This feature is an excerpt from The Well-Balanced World Changer: A Field Guide for Staying Sane While Doing Good.
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Alone, we can do so little; together we can do so much. —Helen Keller #worldchangerbook
I trust you’re determined to stick it out. To run the course. To finish well.
Good for you! Here is my request: Please do not go to the finish line alone. Take someone with you.
Sound strange? Maybe.
Just because this is not the mantra being chanted in our culture, is it? We’re taught something different. How to break away from the pack, to set ourselves apart.
We—those of us in the ministry world, mission field, humanitarian arena—are taught survival of the fittest. There is an implied bottom line: Some will stand strong, some will get squashed, and still others will stand on their squashed heads and be platformed.
There are only so many megachurches in the fields of hometown faith. There are only so many speakers staged at the few prominent conferences … only so many book deals granted by the limited number of publishers … recording contracts put out by a finite group of music labels … donation dollars awarded by a fixed number of philanthropists … feature articles printed and posted in a set number of popular magazines and websites.
So get in now, get yours, snatch everything up you can, before the marketplace gets saturated, right?
Because, as much as we hate it, we cannot all win. Every cause cannot prevail. If everyone won, then no one would! Right?
Please tell me you sense deep down that conclusion is wrong.
Who could ever get to the finish line, look back at their fallen comrades littering the battlefield, and feel good? Would that be cause for celebration? To be near the end and know that you, and you alone, made it! You’ve become the most successful. You’re head and shoulders above the rest!
Congratulations. Let us heap medals on you until you cannot move. Here’s a beautiful library where you can grow old and die while reading your own bestsellers. Is that living the dream?
If you are trying to do good in this world at the expense of other people who are doing good, then I have news for you: You are no longer on the side of good.
