plant and run

our day with Fitz | September 16, 2009

Whew. It has been quite a week. The Fellowship Associates Residency program has dunked us into some pretty exciting waters the last couple of days. I have hardly had a chance to catch my breath. Now that things are beginning to settle down [at least for 24 hours before Crystal and I leave for New Orleans on Thursday evening], I’m sitting in a Starbucks reflecting on what I want to share with you about the last couple of days. I could easily fill a couple of posts with stories and reflections.

I think that all five residents would hands down agree that one of our most exciting and inspiring meetings of the whole program so far occurred on Monday when we met with Fitz Hill.

Fitz Hill is currently the president of Arkansas Baptist College. ABC is a small  historically black college here in Little Rock. It was founded back in the 1880s by former slaves. It is infused into an old neighborhood that reminds me a lot of the Ninth Ward [pre-Katrina]. It seems that this was the area where the first black homeowners bought their homes back in the day. Over the years, it has become overwhelmed by blight, poverty and crime.

Fitz tackled the job of President in 2006. While he has a doctorate in education, his background is primarily in coaching. Fitz was the Assistant Head Coach at Arkansas and the Head Coach at San Jose State. At the time, he was one of only five African-American division I football coaches in the nation. [One funny tidbit...when he found out I was from NOLA, he asked me where I went to high school to see if he ever recruited there. I said, "No, I'm pretty sure you never recruited at Ben Franklin." lol.]

We sat down with Fitz in the president’s board room for our meeting before grabbing lunch with him in the school cafeteria and ending with a tour of the school campus. Fitz pumped us all up with his vision that was literally being built before our eyes.

When Fitz took over in 2006 [that's three years ago], the school had about 150 students and was on the verge of shutting it’s doors. Today, it has 900 students and about 10 million dollars of ongoing construction projects to make it a state of the art school. They have purchased/acquired probably close to a dozen of the blighted properties in the neighborhood and they are turning them into dorms, offices, small businesses [run by students], GED/tutoring centers, parks, etc. They are literally transforming their entire community.

The craziest part…when we walked into the cafeteria…I literally didn’t see one female student. I almost choked on my lunch when Fitz told us that of their 900 students about 600-700 are males. Steve Snider [one of our FA mentors, who is a lifelong friend of Fitz's] later told us that when Fitz goes through the drive-thru at McDonald’s, he’ll ask the young male at the counter if he has ever thought about college and then precede to “recruit” him. Fitz told us that he travels around the regional area [rural Arkansas, northern Louisiana, etc.] and recruits black males with 15s, 16s on their ACT to go to his school. He pursues them like a college football coach would pursue a blue-chip athlete.

No one does that. No one.

In fact, I’m willing to bet that a majority of college presidents would admit off the record that they would be happy if those guys never set foot on their college campuses.

He challenged us to think long and hard about what role we can play in fighting that battle alongside of him. By we, I mean white, middle-class Christians [four of the five church planting residents are white]. He challenged us to think long and hard about tokenism [half-heartedly pursuing diversity]. He decried multi-culturalism as an inadequate solution that could potentially distract the exact group of people that have the most potential to help the cause. His words reminded me a bit of Steve Biko, the South African thinker/activist during the Apartheid era.

It was [literally] awesome.

So I find myself asking the question…what kind of role can I play? I will be [am already?] a church leader in New Orleans. We seek to become a church that reflects the makeup of our city. We seek to become a church that tackles crime and poverty directly.

The question I must ask myself is, “why?”

Why do I want that? Is it so my white middle-class conscience can go to bed feeling content? Further, “What am I willing to give up?”

Are we willing to hand-off ministry and opportunities to others when necessary? Are we more concerned about getting glory or making an lasting impact?

Are we Kingdom-minded or are we only desiring to build our own kingdom?

I’m very happy to say that Fitz is on our schedule a number of times over the residency program. I can’t wait to hear more.