Millard Fuller

Millard Fuller, the founder of Habitat for Humanity, passed away yesterday. I read Fuller's book No More Shacks two decades ago and have been an admirer ever since. In the 42 years since Fuller and his wife, Linda, founded Habitat, this nonprofit organization has built more than 300,000 houses around the world. Buoyed by the efforts of high profile volunteers like Former President Jimmy Carter, Habitat has been able to provide affordable housing for more than 1.5 million people. I have had the privilege of working on Habitat homes in Musicians' Village in New Orleans and in the Providence Park neighborhood in Nashville. 

In a speech to the National Press Club in 1996, Fuller explained his motivation for starting Habitat for Humanity: "After spending most of my adult life in the pursuit of success in law and business, I wanted to make my life count for something of more lasting value. So I made a radical change. Linda and I divested ourselves of our wealth and sought a very different kind of life - a life of Christian service." May Fuller's tribe increase.

"If one of you says to him, 'Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,' but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead." (James 2:16-17)

sacred space

Today I had the privilege of taking part in the Southeast Regional New Baptist Covenant Gathering at the historic Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. The year before I was born, four girls lost their lives one Sunday morning in this church as they prepared to lead worship for Youth Day. The church had long been the center of Birmingham's African-American community and served as a meeting place for civil rights activists like Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph David Abernathy, and Fred Shuttlesworth, thus making it a target of the KKK's wrath.

When I approached the church this morning, I was momentarily startled when I noticed a phalanx of police officers outside the building. I couldn't help but think about Bull Connor, fire hoses, and police dogs. Then I overheard someone make a comment about the Secret Service, and I realized that the beefed up security was there in anticipation of Former President Jimmy Carter's arrival to deliver our keynote address.

As I worshipped in that sacred space today with both black and white Baptists, I thought about how far the city of Birmingham has come since that tragic day in September 1963. When Kate Campbell sang the song she had written about the incident, "Bear It Away," I recalled a TV interview I saw last fall with the parents of one of the girls who perished in the bombing. I thought about their grief and the magnitude of the loss for the entire congregation. I thought about the courage it must have taken for parents to bring their children back to that building the following summer when the church was able to open its doors for worship once again. For that congregation, worship was an act of faithfulness to God and an act of defiance against the forces of evil. 

Thanks be to God, we have come a great distance in this nation in the past 45 years in regard to racism. So help us God, we still have a great distance to go.

"How good and pleasant it is when brothers and sisters live together in unity!" Psalm 133:1