This week I received terrible news that a young man I mentored from the time he was 8 until he graduated from high school was killed in a senseless act of gun violence. I met Tyejuan in 2007 at my first job out of seminary. I was the program manager at The Southeast White House, a faith-based nonprofit in the Randle Highlands neighborhood of Southeast D.C. I managed the after-school program, teen summit, mom’s night out, and summer camp. Tyejuan lived just a few doors down from The Southeast White House. He lived with his great-grandmother because his mother was unable to care for him. She had him at 16. His father was not present. As a result, Tyejuan attended all of our programs. If our doors were open, he was there. He was a favorite among the volunteers and staff. He quickly became one of my favorites. I was only a few years older than his mother at 28, so it wasn’t long before Tyejuan started to confide in me and look to me for moral support. I encouraged him as best I could. I prayed with him. I taught him about Jesus. He and a few of the other children from my programs even attended church with me on some Sunday mornings. It gave me great joy to pour into the lives of children and teens at The Southeast White House. I was extremely happy and proud when Tyejuan graduated from high school in 2017 and had plans to attend college in Virginia. I told myself, “He made it. He made it out of the ghetto despite all of these negative circumstances.” On his graduation day, the last day I saw him, he told me I was like a mother to him. I felt honored and proud he viewed me that way. I told him I viewed him as a son. With my sincerest prayers, I sent him off into the world. Sadly, extenuating circumstances and the lack of financial means brought him back to Southeast after less than two years of school and his life was tragically taken by gun violence.
Initially, I wrestled with strong feelings of grief and pain because I felt like my work with Tyejuan was in vain. I, and the other volunteers and staff, poured into him to prevent him from succumbing to the streets, and despite all our efforts, he still became a victim of violence. I felt like the writer of Ecclesiastes – “Vanity. It’s all vanity.” I questioned God. However, the Lord showed me that there’s a difference between impact and outcome. The Lord reminded me that I had a huge impact on Tyejuan’s life despite the outcome, and the impact is eternal and has eternal consequences. I showed Tyejuan the love of God. I showed him kindness, patience, and longsuffering. I showed him selflessness. This is the fruit that Jesus references in John 15:16. This fruit lasts forever. I prayed for and desired a different outcome for Tyejuan and that didn’t happen, but it doesn’t negate the impact I had on his life.
In ministry, we have an idea of the outcomes we want. We want our membership to increase. We want to have the financial resources to do big things in ministry. We want to see people set free, healed and delivered. We want to see generational curses broken. These are the outcomes we should want to see. However, when we get too focused on our desired outcomes, we can quickly become frustrated when they don’t turn out the way we want. We can fall into despair and want to quit ministry when the outcomes fall short of our expectations. I believe God is calling us to shift our focus from outcomes to impact. We can have great impact and transform people’s lives even if the outcomes don’t look like how we think they should. In many of the stories of Jesus’ encounters with people, we don’t know the outcomes of their lives. Do we know how the woman at the well’s life ended? Do we know how the leper’s life turned out or the woman with the issue of blood? No, we don’t, but we do know the impact Jesus had on them. His impact was transformational. God calls us to have the same kind of impact.
What are your thoughts? Has a focus on outcome ever negatively affected your impact?