Singing About Unsung Heroes

Elevating stories of low-profile faithfulness in an age of high-profile failures.

Some of us are old enough to remember the stock brokerage E.F. Hutton and television commercials that were popular in the 1970s. The ads always concluded with the tag line: “When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen.”

50th anniversary celebration of FCA at Atwater High School / Video screenshot by Ferman Perez

I got an email this week from my friend Jedd Medefind. Jedd is not a stockbroker, but when Jedd talks, people listen. He runs a ministry called CAFO, Christian Alliance for Orphans. CAFO has played a significant role in promoting adoption, foster care, and family-based care for children worldwide. CAFO is also one of the top-rated ministries in the MinistryWatch database. Prior to joining CAFO, he served as a special assistant to George W. Bush and directed the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

In his email, Jedd shared with me an event he had recently attended in California. It was at a church near Atwater High School in Atwater, California, where his father Maynard was a long-time teacher. Jedd described Atwater as a “public high school in the middle of the state, kind of one of those towns no one’s heard.” He is right. Atwater does not have a daily newspaper, and it is often seen as a little brother to Merced, which is about 10 miles away and the county seat. It is not a poor community, but it is far from affluent. Most online descriptions of Atwater include words like “stable” and “blue collar.” The median household income is 30% below the California median, and three-quarters of the students at Atwater receive free or subsidized lunches.

Atwater High School has more than 2,000 students and — more to the point for our story — has a chapter of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes that just celebrated its 50^th birthday. Maynard Medefind, a 1966 graduate of nearby Merced High School, was a young teacher and one of the founders of the FCA group when it started in 1976.

According to Jedd, “My dad helped lead it for more than 30 years alongside a whole group of other amazing people, just humble folks you have never ever heard of before. Men and women, public school teachers, public school coaches, administrators, aides, people just there serving and just day after day, week after week, year after year showing up for students.”

Access to MinistryWatch content is free. However, we hope you will support our work with your prayers and financial gifts. To make a donation, click here.

Jedd went on to say something that really got my attention. He said that during his trip back home to Atwater, “I felt keenly the contrast between [the men and women of Atwater and] the public figures that I sometimes interact with in Washington, D.C. and around the country, in some cases celebrity figures. Many of them, as you know, are wonderful people. But of course, there are also just so many stories of heartbreak — leaders falling into some serious sin, or just really blowing it in one way or another.”

He then drove his point home. “I was just thinking about the contrast between those high-profile stories that seem to come on our radar every week and the humble faithfulness of people like the teachers that have led the Fellowship of Christian Athletes at Atwater High for decades.”

He is right, of course. All of us — including those of us here at MinistryWatch — tend to forget that celebrity preachers or high-profile media campaigns are not the most important influences in our lives. Study after study tells us that we are most shaped by those closest to us — our parents and grandparents, teachers and coaches, Sunday school teachers, and small group Bible study leaders.

We have not completely ignored such stories here at MinistryWatch. Every week, Christina Darnell’s and Jessica Eturralde’s “Ministries Making A Difference” column highlights three or four ministries that are doing great work but which are often too small to get media attention. In these “Editor’s Notebook” columns, I also often feature some of the “unsung heroes” of the faith, people whose faithfulness is known only to God and to those few people to whom they ministered.

Ten years ago, John Stonestreet and I published a book called “Restoring All Things: God’s Audacious Plan to Change the World Through Everyday People.” Near the end of that book, we wrote this: “Well-meaning people and self-help gurus tell us to ‘reach for the stars’ and ‘change the world.’ We ought to dream big dreams and try hard things. But in our attempts to ‘live large,’ it is tempting to neglect needs closer at hand and within our actual reach. A mentor of ours once said, ‘If you want to change the world, start by cleaning your room.’”

It was good advice then, and it is good advice now. Jedd reminded me there are people doing that everywhere.

I have been thinking a lot about Jedd Medefind’s email this week. Especially his closing lines, as he reflected on what he had seen on his trip back home to Atwater.

“There were all these young people and students. Well, some of them are old now. But others still, younger students, come in behind them. A full range, sharing how their lives had been so deeply impacted by these teachers and coaches. And I was just looking at them, some of them very old, and just thinking about their faithfulness and how significant it had been.”

Jedd has been a great encourager to me and to MinistryWatch over the years, so his closing lines landed hard. He said stories that “shine light on reality need to be told.” He said they protect the “integrity of the church.”

“But,” he added, “Here’s a story that’s just as real as these high-profile failures.”

Jedd’s email was a good reminder that high profile failures are real, but so is low-profile faithfulness. And it is happening in Atwater, California, in my hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina, and — I am sure — in your hometown too.

All of that brings me to this point: We want to tell more of those stories here at MinistryWatch. I do not want you to think we are getting soft. We will continue to engage in the fact-based analysis and deeply reported accountability journalism we have always done. But we would like to include more stories featuring below-the-radar Christian leaders serving faithfully in communities all over the country. So, drop me a line. My email is [email protected].

I cannot wait to hear your stories.

TO OUR READERS: The mission of MinistryWatch is to help Christian donors become more faithful stewards of the resources God has entrusted to them. Do you know of a story that will help us fulfill our mission, or do you want to give us feedback about this or any other story? If so, please email us at [email protected].