Tag: Servant Leadership

Prayers for Peace on the National Day of Prayer :: the YMCA, the Church, the City

Especially as Christians, we have a responsibility to fulfill our calling as “little Christ’s” – to “live our lives” in Christ Jesus – this is how we will overflow in thankfulness and be instruments of peace where we live and work and pray.

For the 2022 National Day of Prayer, the emphasis was drawn from the encouragement of St. Paul to the church in the city of Colosse (Colossians 2:6-7).

Here is the cotext of what we wrote to the young Christian men and women who associated there in homes and the marketplace:

“My goal is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

I tell you this so that no one may deceive you by fine-sounding arguments.

For though I am absent from you in body, I am present with you in spirit and delight to see how disciplined you are and how firm your faith in Christ is.

So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.”

Colossians‬ ‭2:2-7‬ ‭NIV

Prayers for our country and community are essential, praying for our leaders and families, our churches and YMCA’s matter.

Especially as Christians, we have a responsibility to fulfill our calling as “little Christ’s” to “live our lives” in Christ Jesus – this is how we will overflow in thankfulness and be instruments of peace where we live and work and pray.

As you pray today, and everyday, may these words above of Saint Paul, and this prayer below of Saint Francis guide you in spirit, mind and body, for all whom Christ brings into your life:

Lord, make us instruments of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let us bear your love.
Where there is offence, pardon us as we pardon others.
Where there is discord, bring union through us.
Where there is error, may truth arise.
Where there is doubt, grant us faith.
Where there is despair, be our hope.
Where there is darkness, shine your light through us.
Where there is sadness, inspire us with joy.


O Master, let us not seek
to be consoled but rather to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love,
for it is in giving that one receives,
it is in forgetting that one finds,
it is in pardoning that one is pardoned,
it is in dying in Christ that one is raised to eternal life.

Adapted from the prayer attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi

The following prayers and prompts are from Central Branch YMCA in downtown Fort Wayne.

Happy Easter & YMCA Ukraine

Today on this Easter Sunday, join me in praying for YMCA Ukraine, for their faithful and brave service to their neighbors as they strive to overcome evil with good.

Today April 24 is Easter Sunday for Orthodox Christians around the world – here in Fort Wayne and in Ukraine.

What’s it mean to celebrate Easter when your nation is being brutally terrorized and violently decimated by the machines of war from your next door neighbor?

When horrific deaths mar the landscape of blasted cities, where does the courage and hope come from, that faith, hope and love can endure?

Even just briefly reflecting on how my pleasant Protestant Easter Sunday went last week compared to my fellow Ukrainian Christian’s celebrating Easter today in Kiev or Mariupol… it is humbling, it is grief-full, it is maddening really that such evil exists and devours the innocent.

What can YMCA Christians do – we who are known as the resurrection people – in the face of such madness, darkness, and violence?

Our name – “little Christ’s” implies that we are marked as such because of our loyalty, imitation, and love of Jesus, in particular how he was present to the weak and vulnerable, the innocent and the guilty, those with power and those praying for deliverance.

The YMCA has within its history a record of brave women and men who responded to the call of Christ upon their life, to serve Him through the Y as peacemakers, as mentors, as friends, as advocates for the oppressed, as allied for justice.

If you haven’t done it yet, please donate to the YMCA work in Ukraine.

Donate Today!
YUSA & YMCA World Service Check In with YMCA Europe & YMCA Ukraine

If you are a Christian in the Y, consider the call that Jesus Christ is making on your life these days: what are you doing about evil in the world, what is your Y doing about despair and violence in the world, what is your Y doing about peace and truth and reconciliation in the world, what is your Y doing about war and oppression?

It’s easy to try and avoid conflict, to keep my head down, eyes averted…until trouble comes near and then we are unprepared in spirit, mind and body. It’s hard to keep caring about our neighbors and fellow YMCA’s around the world. It’s also hard to become cynical, jaded, and hard-hearted…

Today on this Easter Sunday, join me in praying for YMCA Ukraine, for their faithful and brave service to their neighbors as they strive to overcome evil with good.

Pray for the Christians of Ukraine, that as they celebrate Easter amidst rubble and refugees, amidst terror and tyrants, that the Risen One would strengthen their spirit, that their love would breathe new life into their nation.

And today, pray for your neighbors facing darkness in your own community- and be willing to say “yes” to the call Christ is making on you to be present to those in pain, to be ready to be the hands and heart of Jesus, for all who are walking in darkness yet yearn to see a great light.

The C in the YMCA at 2001:: the 150th Anniversary Address by Dr. Ken Gladish [retired CEO of YUSA]

This address, dealing with the history ofthe YMCA in America, was delivered at a 2001 Massachusetts Meeting of The Newcomen Society of the United States held in Boston, when Dr. Kenneth L. Gladish and Mr. John M. Ferrell were guests of honor and speakers on October 25th, 2001.

In this brief speech, Dr. Gladish provides a compelling overview of the YMCA, it’s origins, accomplishments in the United States of America, and how the Christian faith is intregal to it all.

Enjoy this friendly, informative, personal accounting of the Y in 2001; see how the C is described and embodied in the YMCA history, institution, and future.

Click here to view the entire speech

Here is the concluding paragraphs to the speech:

Herein may lie the secret ofthe association’s success and the power of its impact on rising generations of Americans, their families and their communities.

The enterprise, openness, and values of the YMCA were seeded long ago in the American Christlan conscience which gave birth to our nation’s revolution in civic association, charitable action, and moral commitment.

If the “spirit of the Lord” was upon the founding generation of the YMCA, we might well ask where it is to be found today.

And today, of course, is a different day, both for America and for the YMCA.

In a complex and increasingly diverse America, the YMCA is still called to change lives.

In this work we are compelled by faith and history, as well as experience and conviction, to affirm what we know to be true – we are called at our best to do the work we were created to complete.

Like the prophet Isaiah in the Hebrew scriptures, and Jesus of Nazareth in the Christian gospels, we will find the right “spirit” in our own work when we:

“Preach good news to the poor; Proclaim release to the captives; Seek recovery of sight to the blind; and Set at liberty those who are oppressed.”

As students of these sacred texts understand, of course, we are all in some way poor, captive, blind, and oppressed.

The reversal of these conditions and the realization of our full and blessed potential as individuals depend on the unified development of our spiritual, intellectual, and physical personalities.

This has been and must remain the work ofthe YMCA as it touches thelives of men and women, boys and girls, in the new century which lies ahead.

Gladish, p18-19
Kenneth Gladish assumed the office of Executive Director of the YMCA of the USA in February 2000, becoming the twelfth national leader of the YMCA movement.

The YMCA of the USA, the national office responsible for supporting the nation’s 2,500-plus YMCAs, celebrated its 150th anniversary year in 2001. YMCAs serve over 18 million Americans, more than half of them children, and are collectively the nation’s largest charity and community-based service organization.

Gladish accepted the position of Executive Director following six years as executive director of the Indianapolis Foundation and three years as president of the Central Indiana Community Foundation. He previously served as president and chief executive officer of the Indiana Humanities Council and director of the Indiana Donors Alliance. A YMCA member from childhood in his hometown of Northbrook, IL, he volunteered and later held his first professional position as assistant director of youth and community programs at the North Suburban YMCA. He has served on the boards of local YMCAs in Virginia and Indiana and on the national board from 1977 to 1983.

He received a bachelor’s degree from Hanover College and master’s and doctorate degrees in foreign affairs from the University of Virginia. He has taught at the college level at the University of Virginia, Butler University and Indiana University. Active in civic and professional organizations, he serves as a trustee of Hanover and is a member of the boards of American Humanics, the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce and the National Assembly of non-profit agencies.