PIN Ministry Weblog

Yesterday at the conference was really awesome. God really spoke to me in several areas of my life. I wanted to share them in case they can help you. I went to a workshop called “Emotionally Healthy Leaders: Leading from Within”. The guy that led it was Peter Scazzero; he wrote a really good book called “The Emotionally Healthy Church”. During the workshop Peter talked about how once we accept Jesus as Lord we become a ”New Creation in Christ” and we become part of a new family with new brothers and sisters. When he was saying that I was like ye I know I could preach a great sermon on that then he came with the boom. Although we are a new creation there is brokenness in your blood family that exists in your life and ministry even though you are a new creation. As I put my family genealogy on a piece of paper I realized that there are some things that I still do that are not good, and I can see it in my kids.

Here is the bad thing for those of us that lead ministry’s we now allow our dysfunctions to play out in our ministry “In Jesus Name”. I plan to make a couple changes when I get home to get my arms around changing some of these issues. Here is your assignment….. Think about the dysfunctional things in your parents and grandparents, and then look at your kids and see if it has been passed down. You can’t change something you can’t see.

One of the speakers last night was A.R. Bernard, and I always love to hear him speak. I’ve heard him speak several times. A.R. Bernard is the pastor of (Christian Cultural Center) in Brooklyn, NY. One point he made that I thought was very good was that as a church we need to be insulated not isolated. We need to make sure we keep our churches grounded in the truth, while we are being salt of the earth. When we are isolated we tend to think we are insulated. So we just need to make sure that we are serving God’s purpose for us on earth.

One of my favorite things about the CCDA is how multicultural it is. I really love the way that it is so diverse, and I think that is the way it should be. Our work place is often diverse, but then we go to church on Sunday and it is not so diverse. I think diversity is something we need to work on. I often hear pastors say I want my church to be more diverse; however, they have no diversity in their leadership. Duh. It’s like practicing basketball and wondering why I’m not getting better at baseball.

Hey on another note, earlier this week the Memphis Grizzlies basketball team was staying at the hotel we are staying in. I’m at the front desk and I turn around a see a guy who is like 7 feet tall. I was like wow, that dude is tall. Then I see a bus and everyone getting off the bus is tall. So I’m going up to my room and I get in the elevator with Marc Gasal, Antoine Walker and 3 other guys I don’t know who they are. Hey it’s the Memphis Grizzlies; you have to be a sports super freak to know two players. So I’m on the elevator with 5 professional basketball players and I look at Antoine Walker and said “5″ 9′ has never felt so small”. He smiled and shook his head. I bet he never heard that before.

Running a non-profit organization that helps the homeless is a hard job. It is a difficult balance between supporters and homeless people and making sure I’m spending enough time with both. I’m also unintentionally making people mad both homeless and supporters. If you add in the long hours and the low pay it can be a very difficult job. So why do I do it? First, God told me to!!!!! If you are a Christian that should be enough; however, I’m also seeing real life change. We have seen 20 homeless people accept Jesus as their savior this year…… I also have people come up to me all the time to tell me how PIN has changed their lives. So when I think about it the positives way outweighs the negatives. However there is someone associated with PIN that has a really tough job…. My wife Anne.

Anne is so awesome! She gets to live out the tough times because I share them with her, but doesn’t get to share all of the complements and praise that is heaped on PIN. I would say that being married to a person who runs an organization that helps the homeless is actually one of the hardest job in the world. So when I found out that this year’s conference was in Miami and we had enough frequent flier miles for a free ticket I decided that Anne should come with me. Anne loves to travel, and when I was a 6 figure engineer at GE we were able to take nice vacations. My salary doesn’t allow us nice vacation money, we get budget vacations. So Anne and I came to Miami two days before the actual conference starts to have a mini vacation, and we had some fun. We went for a ride on an air boat in the everglades, went to Key Largo, and ate lunch on south beach. I’m so glad that it worked out that Anne has been able to come, she deserves to relax more than any person I know.

I took an unintentional sabbatical from the blog, but I’m back now. Last week was really crazy busy, because PIN is submitting a grant proposal to Norfolk Foundation. This year has not been a great year financially, even though the amount of people we serve is growing. The need is getting greater and greater. I think with the economy where it is PIN will be more important than ever. So please pray with us that we will get funding from Norfolk Foundation.

I’m out of town in Miami this week to attend the CCDA (Christian Community Development Association) www.ccdamiami08.org. It is an opportunity to learn from different organizations that work with people who are homeless and living in poverty. On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday Night I will be posting to this blog about some of the things I’ve learned. 

Come back Thursday…….

So it was January 2006 and Dallas Stamper started working for PIN full time. PIN couldn’t afford to pay me a salary so we would have to use the money that we had saved. We put aside enough money to make it a year without a salary, and God would provide a salary for Dallas sometime that year. It was a simple and brilliant plan. Here is the problem several things happened that caused our money to evaporate quicker than we planned. So after 4 months we only had 4 months worth of money left. That month PIN had brought in $1,000 and we had spent $3,000 and we had $8,000 in the bank. So my family was going to be broke at the same time PIN went out of business. How could I have been so stupid!!! Anne and I sat down to talk about the future, that was a really tough conversation. Anne said “you have to get another job we are going to be broke in 4 months”. I knew she was right how could I have been so wrong about God’s call for my life. Have you ever felt like you were completely wrong about God’s call? So I told Anne that I would quit PIN and get another job; however, I wanted to take a day to pray and fast. During that day I really cried out to God, what did I do wrong? Why did God not bless what we had done? I can’t completely explain what happened that day, but I was more convinced than ever that God wanted me to stay at PIN.

So I went home that day and told Anne that I felt God wanted me to stay at PIN, Could we give it one more month if something didn’t change then I would get another job. She agreed and we continued to pray. That month was incredible we received money from places I would never expect. Within 4 months PIN had enough money in the budget to pay me a salary. It was a cool confirmation on the call that God had put on my heart.

I was left wondering what I could learn from the rough beginning of my employment of PIN, so this is what I learned. God has gifted me with some abilities, but my abilities were going to be nothing unless I put all my focus on God. I had a great plan to start with, but God’s plan is better.

There became a point in 2004 that I felt God’s call to leave my job at GE to work for PIN full-time. Here was the problem I had a really good salary at GE and PIN couldn’t afford to pay me. So I ignored God’s call initial, because I knew it was not going to be easy or comfortable. I love God and want to please Him so I couldn’t ignore the call for long. I told God I would leave my job and work for PIN full-time if He made it clear to my wife. So I told my wife that I though God wanted me to leave GE to work for PIN full-time, but I wouldn’t even considered leaving until God made it clear to her.

My wife loves God and wants to serve the poor, but I knew it was going to take God for her to agree. We had a large house in a neighborhood she loved. We had 401K’s and allot of additional money which my job allowed. My wife said OK honey, but I know she was thinking “that’s never going to happen”. We both continued to pray and to focus on what God wanted. Then one morning my wife just woke up and said you have to quit your job. We then put the plan in place. Sold our house and bought a smaller one, and started living on less money.

So 4 years ago I realized that PIN needed a big fundraiser that would accomplish two things. First, it had to make money (hence the name Fundraiser). Second, it had to be great forum to share PIN to the massed (and by masses I mean anyone I can talk into coming). So here is what most non-profits do for their big fundraiser. They have a dinner at a hotel at the oceanfront; they have an orchestra playing music in the background, a special guest speaker, and a live auction. I think they must teach this at non-profit school. I’ve been to them and I just think they are boring. By the end they have to wake everyone up to tell them it’s time to go home.

I didn’t go to non-profit school, so I wanted to come up with a fundraiser that would be fun, energetic, and affordable for everyone. I thought about coming up with a comedy night; however, I didn’t know any comedians so how could I set this up. So I googled Comedians and Virginia Beach and I came up with Bob Featherer. I got Bob’s number and said. “You don’t know me, but my name is Dallas Stamper and I run a non-profit organization that helps homeless people” would you be willing to be the comedian at our big fundraiser. He said yes, and then I said there are only a couple things. First, I told him we couldn’t pay him, and he said no problem I love to give back. Bob is an awesome guy!!!! Then I said secondly I needed him to keep his act PG13. He said nope can’t do it can’t do a whole show PG13. Bob said he could only do 15 minutes of PG 13 comedy, but he could get 4 other comedians that could do PG13 comedy. Are you kidding me this is it the perfect fundraiser and it would meet all of my criteria.

In 2005 we had 90 people attend, and then in 2006 we had 250 people attend, last year we had 450 people attend. So this year we are having our Comedy Night on Friday Night November 14th and we are expecting over 600 people so you should get your ticket early. You can get your ticket at http://www.pinministry.org/comedy.html.

As PIN began to grow, it was cool to see all the people come out to serve the homeless. We began to have meetings to discuss how to make PIN better. During one of these meeting someone said we should make PIN a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. I thought great who would do it, so I said, “Who wants to do it”. Then several people said you’re the leader you should do it. I have to be honest there are times that leading an organization stinks, and this was one of those times. I smiled and said OK, but I was thinking did anyone get the license of that bus that just hit me. Since I had started zero non-profit organizations, I decided I would talk to someone who understands non-profit organizations. She told me that it could take anywhere from 4 to 6 months to become a tax-exempt organization, but since I had no clue what I was doing it would take me longer. Nothing like encouraging words to get you started.

So here is the deal it was clear that I was not qualified to do this, so I needed God’s help. It’s funny how we often lean more on God when it seems like an insurmountable goal. So I came up with this plan, I decided that I would make an announcement at our meeting that we would become a non-profit in 2 months, and the person that advised me would say you can’t do it in 2 months. I would then say well I need all of you to pray to God will make it happen. Great Plan Right??? So everyone left and said they would pray. I got busy at work the next month and did nothing on this non-profit thing then I realized that I bunch of people were praying, but since I didn’t do anything I had failed them. How is this going to happen in 1 month? After I got done feeling sorry for myself I realized that if God could do this in 2 months then He could do it in 1 month. So I spend an entire weekend praying and putting the paperwork together it was April 24th and 25th, 2004.

So we were going to be a non profit before the end of May 2004. As May went on I kept praying and meeting the mailman at the mailbox. I think my mailman thought I was staking him. I was going to a Men’s retreat on the weekend of May 28th and May 29th, and I was going to confess how I had got all these people to pray and I failed them. I was pretty depressed, I felt like these people trusted me and I failed them. So it was Friday May 28th and I was packing up my car when the mail man pulled up to my mail box. So I will look at the mail box one more disappointing time. I looked in the mail box and there was a letter from the IRS. PIN WAS TAX EXEMPT. You have got to be kidding me, this was crazy, this was cool, and this was God.

I have to be honest I completely believe in the Bible every last word. I believe everything in Genesis that God created Heaven and Earth. So sometimes I wonder why I doubt God in small things. I can tell you my faith grew that day by my mailbox.