I’ve often held the belief that a great deal of problems in
life can be solved with math. Simple
math. Whether it’s at work, when I’m
teaching, in various walks of life, if you “do the math” you can determine if
whatever you are trying to achieve is feasible or not.
Let’s take a couple quick and simple examples. We’ll be talking at work about our sales
goals, and someone will say, “I think we can reach X in sales this year”. Really?
If you do the math, and you see where we are at the moment, and where
you believe we can be, it just doesn’t work.
You just can’t get there from here.
I’ll have students who will say, “I really need to get a B
in this class, what do I need to get on the final for a B?” If you take what you’ve achieved so far on
the tests, homework, quizzes, you are at X%.
To get a B in the class, you need a 130 on the final, and since there
are only 100 possible points, that ship has sailed. You can’t get there from here. I do explain it much nicer than this.
A few years ago, I agreed to serve on the Board of Trustees
for United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio. It’s a long story, but I was asked to serve
because of my financial expertise. I
knew going in that UTS had some financial issues, but I never imagined how
problematic they were at the time. When
I first started on the board, the financials were bad. As time wore on over the first couple of
years, the financials got worse.
Throughout my career, I’ve endured and worked through
various financial situations, and I’ve seen and experienced a great deal of
financial difficulties. I had never seen
anything like this. While I’m often
calm, and I hope a voice of reason, I finally couldn’t take it anymore, and I
gave one of my most memorable and impassioned speeches. To paraphrase, I said, “I’ve never seen
financial statements this bad in over 30 years in business. As far as I can tell, we’re going to run out
of cash. I don’t know what to do if we
run out of cash, does anyone else know?
We can’t keep going like this, we have to do something differently.”
What greeted me was not what I had anticipated. As we discussed our financial crisis, as we
tried to determine what to do, the overriding comments, recommendations or
admonishments from people such as Bishop Gregory Palmer, Dr. Robert Scott and
Dr. Charles Booth were along the lines of
“We just need to pray more”
“What I’ve not seen or heard enough of
lately is prayer”
“We need to pray about this”
And
so on. You have to understand that these
gentlemen are incredible orators, and they can take over a meeting, a room, any
event with their eloquence and deep convictions. While I’m always deeply impressed by anything
that they have to say, they are incredible men of God, I was still perplexed on
how prayer was going to dig us out of the deep hole we were in. We need to pray more? Seriously?
When
President Kent Millard came on board at UTS, he had a similar mantra. He evoked the need for prayer, for God to
help us out of the situation we were in, and to provide a miracle. As time went on, I became more discouraged as
I really felt the math just didn’t work.
Prayer was great, but if you do the math, we can’t get there from
here.
It’s
amazing how wrong I could be.
As
the months went by, the money started pouring in. Kent and Callie Picardo, our Vice President
for Development, would both say, “We just hold out our arms, and God pours down
the donations to us.” Over the last
year, UTS has gone through an unbelievable turnaround, I would have never
imagined it was possible, but somehow it happened. If you look at the numbers, if you do the
math, it really wasn’t feasible to make this kind of turnaround. The only plausible answer was that what we
did need was more prayer and a miracle from God, and it happened.
Now,
it wouldn’t be fair to stop right there.
While the overriding story to all of this was that prayer and God can
overcome a lot, it also took a great deal of hard work and sacrifice. What I learned over time is that Kent Millard
has a saying, which I know I’ll butcher, but it goes something like, “Trust God
as if it will all come from Him, but work as if it is all coming from
you.” The Administration, the Staff, the
Faculty and even the Trustees made significant sacrifices and worked extremely
hard to turn UTS around. While Kent and
Callie would say that God just pours down the money, a tremendous effort went
into bringing in those donations. And of
course we can’t forget the dedicated donors that UTS has, they continue to go
above and beyond to keep the seminary flourishing. Again, if it weren’t for God, this doesn’t
happen, but also if it weren’t for all of the hard work and sacrifices, it also
wouldn’t have happened.
As
I’ve contemplated this last year or so, I’ve come to a few conclusions. They are:
God is even more powerful than math. Yes, I’m joking, although I’m pretty sure God
is more powerful than math. Even when
things look hopeless, even when the math won’t work, God may have other plans.
People actually believe in the power of
prayer. Before you judge me, I do
believe in the power of prayer. I do
pray, I believe that God listens to prayers, I believe sometimes God answers
prayers, and I believe sometimes the answer God gives is not the answer we
hoped for or anticipated, but God is God, and He has a better idea of what we
need than we do.
Now, having
said that, these people truly believe in the power of prayer. I know I’m not making much of a distinction
or really any distinction at all, but there is a fine line, or probably a
football field between their faith and my faith. It was a sobering moment for me, but a
learning moment just the same. I learned
a lot about my faith, and their faith, and I learned that I sometimes have to
defer my need for control and realize that ultimately the only one in control
is God.
As is usual, when you set out to help
others, the one who benefits the most is you.
I’ve shared before my experience as a teacher at Georgia Gwinnett
College. I started teaching to give
back to the community and try to help educate young accounting students. What I found was that they taught me much
more than I was able to teach them, and I gained much more than I gave.
The same
applies with UTS. I came in to provide
my financial expertise, and what I provided to UTS pales in comparison to what
I received. The people I’ve been blessed
to be surrounded by at UTS have provided me so many valuable lessons on the
love of God, the power of prayer, the strength of belief, and the confidence to
rely on God rather than to rely on myself.
I’ve always been good at working like it all relies on me, but I have
serious work to do on trusting that it will all come from God.
While it’s
painful, sometimes we need a reminder of where we are on our journey compared
to where we want to be. As I often say,
I’m still a work in progress, and I will be until the day I die. Thanks be to God for giving me the
opportunity to keep on growing.
