name for yourself or make the name of Jesus famous? Are you building altars to God or monuments to yourself?

There are thirty-seven mighty men listed in 2 Samuel 23. Pick a name, any name. I chose Benaiah the Pirathonite because he shares the same first name as Benaiah son of Jehoiada. Maybe they called him Ben to differentiate. I can say with a high level of confidence that Ben wasn’t about Ben. He was about David. He wasn’t trying to make a name for himself or establish his own throne.

Every mighty man, to a man, risked life and limb for David. Each one’s energies were devoted to helping David fulfill his dream.

I’ve met lots of amazing leaders over the years, and lots of them are amazing people too. But some of them are amazing only from a distance. They’re the ones whose egos barely fit through the doorframe. Can I tell you who impresses me most? Those who try to impress the least. Nothing is more impressive than a down-to-earth dreamer who understands that leadership is first and foremost servanthood.

Is your dream about you? Or is it about others?

If your dream is about you, no one will rally around it.

If your dream is about others, you won’t be able to keep people away.

Bittersweet

I have the privilege of serving on the board of the Bittersweet Foundation, based in Washington, DC. The executive director, Kate Schmidgall, was recognized by the DC Chamber of Commerce as Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2014. Kate is a visionary leader, but what I respect most about Kate is that she is all about everyone else.

Fourteen years ago a conviction was conceived in her spirit that the church needs to do a better job of telling stories about a good God who is at work in the world. In Kate’s words, “It’s an injustice not to.” For seven years the dream was nothing more than a desire. If you’ve ever had a dream that has gathered dust on the shelf, you know that feeling of frustration. Then came the moment of truth. “I knew that I was no longer waiting for God,” Kate said. “I knew that God was waiting for me.” So Kate chased her lion!

The mission of Bittersweet is sharing counternarratives.

Listen to any twenty-four-hour news cycle, and most of the news is bad. It’s not only depressing; it’s deceiving. Bittersweet believes that God is not dead, the church is not idle, and faith is not futile. But it’s our job, as a story shop, to celebrate those stories! Each month we highlight an inspiring story of a good God at work in the world. If you need a little dose of inspiration, check out the story inventory at bittersweetmonthly.com.

In Luke’s gospel there is a common refrain: “The kingdom of heaven is like…” And you can fill in the blank with any number of parables. It’s like leaven; it’s like a mustard seed; it’s like a treasure hidden in a field.

Bittersweet believes that the kingdom of heaven is like an eighty-year-old Palestinian woman, Ms. Lydia, who started the Peace Center for the Blind in East Jerusalem. Why did she do it? Because Ms. Lydia is blind herself. We believe the kingdom of heaven is like a master craftsman who uses the tools of his trade to build braces so that kids with polio can go to school, play soccer, dance, and dream. We believe the kingdom of heaven is like DC127, a nonprofit that is rallying churches to reverse the foster-care list in Washington, DC, so there are more families waiting for children than children waiting for families.

How do we push back the kingdom of darkness? By highlighting stories of God’s goodness, God’s grace. And after we tell the stories, the creative collateral belongs to the organizations we profile so they can share their story with as many people as possible.

We should do what we do for an audience of One, but I also believe that the good news should make the news. We should be making such a huge difference in our communities that we’re unignorable.

Like any dreamer, Kate wrestles with doubt—Does it really make a difference? Her honest answer: “It’s hard for us to know.” So why keep going? The short answer is conviction. Have you ever felt so convicted about a cause that you can’t not do something about it? It’s like the prophet Ezekiel, who had fire shut up in his bones!8 “If Bittersweet helps even one person learn to see God in the dark,” Kate says, “then I consider it worth my everyday living.”

Third Wheel

On bad days I bet Benaiah the Pirathonite felt as if he was second string or a third wheel. After all, he wasn’t even the most famous Benaiah in David’s band of brothers. I bet he had to repeatedly correct people who mistakenly thought he was the Benaiah who chased the lion. No, that was Benaiah son of Jehoiada.

It’s hard to get inside the head of someone who lived thousands of years ago, but human nature is human nature. I’m guessing Benaiah the Pirathonite wrestled with self-worth like the rest of us. Some days he felt like a no name. And that causes a wide variety of emotional issues if you’re trying to make a name for yourself. But if your dream is about others, it doesn’t matter!

My friend Mark Moore leads a wonderful organization called MANA, whose mission is fighting world hunger, one child at a time.9 Their weapon? Mother Administered Nutritive Aid—packets of peanut butter infused with nutrients that help millions of malnourished kids around the world. Part of what I love about this field-of-dreams story is that their factory in Georgia was built on a field where peanuts used to grow! Another reason I love MANA is because it was launched at Ebenezers coffeehouse on World Hunger Day, 2010. So it feels like a dream within a dream.

If you were to visit MANA headquarters, the first thing you’d notice is the picture of a gaunt Ethiopian girl right inside the entrance. It’s a setup. Mark anticipated the question people would ask: “Who’s the girl?” I love Mark’s answer: “She’s the boss!”

MANA isn’t about Mark. It’s about the millions of nameless, faceless children who deserve a fighting chance. That’s why Mark is chasing this five-hundred-pound lion.

The mighty men pledged their fame and fortunes to what seemed to be a lost cause at the time, a fugitive named David. They knew David would get the glory, and they were okay with that. Why? Because David’s dream was their dream.

I love the way the Bible doesn’t even name some of its heroes, like the widow who gave two mites or the boy who gave his brown-bag lunch to Jesus. It’ll be fun to discover their names when everyone is introduced at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb! Of course, your real name isn’t the name given to you by your birth parents. It’s the name that will be given to you by the Son of God Himself: “To the one who is victorious, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give that person a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it.”10

One of the greatest moments in all eternity will be the moment Jesus pronounces your new name, your true name. When it hits your eardrum, fires across your synapses, and registers in your auditory cortex, it’ll be as though your entire life is flashing before your eyes. In that one moment your entire existence will come into perfect focus. That name will unveil your true identity, your true destiny. It will make everything make sense.

Turtle on a Fence Post

One of the perks of living in Washington, DC, is all the memorials and monuments in our backyard. I love the Lincoln Memorial at sunrise, the Jefferson Memorial when the cherry blossoms bud, and the Einstein Memorial off Constitution Avenue because no one knows it exists. That said, no memorial is more emotive than the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Name after name after name is etched into the black gabbro wall that stretches 246 feet in length.

If you don’t know any of the names on the wall, you might be able to make it from one end to the other without crying. But to children and spouses and parents, those names are more than names. Each name represents a universe of emotions, a lifetime of memories.

In one sense, reading the list of thirty-seven names in 2 Samuel 23 is about as exciting as reading the phone book. It’s a long list of names we can barely pronounce. To us it’s a bunch of no names. But to David it was the band of brothers he went to war with. And without them David would never have become king.

David’s greatest talent may have been attracting talent.

Alex Haley, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Roots, is said to have hung in his office a painting of a turtle sitting on a fence post. “Anytime you see a turtle up on top of a fence post,” Haley said, “you know he had some help.”11

Coaching legend Vince Lombardi said something similar: “The man on top of the mountain didn’t fall there.”12

Whether it’s a man on a mountain, a turtle on a fence post, or a king on a throne, you know they had some help getting there. It’s true of every dream, every dreamer.

As National Community Church grows larger and larger, I know less and less about more and more. Organizationally, it’s too complex to keep a pulse on everything. In other words, my dream outgrew me a long time ago! It takes nearly five hundred volunteers to pull off a weekend at our eight campuses. And we have a dream team that does it week in and week out.

If you are big enough for your dream, your dream isn’t big enough for God.

You need a dream that necessitates thirty-seven mighty men, mighty women.

You need a dream that takes dollars and decades.

You need a dream that scares you!