On today's special bonus episode of the Love Fort Wayne Podcast, Host Geoff King interviews four inspiring leaders during the 2023 Global Leadership Podcast. These are local leaders from the Fort Wayne community who are making big and influential leadership impacts in the areas of business, ministry, education, and family services. Join us as Brendon Maxwell, Fernando Zapari, Pastor Steve Terry, Ally Holland, and Bonnie Doolittle share their growing experiences as leaders teaching them to not only lead with purpose but to lead with love.
On today's special bonus episode of the Love Fort Wayne Podcast, Host Geoff King interviews four inspiring leaders during the 2023 Global Leadership Podcast. These are local leaders from the Fort Wayne community who are making big and influential leadership impacts in the areas of business, ministry, education, and family services. Join us as Brendon Maxwell, Fernando Zapari, Pastor Steve Terry, Ally Holland, and Bonnie Doolittle share their growing experiences as leaders teaching them to not only lead with purpose but to lead with love.
Hey everybody, this is Jeff King CEO of love Fort Wayne on August 3, and 4th 2023 love Fort Wayne, we celebrated our 20th year anniversary of hosting the Global Leadership Summit here in northeast Indiana. During the summit, I was able to host a local leaders panel featuring foreign leaders from the Fort Wayne community who are making big and influential leadership impacts in the areas of business, ministry, education and family services. Take a listen to this bonus episode of the love fortwayne podcast for a transformed community. One thing that the GLS has done this year is they've given us some space for us to close at five. But in that space for us to hear from local leaders, and some of the feedback from last year from you was that we want to hear stories of local leaders, the same type of stories we got from our global leaders. We want to hear it from folks in our own community. And so here live at Grand Wayne and also some folks at Wabash. We're so excited that you are with us to hear these stories as well. We're going to hear from some folks that are joining me right now on stage Bonnie Doolittle, Allison Holland, Pastor Steve Terry, Fernando Zapari. And also Brendon Maxwell, Would you welcome them, we're going to hear we're going to spend just a little bit of time together hearing from some local leaders. And so I'm going to have them just take a moment to introduce themselves, where you guys are leading and a little bit about the work that you're doing. So Brendan, I'll start with you.
Brendan:More Good afternoon. So my name is Brendan Maxwell. And I get to serve as the chief impact officer at utopian coffee. Also the co founder there and we get to travel around the world come alongside coffee producers in developing countries, partner with them to create sustainable supply chains and bring that coffee back here. Right here downtown Fort Wayne, Indiana and roast that ship around the states. And then we also partner with offices they want to have, you know, high impact coffee as well as churches, businesses, restaurants. And we do a lot of corporate gifting for those entities as well.
Geoff King:That Fernando go ahead
Fernando:with this. Good afternoon, Joel, thank you so much for inviting me to be here. With so many wonderful people. My name is Fernando Zakaria and the publisher. The editor will make a Canon newspaper and the Spanish language newspaper we have been doing have been in business since 1994. Came to the wonderful city of Fort Wayne, my city in 1978. Our mission is to inform to educate Hispanic, Latino, new immigrants into our region, northeast Indiana. And I'm passionate about helping people serving others. Again, thank you so much for inviting me Pastor Jeff, but thank you, Bob all Gracias, adios. Thank you.
Steve:Steve Terry, and I came here in 97, the pastor New Life Church of God and and God blessed us doubly, in 2019 by adding us to a family, Grace gathering was planning their third site. And so I'm still lead pastor of New Life Church of God and site leader of grace gathering central where a new grace, we just happen to operate as one family, one worship one mission. And I believe that what I've been trying to figure out I'm like, Lord, there's some great things that you're doing here. But what do you do when you have a church family, black, white, Hispanic, and in the church, everybody just has such a high anticipation waiting on a move from God. And so the best that I can do is to try to steward Well, a move of God.
Ally:Ally Holland I'm the principal at Adams elementary school with Fort Wayne community schools. i This is my 15th year of an education. I was I'm from the South Bend area, but we've been in the area for about eight years now. It's my going into my fifth year at Adams Elementary School.
Bonnie:Hi, I'm Bonnie Doolittle. I'm the founder and executive director of new mercies ministries. We come alongside hurting and vulnerable families in our community. Our goal is to just come alongside these families and our goal is to preserve the family keep the family intact, so we want to love on families, keep their kiddos out of foster care, and just show them the hope and compassion that Jesus alive. transform life with Jesus Christ looks like. And I just want to add, Jeff, someone encouraged me to say this in 20, the 2017 GLS is when I made the decision to leave my corporate climbing career in IT, to jump into ministry and love on these families.
Geoff King:That I know that story well, from sitting with you, you know, I love Fort Wayne, truly our hardest to convene the community to love leaders, Pastor schools and family, we, our community is on the move, and many of us can feel it. And I'm talking about this a little bit tomorrow. But sometimes we silo and separate so much, we can't do the big thing that we can collaboratively do together because there's small differences that divide us. And one of the places one of our hearts, again, is to lean into folks like you and have our community lean into people like you because you are serving in business, you are serving in ministry, you're serving in schools, you're serving families, and you guys have a unique perspective in that. And so from your perspective, where you serve, what responsibilities do you feel the leaders in our communities have in seeding a flourishing Fort Wayne, from a business leader perspective from pastors, from educators, and also those who work with families? What do you think? Jump in Pastor Steve, what do you think? Because I'm not gonna call on you. What do you think?
Steve:So for me, I believe that leaders, ministry leaders, at least have a responsibility to represent Christ to represent the kingdom in everything in every area, really have a responsibility, get involved in education, get involved in transformation, and absolutely community revitalization. I believe that they have that responsibility. And really, it's to connect the community that connect the neighbors, and I think what happens is, oftentimes when when the word reminds us to love our neighbors as ourselves, it may not be talking about our next door neighbor. But connecting neighbors. For me, it's, it may be the haves and the have nots. But But the only way to do that is we've got to be connected to the neighbors. I can't connect to a neighbor, if I don't know how to love them, I gotta love them. I've got to listen to them, I got to learn from my neighbors. And actually, you can't just, you know, invite yourself. They've got to invite you in. So we got to learn how to love and connect with all of our neighbors.
Geoff King:So good, buddy, what do you think? Yeah.
Bonnie:I love that. I love what you just said, I think as leaders in any in any thing, like all of us are in different blocks, right? We need to figure out what everyone else is doing. And pull those assets work together, we can all work together and bring what we have to the table and serve them together. And I'm a big fan of collaboration, not remaking the wheel. Get out there. Don't do it just because you know how to do it. Because it's, you know, what God calls you to do?
Ally:And I would add, so Adams, we have partnered with love Fort Wayne. And it has been amazing. And they just said, well, they just wanted to come and meet us and see our kids. And then they said, What do you need, and we said, we need to feed our kids. That's number one. And so then it all just started happening. And because of those partnerships, because people didn't know that our kids are hungry. In that section of Fort Wayne, all of these partners are coming in, our kids are going to be fed, our families are going to be fed just because someone was willing to listen.
Geoff King:So you all, all of us, we face challenges in our leadership. And Brandon, I'm looking at you think about the work that the collaborative work I see all over the place in Fort Wayne, you guys have partners so well with other roasteries and cafes and restaurants. But there's so many challenges in the work that we do. Can you share just a little bit about challenges you face, but also just how you celebrate victories day to day.
Brendan:I think you know, the challenges in our world. Take a variety of forms. And when we have challenges when we're overseas, you know, working with farmers and trying to translate that story that for the challenges they have right that the hard work that goes into coffee starts far before we get it. So working with them trying to understand kind of that multicultural aspect of it, working with them. And then you know, the challenges here, even once you know that that part is transitioned in kind of real time. You know, last week we had an employee who moved from Denver was here a couple of months and had some real challenges had to leave unexpectedly. We had about, you know, 24 hours notice they were leaving indefinitely and bring the team around them. How do we rally around them? How do we love people? Well, in the moment when it's decidedly inconvenient for the business But we have to make decisions as leaders to, you know, be in a position where we say, Look, this isn't a this isn't a business decision right now, this is a human decision. And I think, you know, those challenges are always present. But how do we love? You know, well, in those contexts, how do we demonstrate, you know, leadership when maybe the business suffers a little bit, you know, from a numbers perspective, but, you know, we're looking at it from a different place. So
Geoff King:have that we heard that principle share today to that, that human need that we can look at beyond the business need, but look at the person and serve that, Fernando, you, you serve so long in our community that the Latin X community, the Hispanic community, what are some challenges that you face in leadership? And that you see, and you shared some with me on the phone not too long ago?
Fernando:Yes, actually, challenges are going to be there every day. How do we face those challenges? Personally, myself, I believe in heavy Now, first thing when I get up, grateful for just waking up, and I have a meeting, I have a meeting with my maker, my boss takes me about 1520 minutes of my time, that's the very first thing that I do when I wake up. And I know that we're gonna have some other type of challenges in the immigrant community is pretty rough. Almost every day people call me with, call us with horrible stories. So many times, we cannot help. But at least we can listen to what they have to say. And it's very challenging, like I say, but there's so many opportunities to nowadays we're seeing such a such an influx of new immigrants coming to our beautiful city of Fort Wayne. And that brings along up opportunities. Because there's so many talented Fox coming into our community, and they're, they just want to work. They want to make a better living from where they come from. And again, like I said, the stories, it's pretty tough, pretty tough. But he helped us overcome those challenges. I just want to say here in the city of Fort Wayne, we, I believe the last I check, we speak like over 100 different languages, dialect. And when I talk about immigrants, I'm talking about new immigrants coming from Russia, from Ukraine, from Haiti, from Brazil from you name it. So what are we going to do? What are we going? Are we gonna just seclude ourselves? Or are we gonna try to bring everybody together? It's easy to say better to get we're so much better together. But I think we are so much more stronger together.
Geoff King:It's so good. You hit it on the head. Amen to that. So Allium bounding I've got some I got a question for you. Because you're working with students, you're working with families? What are some of the visible needs that you see every single day in the lives of students and families in your particular context? And how can we as a city, and as leaders lean in?
Bonnie:Yeah, I will just speak to and then please, please, I want to share with you, but I will speak to the affordable housing crisis in Fort Wayne. It is a systemic problem, and many don't even realize it. reliable transportation, childcare, the cost of transportation and childcare, the unreliability of transportation, but the cost of childcare makes it so hard for so many of the parents that we serve, to even get that job. And last, but certainly not least 95 IV and closer to 99% of who we serve is so sick, socially isolated people. And those are those are the problems. And that's what we deal with every day.
Ally:I would agree with all of those. But then I would definitely add food deserts and the food scarcity. A lot of times you'll say an area and say, well, we'll put a grocery store there. But it's still five to six miles away from another neighborhood. And if they can only walk or have public transit, getting to that space is not feasible. And if you do get there, you can only get so much and walk home with that. Which is why Adam, all of the staff Adams We are very diligent about feeding our families and becoming a community hub in that area because there is a lack of food.
Bonnie:May I add, I think that we could all collectively do together is one of the things that we've embraced is engaging the church, the Christian family, the church has the power to be the biggest change agent in our community. And we love Jesus, we love our neighbor. Those are the first and second right. And if we just got outside of the church walls, got outside of our own homes and We collectively banded together, we, every single person in this room can do something about these systemic problems if we collaborate and do it together,
Geoff King:right, a man a man. There's an echo in that room, because I can hear we were on the same wavelength with that, Barney. So Steve, when I asked you as we kind of wind down, why is it important for the community? Why is it important for the community to care for ministry leaders here in Greater Fort Wayne? And what are some of the ways that we can lean in with you all as ministry leaders and pastors because it's essential?
Steve:Yeah, definitely. When it comes to ministry leaders, I guess, even coming in 97, I was, in my mind, I told myself, I was fortunate to have 10 staff members. But unfortunately, all of them named was Steve, number one through 10. And the problem there with many ministry leaders, if you don't have help, if you don't have someone who's helping you in the task, they'll burn your you'll burn yourself out. And really, ministry leaders, we can give up everything but find a responsibility. And one of the reasons why it's such a wonderful partnership with Grace gathering, they have a thought it's development over delivery. And so it's being able to develop the leaders so that you have more leaders. And that's been so such a blessing to me. I would say another thing for leaders. An issue is is that, you know, when you're doing it yourself, you actually unknown by your performance or your position. And nobody knows the real person, you're still expected to lead. Even though you're bleeding, you're bleeding at home, you're bleeding in the pulpit. Everybody knows the position. And you're supposed to always come out with a smile to know how to get a smile on and know how to make sure an Attaboy. However, it's it's understanding that ministry leaders because we live in such a fishbowl, you're put on such a pedestal. You're known for your performance, you're known for your position, but no one knows intimately or personally the leader. And so we need prayer deeply. And really, we need deeper relationships. And for me, I mean, I tell you what, the collaboration, the partnership with Grace gathering, has absolutely saved this brother's life sitting up here. And I swear, thank God for partnership and collaboration.
Geoff King:And man, you know, it's really interesting that Steve shared that because I think if you're not a pastor, that you can still resonate with what you said with what he said is that oftentimes in leadership, you're in Have you feel like you're in a bubble, you're bleeding, and no one else knows it. And what you just shared, I believe, humanizes our ministry leaders and our pastors so much for us. And I always say this you guys in the room, it's that and watching us in wall bashes. You know, ministry leaders lead the masses that then go and lead in the community. And if so, if our guys and gals are well, then they can serve our people will who then go and lead in the community. So you know, as we look at this room full of leaders, if you got just a final word, each of you if you've got, if you look at this room, full of leaders with various backgrounds, what word of encouragement would you give them, Brendon, I'll start with you, as it pertains to leading in our community with love and purpose.
Brendan:So I'm a big believer in sphere of influence. And I think whether it's one person or 100, or 1000 people in your organization, you've been given specific people that you get to lead. And even if that isn't in the traditional sense, if your title isn't one, that you have a bunch of people under you, you get to lead alongside others. And I think just being empathetic, you know, drawing from your own personal experiences, really thinking about how to love that person, well, not as a title in the organization, but how to love them on the human level. And I think ultimately, that's what creates flourishing people that results in for flourishing organizations, and then the community.
Geoff King:What else have anything to add a word of encouragement to folks in the room?
Steve:I mean, I just would say, You got to have some kind of predictable pattern, to be in the presence of God be holy, spirit filled, Holy Spirit lead. And I often say when that happens, our real desire is I want to have a life that's worth imitating. And it's because it's his power. That's leading us anyway.
Bonnie:Yeah, and I would just add, surround yourself with people who are better than you. You know, identify your weaknesses, be self aware, and then find those people that do it. that can help you with those weaknesses and just engage them and be transparent and open with them. It will. It will do you Well
Mitch Kruse:thank you so much for joining us this month we drop a new episode the first Monday of every month. Love Fort Wayne has some amazing episodes coming up. You don't want to miss a single one. So subscribe today, wherever you are listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please like, share and leave a review we want to share your thoughts and comments with listeners on future episodes. Thanks again for joining us today. Join us next time as we hear from leaders that don't just lead but love our city.