Why a Good Leader Knows When To Let Go

By Kevin Young

This is a guest post by Kevin Young. I’ve known Kevin since I was a freshman in college, when I volunteered at Cru High School and he was my Director. Since then, he has not only become a trusted spiritual mentor, he is a true father figure to my husband Moses and me. He’s also a very talented writer. You can read his blog here and follow him on Twitter. 

I had invited him, along with a small team of others to a school called Thomas Jefferson, in East New York, known for violence and poor graduation rates. The week before I had helped a dazed and bloodied student off the floor after she had been beat up, her blouse ripped, eyes glazed over. This was no place for the faint at heart, and so when I asked him to do classroom talks, I was curious to see how he would be received by some of the toughest kids in New York City. What I saw changed everything. While I sat in that broken school desk, I heard a voice inside. 

“Do you see their eyes, how they identify with him? They know he understands them, they know they have found someone to follow.”

And I knew I had found my Jeremiah.

His name is Moses Sanchez, and he lives with his wife Marilette, and their two children in Bushwick, Brooklyn. The best part of the story is how God led us together, but the most important part is how an older man needed to step aside, and let a Jeremiah take his place.

Moses’ story begins in the Bronx, and a flat out sprint trying to ditch the cops. He had just witnessed his mother’s arrest, and she had screamed to him, “run!” Next stop foster care, but if you know anything about Jeremiahs, they don’t stand still. He would disappear on long subway rides across the city, running, always running—at seven years old. A couple years later he made a soft landing into a Christian home, into the arms of a mom who took him in and adopted him as her own. Moses could have become a statistic, part of a number on a print out—one in four foster kids in NYC end up homeless. But God had other plans. Over the next several years He led him to families who loved him, cared for him, and shaped him. At his wedding, he had four sets of what he calls his ‘mom & dad,’ all for different reasons, and all brought into his life in the nick of time. That ceremony was a baptism of tears, a celebration of God’s amazing grace. I’ll never forget his words to his real mom. “I love you, because you loved me enough to send me away.”

These sovereign foundations give Jeremiahs an early, mature and determined faith to speak to God and man without fear. As Moses tells it, he needed $10,000 for each of the two years remaining at The King’s College. He wouldn’t continue there without it. He prayed. Literally in the same week, not knowing anything about his need or his cry to God, I met with a ministry partner, a long time friend of Cru, who said he “had an idea.” “I’d like to give $10,000 a year to the King’s College to scholarship an intern to work with your ministry.” I immediately thought of Moses. “But should I split the investment,” I thought, “involve more than one?”

The following week Moses and I were standing outside a school in lower Manhattan, and had just met a junior gang member named Manny. He was short, mean looking, and scowled the way kids like that do, in order to keep a healthy distance, command respect. After my attempt at reaching out, I asked Moses to tell his story. I needed to know if he had the stuff to deliver in evangelism. I remember Manny moved his sight from me and stared him down. Moments later, after listening to Moses, he was wiping tears from his eyes. “Your story man, it’s, it’s mine, too,” he said haltingly. This time the little voice was louder. 

“Here is the future of ministry to New York City’s 1.2 million students. And by the way, give him the whole amount.”

All through his internship, Moses told me he was going into teaching when he graduated. I prayed God would show him otherwise. But his vision seemed stronger than my invitation to join our team, and so off he went. It broke my heart, honestly tore a hole in it. I didn’t know if it was selfish, or maternal. We had spent so much time together. While my insides were aching, the voice whispered. “Wait, I have more to teach him.” When I got an unexpected call from him several months later, I thought it was just to catch up. We sat in our favorite spot at LuLu Bean Café in Brooklyn, and he told me through tears he was out of God’s will. He needed to re-engage with us.

For some unknown reason, in that moment I saw several years stretched out all at once, and Moses stepping up to a place of leadership—into my post! I felt threatened, relieved, but mostly awe. Fear gripped me, a wonder in the wisdom and persistence of God upon a young man’s life, and the patience in an old man. When the voice spoke this time, “He is the man,” there was nothing to say.

I didn’t tell anyone what I had heard. It was a lonely burden I kept for many months. A great mission needs a great young soul to drive it, nurture it, call others around it, and ultimately to believe God for it. Today’s Jeremiahs need the older guard to step aside and let them lead. And so, the time came all too quickly, when God demanded that hard step of me. 

“You are asking me to leave the city I love." 

"Yes,” God responded, “but unless you leave, this young man will never fail enough, nor suffer enough to be great enough to carry my will.”

Epilogue: This spring I handed Moses a baseball, symbolic of the way a manager takes the mound and relieves one pitcher and installs the next. It’s his turn now, and I have a hunch he’s going to pitch a better game than me. I’m so glad. He’s already doing things I only dreamed of. This Jeremiah happens to be called Moses, but his story is only part of a larger one unfolding today. We who are older, wiser and more invested must ask God to open our eyes to see how we can give the Jeremiahs around us a place to lead, then get out of the way. They may be untested, but they are undaunted.

QUESTION: In what way is God calling you to let go in order to let Him to have His way with a ‘Jeremiah’ in your own life? Let me know in the comments below.

Shia LaBeouf and the Heart of God

By Alyssa Plock

This is a guest post from Alyssa, my dear friend and roommate from college. For the past few years, she has helped lead a scripture-based recovery program. Her experience has taught her that many Christians are saved, but not healed of pain. Her passion is to see God move every hurting person to a new place through reflection, accountability, and forgiveness. Alyssa currently works as a radio producer in upstate New York. You can read her blog or follow her on Twitter.

Cory Monteith, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Robin Williams–stars with dark secrets who did not make it out alive; souls who, as far as we can tell, became permanently lost to the Father.

But then there’s Shia LaBeouf. His dark secrets are well known. But because of God’s pursuit, he will make it out of this alive. Shia shares a lot about himself and how he found God in the recent Interview Magazine article, a sit-down interview with Elvis Mitchell. As I read it, I rejoiced, cried, and felt a deep, brotherly love for him grow and grow. God reached down into a dark life and pulled Shia up.   

In the Interview article, Shia candidly describes his father as “a Vietnam veteran who came home disgruntled.” A former drug addict and motorcycle gang member, Shia’s father created a childhood of darkness and “irony” for Shia, in which the greatest gift he got from his dad was pain.  

Then in his young adulthood, Shia explains how he felt like he had become a slave of the movie industry, that he had given it so much control over him, and that he struggled to feel hope when the whole world was “dumping” on him. He says his method acting and deep insecurities often got him in trouble in the public eye.

Then Director David Ayer entered the picture.

David is known for writing Training Day, The Fast and the Furious, and End of Watch. David grew up in the rough streets of Los Angeles, joined the Navy before he finished high school, and taught himself to screenwrite. He was a troubled soul until the Lord rescued him. David uses his movies to explore manhood, explore the complexities of life, and honor those who put themselves on the line to protect others.

When Shia first met with David on the set of Fury, the writer/director said, “I want you to know that what’s being offered to you is not just a film, this is a life-changer. We’re going to push it all the way to the edge. I want you to make this movie like you’ll never make another movie. You’re going to die on this set.”

After his first meeting with David, Shia became a chaplain’s assistant with the National Guard. Through this training period, in which he shadowed a chaplain for a month, he found God.

Back on set, David connected with Shia over rehearsals, camping, and living life together.  “I’ve never experienced unconditional love from another man,” Shia tells Mitchell. “And war is the only place in society where men are allowed to unconditionally love each other. And what we experienced on the set was unconditional love.”

For Shia, working on Fury was the best experience of his life because making films is his therapy and David Ayer was “not the observer; he’s going through it with you…It was like becoming a Christian–you subject yourself to everything that’s coming. You relinquish everything.”

At one point Mitchell asks Shia, “It sounds like this is the first time you’ve ever had real trust in a director?”

Shia responds, “In men.”

God’s heart is for men like Shia who grew up in “affliction” and “bitterness of suffering” (Lamentations 3).” He knows that at one point, like Shia, we were all dead in our filth, children of wrath by nature, without hope and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2).

It pains God to see His sons slipping away from His grasp. The Bible describes a story in which a son disowned his father, took his inheritance early and spent it all in crazy, reckless living. When the money ran out and the son hit rockbottom, he decided he would go back and work like a servant for his dad. But his dad wouldn’t have it. His dad had been watching for him and when he saw the son far off, he sprinted toward him and wrapped him in his arms (Luke 15:11-32). Like that father to the prodigal, God wants to run to his lost sons when He sees them looking for a way out of the dead ends.

I am grateful to men like David whose hearts align with the Father’s heart and who see their job as their calling. As Shia’s public meltdowns spread across the cyber-universe, he seemed to appear beyond saving to most of the world. But God allowed David to pursue him and show him what no other man had shown him–unconditional love. As God’s love changes our brokenness, we begin to feel the heartbeat of God and realize that His deep love can pour out of us and change another life.In David’s case, the pain from his past allowed him to extend the ultimate ‘pay it forward’ to Shia. He felt what Shia felt.

A few years ago, a friend of mine slipped further and further away from God. Through this awful experience of watching the light go out in someone’s eyes, the Lord drew me near to the depth of His love. As I would pray for my friend, God would cry, “My child, my child. Alyssa, you are not weeping right now, but I am.” And the Father’s searing pain and the Spirit’s groans would burn in my spirit. It’s called travailing in the Spirit. It’s feeling pain on someone else’s behalf to spare them, bring them to healing or, like in my case, serve God’s purpose in pushing one you love over the edge.

When God brings you into this kind of prayer, no matter how deep he brings you or how much it hurts, you are safe. When you have witnessed what God has for you, he brings you back up to the surface to breathe easily again, refreshes you and equips you for the next task. Just because it is scary at first, does not mean it is not from God. The honor in submitting to a travailing prayer is that you walk away knowing that God has shared his innermost thoughts with you.

I ask you, my brothers and sisters to join me in travailing for Shia. He, other Hollywood souls, and the people God has put before us in our own circles, need our love and support.

For Shia, pray that God breaks the anger he is still holding onto and replaces it with something more powerful: forgiveness; pray that God brings even more men to unconditionally love him and keep him walking on the path of truth; and pray that Shia finds movies to work on that (in his words) make his “soul grow.”