The decision had been made on Father's Day 2013 .....

to step back and be a servant in whatever way that evolved by allowing Vicky to lead the team (?) in our Open Doors for the Open outreach at the 2014 U.S. Opens.  Even though the plan I had put together; following the template provided by Dan Williams for the MTG 2012 Summer Olympics, had been, basically, ignored by the entire team, especially by the leader, Vicky.  But, I felt the Lord was calling me to be obedient and to serve Vicky as the leader of the Outreach from that point forward.

So, we talked on a regular basis, not in formal team meetings, in fact, those team meetings were few and far between, but, the interaction between Vicky and me as we focused upon her need and the general direction of preparing for the Outreach was always my focus.  But, our time was consumed with the efforts to fund her ministry and activity.  I had made the decision and, told her several times, that any funds received in whatever way would go into her 501C3 for use for the Outreach and ANY funding needs she had.  I encouraged her to marry her ministry and her business together because it made perfect sense to me for her to engage with her target customers right in Pinehurst using the Outreach vision to get herself into the network of churches, para-ministries, golf clubs, golf organizations, associations and those in the community that had a passion for golf and a love of Christ.  Again, in my opinion, it made perfect sense for her to promote herself and her ministry, including her books, her videos, her speaking engagements and her one-on-one coaching clientele to draw business clients, Champion Coaching candidates and donations to her and the Outreach. I helped her with an outline for her business as well as coached her on finalizing a business strategy and plan.  I converted her book from a PDF document into a Word document in order to be imported into Kindle Direct Publishing and begin her account on the Kindle platform. I established coaching time with her for her business and walked down the pattern I had for engaging with other clients with similar needs in my job as a business specialist in the Small Business Development Center I was working in.  We talked about the churches within the local and regional area around Pinehurst and how this was the perfect entree' into the churches to grow attention to her business in the area as well as promote and connect with the churches to solicit their partnership in the activities associated with the Open Doors for the Open.

She refused to do any of it or did not fulfill any of it!!!!

How frustrating is it to spend time serving someone that won't implement nor take advantage of an experienced business adviser and golf ministry partner?  Very!!!  Especially when I receive emotional calls every other week and am told by Vicky that she doesn't have the funds to pay her bills or rent, etc.  I even convinced my son who is a wonderful competitive amateur golfer with a bit of a sports psychological challenge with combating negative thoughts while competing in events like the U.S. Open qualifying, U.S. Amateur, Mid-Amateur and Public Links Amateur competitions.  I convinced him to engage with Vicky through her Champion Coaching efforts.  He agreed to contract with her for the process and paid a significant amount for the six or seven session engagement.  I believed her coaching would positively impact his competitive performances and it did to some degree.

My point is; I was serving the fulfillment of Open Doors for the Open by allowing the "visionary" (I thought at the time) to lead and attempting to provide assistance for her needs at every point along the path to the Outreach.  My thoughts were; "If I can't minister to one person in need, how can we, as an Outreach, have a Godly impact on some 400,000 people coming to the U.S. Open in Pinehurst, NC in June 2014?"  My conclusion was, over and over, that we couldn't so that I needed to follow the Lord's lead and guidance to minister to the needs of Vicky as well as I was able.

This resulted in a 7 month delay, from May 2013 to January 2014 in the full implementation of our Outreach for the Open in June 2014.

As I related earlier, the funding of Vicky as the leader of the Outreach became a sticking point in May of 2013.  

In that regard, in fact, Jimmy and I had several discussions about the fact that the chapel had, through the Board of Directors, agreed there would be some funds, approximately $10,000 committed to the event, but it would not be available until January 2014 and, it would NOT be used to fund Vicky.  This point on the remuneration of Vicky became the sticking point for the next 7 months of ministerial non-action.

Two days before Father's Day 2013 there was a discussion between Vicky and me about who should lead the Outreach.  It was, really, an off-the-cuff discussion as we pondered several obstacles associated with moving the Outreach forward.  We were discussing leadership in order to ensure that we had a high caliber individual that would be able to move this entire operation forward.  Vicky began the discussion by saying that Dan Williams should be the leader because of his abilities and his involvement in the More Than Gold (MTG) London 2012, the Christian outreach during the 2012 Olympics.  I had a few conversations with Dan up to this point and was told that he did not plan to be involved in the US Open Outreach on a full time basis.  So, as Vicky mentioned Dan Williams, I immediately came back and said, “I want to be very honest with you. I believe that if we're going to move forward with this outreach, considering the obstacles we have come up against up to this point, that I should be the leader of the ministry.” I recognized quickly this was a non-starter because of the coolness that came over the line after that.  She resisted, she became very cold toward me and the discussion didn't go much further after that.

As I said in an earlier section, on Father's Day 2013, I received an email from Vicky expressing her concerns about our conversation on leadership;

“With regard to positions and roles---we are still functioning informally as a team and there have been no "formal positions" agreed upon yet--I felt very uncomfortable with some comments you made yesterday with regard to who is leading what.  All of that needs to be agreed upon as a team and we are not quite there yet.  With regard to Dan Williams, he was part of the team even before you came on board and is still advising us organizationally.  No one person is leading this vision or "taking the lead" of it--we are all still just serving the present needs. 

I am expressing my concerns because it is obvious we all have our perspectives, perceptions, and desires--and I think it is a good idea to spend some time in the next meeting coming into agreement with "how we are going to live together" in this quest.”

When I received this email, my wife and I were in the car driving around on that Sunday. I showed it to her and she said I should call her directly and set her straight.  Initially, I was infuriated, but I quietly prayed and began to hear the question; “Why are you so angry?”  “Why are you so offended by her email?”  I started to think about that and realized that if I was angry about this simple email that expressed her thoughts about my saying I should be the leader, why was I having such a hostile response?  I realized at that moment; I was, indeed, wanting to take control, take leadership of the Outreach and it was not my right, nor, role at that point to suggest that I should take over leadership of the event.

This was huge for me!!  This set me on a course to recognize God was chastising me for trying to take things into my own hands.   This had been the problem with my following Him and His leads in the past.  This had been the problem in my life, even, throughout former difficulties in jobs and relationships, etc.  I did not know how to serve!  I wanted to lead!  I needed to learn how to serve before I could be the leader God wanted me to be.

Wow, what a revelation.  So I called her three days later.

Read next post....

So, as I said before, the greatest challenge in ministry is; the people.

After finalizing the draft of what would become the “Open Doors for the Open” business/ministerial plan, I distributed the copies though email to all of the individuals that attended the initial meeting. What surprised me most after this was the lack of response from anyone in the entire group other than Vicky (fictitious name).  Her response was a two or three page summary of the plan that I had put together with very little comment other than, "Here is the plan I generated from your notes."  At no time after this was there any real discussion of the comprehensive plan draft I put together from Vicky or from any of the other recipients of the initial plan. We're talking about an entire year of walking down the path to success for a ministerial outreach without a formalized plan accepted by the entire team.  Doomed to failure, right?  Not on His watch.

This, then, leads to a segue into the difficulty, again, that the main challenge in ministry is the people. It became apparent from my conversations with Vicky that her two to three page summary of the entire plan was considered by her to be the actual plan from that point forward. I didn't understand this for awhile, but it was pretty clear to me as things moved along that, indeed, this was thought of by Vicky herself as the actual plan for the outreach.

I referenced earlier that Father’s Day 2013 was a big confrontation between Vicky and me. We had a serious discussion 2 days before Father's Day, I believe, regarding the identification of a leader for the Outreach. Up to this point, Vicky continued to tell me the Outreach was brought about through a vision she had back in 2005 when the U.S. Open was last conducted at Pinehurst #2. During that time, she expressed, the Holy Spirit had shown her what really needed to be glorified during the Open was Himself, Jesus Christ, as opposed to the international media, the Players or the game of golf itself.  What really should be glorified is, of course, Him!!  This is what we are called to do in all things, right? On this fact she and I, firmly, agreed.  

Regarding leadership of the Outreach, I had already bought into the fact that she would be the Executive Director or day-to-day leader of the ministry. Early on, Vicky and I had talked about how she would be remunerated in that regard.  In my plan and in our discussions, I quickly identified the main priority on acquiring funding for her through donations or other initiatives and, indeed, had accepted this as the primary focus of the beginnings of the ministry.

In fact, this was, once again, a concern regarding a team approach to the ministry.  I had written a comprehensive draft of the business plan and a rough financial development model and, we weren’t walking down a path of order and agreement.  I had included in the plan all of the major components for implementation as well as draft financials to support the strategy, including marketing, travel, monthly support of the Executive Director and funds  for general management of the entire process for the next year to 14 months.

I began to take an aggressive approach with the rest of the team as we continued to discuss the overall focus of the outreach even though we didn't further discuss the formal business plan.  It was clear to me that each of us was focused on securing the first donation which we estimated at approximately $10,000 in order to fund Vicky to be the daily operator of the Outreach.  This focus, however, was met with a significant amount of resistance from the folks at the Chapel, specifically from Jimmy Schneider. I spoke with him a few times about this during those first few months, in fact, several times over the next year, making it clear that in order for Vicky to work as the full time action person, she would need to be compensated.  In addition, she needed the money right away.  This continued to meet with incredible resistance and I kept hearing the same story as to why.  I, finally, heard from Jimmy that the funding for Vicky was not going to be covered by the Chapel and he would not recommend that Vicky lead nor be compensated from the first donations.

This was a significant obstacle and became the reason that very little activity was done on the initial plan nor was there ever another full team meeting to continue down the road on a comprehensive work on the Open Doors Outreach for the next 6.5 months. 

Challenges ….. people!!!


So, who's gonna lead??