Open Hands and Growing Fruit: HOPE’s Leadership Summit

MECHANICSBURG, PA – Do you know the feeling of not knowing how to share about an impactful experience? Like when you come home from a mission trip or an epic vacation and people ask, “how was it?” How was it?!? It would take so much time to unpack the experience – what you saw, what you learned, who you met, how you grew – so you summarize with, “It was good.”

HOPE International’s biennial Leadership Summit leaves me with that feeling. Every two years, HOPE International staff and board members gather with program staff and implementing partners from across the globe for one packed week of intentional learning and relationship building. It was good!

The current challenge of securing visas for most global staff and partners threatened to put a damper on this gathering of the HOPE network. The planning team pivoted. Those who could not join in person gathered with nearby staff and joined virtually. We felt their physical absence deeply, but we still had the opportunity to sit with and learn from men and women doing the work of investing in the dreams of families in underserved communities while proclaiming and living the Gospel in thirty countries. Though different from previous years, this year’s summit still brought waves of joy, excitement, heartbreak, and hope.

Peter Greer, HOPE International CEO and Homes for HOPE board member opened with the concept of produce versus produce. (English is a complex language). He called us to see the difference between these words.

pro-DUCE: a verb focusing on what we make, what we bring about, an idea framed by the image of a factory.

PRO-duce: a noun focused on fruit, what God grows, an idea framed by the image of a farm.

The Fruit God Provides

We spent the rest of the week pursuing the Lord, seeking His will, looking for the fruit that has come and is coming from Him. @Ruth Haley Barton, an author and leader with @The Transforming Community, encouraged us to seek indifference before seeking the Lord’s will. “Indifference” sits oddly in my head, but the concept of intentionally seeking a neutral position makes so much sense.

Proverbs 3:5-6 states, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”

If we truly seek to follow God’s will above our own, it makes sense that we would need to lay down our own preferences and experience and wisdom. Though good and often developed through a lifetime of walking with the Lord, seeking His will requires us to lay those things down and quiet our own voice in pursuit of His voice. If I want my foundation to be built on His terms, I cannot start with my structure already partially built. A position of neutrality – visualized as open hands – indicates a dependence on the Lord and an expectation of His moving.

Growing Together

With those overarching concepts serving as an umbrella over the summit, the week was full of opportunities to learn from experts in areas of integrating faith and care in our work, exploring AI and digital transformation, working across cultures, serving the underserved, synthesizing feedback from those we serve, and looking at how HOPE works with innovation and spiritual integration.

We spent time worshiping the Lord in multiple languages and digging into His Word. We prayed together and individually. We practiced corporate discernment. We learned from and prayed for those who serve in difficult or dangerous contexts. We got to know colleagues better through hallway conversations and shared meals and spontaneous games in the dorms. The greater Advancement team, of which Homes for HOPE is a small part, engaged in teambuilding activities and a high ropes course (which, in my case, meant cheering for those high ropes adventurers with my feet firmly planted on the ground). In summary, it was good.

Covering it All in Prayer

As we all return to our homes, offices, and regular work, we carry Leadership Summit with us. Across the global network, we continue to seek the Lord’s direction for the next few years. This process has already included rhythms of increased prayer and time with the Lord and gathering feedback from the families and churches HOPE serves. Please join us in praying for the Lord’s guidance and for His best as we seek to love and serve men and women living in poverty in underserved communities around the world.

Please also join us in praying for colleagues living and serving in conflict zones and under unsafe conditions. Pray for boldness in proclaiming the Gospel, the only true and eternal solution to our deepest need. Pray for provision to do the work we have been called to do. Pray for innovation and creativity to meet the needs of an ever-changing world. And pray that in all these things, we would each experience joy in serving the Lord wherever He leads us.

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