Wess Stafford could be a rising star among evangelical leaders, filling his days with speaking engagements and guest appearances on TV talk shows.

He could be driving a luxury car, living in a mansion and coasting on his achievements as CEO and president of Colorado Springs-based Compassion International.

He wants none of it.

His life is all about helping poverty-stricken kids in the world through the faith-based organization he’s run for 16 years.

“I think I got this job because I care more than anybody else,” Stafford says.

Read the rest of the article at the gazette.com, as well as some edited excerpts from the interview.

Hello. My name is Ally Patton. I’m a Las Vegas native currently attending the University of Nevada, Reno.

This past summer, I interned at Compassion in the Global Ministry Center. There, I worked to establish the Delivery Community* as well as to formulate a detailed road map for upcoming project management training intended to further equip and empower Compassion staff.

When I started my internship, President and CEO Wess Stafford offered a revolutionary idea during my first day of staff orientation. He held up his hands and used his thumbs and index fingers to form a triangle. This top-down pyramid is the traditional model of leadership.

Yes, I’d heard this before. This is how the working world functions — the base supports the top, and the top, due to its position, makes the final call on all projects, decisions, etc.

But then Wess moved his hands, flipping that triangle upside down and said this is how leadership is supposed to look.

I gawked as Wess explained he may be in a position of leadership, but that didn’t mean he was at the top of the triangle.

Instead, he calmly clarified that because of his position in leadership, he was the bottom point of the triangle. As a leader, it is his responsibility to serve and support the rest of the organization — the staff, the global partners and, most important, the sponsored children.

That day I squirmed in my chair, confused by this role reversal. This is not how business functions. This is not how projects are executed. This is not how the world works.

But while this is not how the world works, this is how the kingdom of God is meant to be.

Philippians 2:3-8 adds value to this worldview and the concept of servant leadership. In the New International Version (yes, I prefer this version over ESV) this reads:

“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

“Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death — even death on a cross!”

When I arrived at Compassion, I came as a culturally aware college student from a secular university. I saw these verses in Philippians as vital to following Christ. Yes, implement them at home, with friends, at church and in the streets. But in my occupation?

Surely, this didn’t have a place in the power plays of the business world. (more…)

After passing by a hazy eastern tip of Cuba, our American Airlines flight banked steeply to the right and within minutes we were passing over the northern peninsula of Haiti, so recognizable due to the heavily rutted landscape.

The French had not been kind when they ravaged the once-lush western half of Hispaniola of all the mahogany trees and shipped the lumber back to Paris to make fine furniture.

More than 200 years later, the nation is still 90 percent barren, and what little good topsoil remains is eroding into the Caribbean.

We circled over the Canal du Sud strait approaching Port-au-Prince, a teeming city I had not been to in 19 years. As we touched down on the single runway “international” airport, memories began to take focus.

Child Survival – What Does Ti Chape Means?

I’ll never forget that trip. A wiry American with a unique accent was my guide. He had been living in Haiti for six years, assisting with various ministries, and eventually signing on full time with Compassion. His name was Wess Stafford.

It was on that trip that I snapped one of my all-time favorite photos: a little child of about 3 with a distended belly, wearing a ragged striped T-shirt and nothing else, proudly hoisting his torn little handmade kite on a 10-foot string made of scraps of twine and wire he had found.

The breeze was only keeping the kite about 5 feet aloft, but the boy was as gleeful as any child I had ever seen.

Wess was seated next to me in our van, and noticed my fascination with the tiny urchin.

“Ah, yes … another little Ti Chape.”

“What is a Ti Chape?”

“It’s a Creole phrase that many parents in these poorest areas of Haiti use with their youngest kids. I’m sure you’ll hear it often over the next several days as we visit homes. It’s a term of endearment … but also a harsh reality that reminds everyone of how devastating each day can be for people living on the brink. Ti Chape means little survivor or one who has escaped death.”

As a very tenderhearted man, Wess could not conceal his passion, and tears began to well in his eyes. With a catch in his throat he continued:

“Sadly, for the majority of the poor here in Haiti, the infant mortality rate is as high as 50 percent for children under the age of 5.

“Often parents won’t refer to their littlest ones by their birth name until they celebrate their fifth birthday because they know all too well that many of them won’t make it that far.

“While they are still in this most vulnerable toddler stage, the children are affectionately called Ti Chape.

“I guess it is often too painful to consistently call them by their real names for fear of assigning too much hope to their prospects.

“This same phenomena happens, by different names of course, in other desperately poor cultures around the globe.”

I watched intently for a few more minutes as that toddler joyfully tried to keep his tattered toy buoyant on the air. Then we lurched forward in the traffic flow.

For the rest of our stay I pondered what that child’s chances of survival really were.

Even now, whenever I look at that tyke’s photo in my collection, it gives me great pause, and those feelings all came back to me as we drove through the packed streets of Port-au-Prince again.

On the trip’s final day, we drove out the N2 highway along the southern Massif de la Hotte peninsula, weaving past colorfully painted tap-taps (old pickups converted into buses often over-loaded down with upward of 20 people), soot-spewing diesel trucks, and U.N. troop patrol vehicles that help keep the peace in the politically unstable environment.

We were headed out to see one of our child development centers — one that had been in existence for 23 years, but had added a new program just a few years before, a program that is helping revolutionize our work: our Child Survival Program. (more…)

Many companies have a dress code for their employees. Compassion does too, but it’s not what you’d typically think of as a dress code.

“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.” – Colossians 3:12 (NIV) –

And in this light, we commit to you:

• to honor Jesus Christ in all that we do
• to submit to the Word of God
• to NOT compromise the centrality of Christ in our messages and programs
• to treat children and their families with dignity and respect
• to tell the truth and communicate honestly and openly
• to align our thoughts, motivations, attitudes and actions with the ethical principles found in God’s word

Listen to Wess talk about the importance of demonstrating Godly character.

“I learned in my childhood in Africa that a child may be born in poverty but poverty is never born in a child. The worst aspects of poverty are not the deplorable outward conditions, but rather the erosion and eventual destruction of hope and therefore dreams.”

Too Small To Ignore
Dr. Wess Stafford

Now that is an intense statement. One that requires reflection; allowing ourselves to read and re-read each word carefully, grasping at understanding.

Have you grasped it?

Even with my draw to aid children in poverty, I still struggle with getting it. I mean really getting it.

The Lord has taken me on many a great adventure. He has been my tour guide, my leader, even my travel buddy! And anyone who has traveled knows how important the buddy system is.

He gives me these glimpses into poverty, into what a majority of the world is faced with, and I dive into them with all my emotion, mind and heart. I studiously grapple with realities that are too surreal for me to comprehend.

I have seen immense lack of materials and absence of love, but I know I cannot rely on just experiences to fuel my passion. Especially when my desire is to do all things unto the Lord, and that can’t be put on hold when I’m just not feeling it.

But all is not lost. I simply read. That’s right … I am constantly reading. That person who is reading four books at one time … that’s me. I always have two books in my purse and even two journals. So, most times when I am in line or waiting somewhere I am either writing or reading.

I have come to see that my passion for social justice and my desire for reading are more intermingled than I realized. Reading helps me remember. It takes the disconnect I sometimes feel and lessens the gap.

For example, I read this from Too Small To Ignore (which was one of the four I was reading), (more…)

Scooped again!

“While the United States is reeling from the stock market’s plunge and the credit crisis, there are severe worldwide consequences to America’s economic woes that have been almost entirely ignored. Most people have not given any thought to the millions of victims of our economic situation: the children in the poorest areas of the world now supported by U.S. donors.”

Read all of Wess’ op-ed piece in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

If you’re new here, our CEO, Wess Stafford, didn’t write this post, but he did answer the question. We recorded his answer and transcribed it for your reading pleasure.

Read all the posts in the Wess Speaks series.

• I remember you telling us how the idea of LDP came to you as you were taking a walk in your garden. I have always wondered what kind of trees were in the garden and what sounds were there? (Anthony Njoroge)

Wow — you have an amazing memory.

It was on the little ranch that I now own that I first had the thought of the Leadership Development Program (LDP). I didn’t even own the ranch then, I was just kind of walking through it. The trees I was walking through were Ponderosa Pines and the sounds that were all around me were squirrels chattering, cattle grazing and birds chirping. That was 11 years ago.

My great joy is out of that thought (that I’m sure was from God) we now have 1,800 LDP students. These are students who are going through university.

About two weeks ago I was in India for the country’s first LDP graduation down in Chennai, which used to be Madras. We graduated 16 that day, but there are 97 more university students in that program who will graduate in the next three or four years.

I go to the very first LDP graduation of each country. I can’t go to them all, but I’ve promised that I’ll be at the first one.

I met one of the young men in that LDP who is a medical student. Last year 205,000 of India’s sharpest and brightest took the medical entrance exams that the government puts out. That LDP medical student, whose father is a peasant farmer, placed second in the entire nation on the exam. That’s the kind of outstanding people we have in this program.

Yeah, okay some of them are still four and five years old and in the Child Sponsorship Program. Some of them are still in their momma’s womb. But when you think of the potential! What a loss the world would have if we didn’t give these kids the chance to, first of all reach their potential, but then also to reach that potential with a heart to give back. What would the world be like?

Do we still have cancer because the guy that was supposed to cure cancer grew up in a dump in Guatemala and didn’t make it? Or maybe he is running a sugarcane stand somewhere?

Every time I see these young people, especially when they are really, really small, I can’t help asking myself, What are they becoming? What has God knit into them in their momma’s womb? He knit their DNA. And what is His plan? What is His hope and future that He says He has for these little ones?

For the 1,800 that we’ve got in the Leadership Development Program, I’m thrilled to see that not only are they in the top of their classes, but they’re also the leaders on their campuses.

And I have no doubt that the young man I met is going to be a remarkable doctor. So I ask myself Who picked up his little child packet when there was a little four-year-old cute guy on the table? I bet they had no idea that God had orchestrated for this little guy to grow up to be a doctor, or a pastor, or president of the country.

So that’s where the idea of the LDP came from, walking through the Ponderosa Pines on my little ranch, and it was one of my absolute greatest joys.