Fuller was the 2004 VWC graduation speaker. He was
awarded an honorary doctorate for his
humanitarian work .
Millard Fuller, Habitat founder, challenges VWC graduates to make a difference
Telling VWC seniors that as college graduates they were in the elite one percent of the world’s population, Millard Fuller, founder and president of Habitat for Humanity International, challenged them to be leaders and to give back to the world.
“To whom much is given, much is required,” Fuller said, quoting scripture. “I’m looking forward to your leadership over the years.”
Fuller was the 2004 VWC Commencement speaker on May 15. He was presented an honorary doctorate for his leadership and philanthropic work, which has forged Habitat into a worldwide Christian-housing ministry.
Habitat volunteers have built homes with nearly 200,000 families in need in nearly 3,000 communities worldwide. Habitat is at work in 89 countries and has grown to be one of the top house builders in the United States and the largest among nonprofits. More than 750,000 people now have safe, decent, affordable shelter because of Habitat’s work around the world.
Fuller noted in his address that the world spends more than 20 times on defense than it does in development. “This is madness,” he said.
“We spend less today (on development) than we did 40 years ago. We’ve got to do something different if we expect different results.”
Referencing Habitat’s success and the number of houses the organization has built, he called it “a small amount, considering the enormity of need.” He pointed out that 15,000 houses, costing at least $1 million each, will be built in the U.S. this year. If that $15 billion were used to build Habitat houses, it could fund 300,000 houses at $50,000 each in the U.S. or three million houses in developing countries at $2,500 each. (Virginia Wesleyan donated $2,500 to sponsor a house in Guatemala in lieu of an honorarium for Mr. Fuller.)
Fuller is a man who doesn’t just point fingers – he acts boldly on his faith. From humble beginnings in Alabama, he rose to become a young, self-made millionaire by the age of 29. But as his business prospered, his health, integrity and marriage suffered.
This crisis caused him to re-evaluate his life and priorities, leading him and his wife Linda to take a drastic step: They sold all their possessions, gave the money to the poor and began searching for a new focus and purpose for their lives. In 1976 they founded Habitat for Humanity.
Today, Fuller travels and speaks worldwide and has earned international recognition for his work advocating decent, affordable housing for all. Fuller, a tall, reed-thin man, belies his age of 69. He keeps a schedule that many younger persons would have difficulty matching.
He took the time to answer questions in a late interview conducted the night before he spoke at Wesleyan’s graduation. The following is excerpted from the interview.
Q:You were a self-made millionaire by the age of 29, and then you sold everything and gave it to the poor. What led you to make such a drastic decision? How is your life different as a result?
A: I went in business with a fellow student when I was at the University of Alabama Law School. We were in business together for eight years. We devoted every waking minute together in our business venture, and I was more married to the company than I was to my wife. As a result, my wife left me and went to New York to get a divorce. I pursued her, and we were reconciled. Out of the reconciliation, we felt that God was calling us to seek a life of Christian service.
The Bible teaches that it’s difficult for the rich to get into the kingdom – not impossible but difficult. It also teaches that you can’t serve God and money. The Bible says, seek first the kingdom of God and everything else will be added. It doesn’t say, seek first and you won’t need anything else. It says to get your priorities right, and my priorities weren’t right. I was a Christian, but seeking God’s kingdom wasn’t first on my list.
Linda and I felt that God was calling us to divest ourselves of our wealth. We made that decision in a taxicab in New York City, and we decided to go on a spiritual pilgrimage. We had no idea where it would lead to or what we would do. We just knew we wanted to get our priorities changed and to devote ourselves to seeking God’s kingdom first.
We went to Koinonia Farms (a Christian community in Sumter County, GA). We stayed there for a month, but left, then came back two-and-a-half years later to live, and that’s when we started a housing program initially called Partnership Housing, which was the forerunner of Habitat for Humanity.
Q:What gave you the idea for Habitat for Humanity? Did you ever imagine that it would become the organization it is today?
We wanted an “incarnational ministry” – a ministry in the flesh. Religion is mostly expressed through talking and singing. An incarnational ministry is doing something rather than just talking about it. We started building houses in a program called Partnership Housing, where the houses were built and sold for no profit and no interest. The families would help build the houses and they would move in and pay the money back for no profit and no interest.
We got the Christian Church – now called the Disciples of Christ – to sponsor us to be missionaries to Africa. We went to the old Belgium Congo for three years. We started building houses. I got the idea that maybe we could form a worldwide Christian housing ministry.
We came back in 1976 with that dream in our hearts, and we had an organizing meeting in an old abandoned chicken barn in Koinonia Farms to organize Habitat. I incorporated Habitat for Humanity, put together the first board, and we invited the world to join us in this ministry.
To answer the second part of your question – did I ever expect Habitat to be what it is today? The answer is yes and no. Yes, in that it grew, but we really did not expect Habitat to be building in 52 cities in Virginia. We did not expect Habitat to be building on every island in Hawaii; London; Belfast, Northern Ireland; 21 cities in New Zealand; every province in Canada; and 18 countries in Europe.
It’s grown in so many other places we never dreamed of. We thought that Habitat would be in the really poor parts of our own country and the really poor parts of the world. But what we’ve discovered is, that even in really affluent countries, there are pockets of poverty.
Q:Why do you feel called to help the poor? What bearing does your faith have on your decision?
A: If you do an objective reading of the Bible, you can come away with no other conclusion than that God has a special love for the poor. How can you say you love God whom you have never seen, if you don’t have compassion and love and caring for those poor people around you, all of whom were made in God’s image? I come out of the Deep South, a Southern religious tradition, which frankly is rather weak on social concerns.
When I was a youngster growing up in a little cotton mill town in Alabama, I had a pastor whose name was Joe French, and he took a special interest in me. I was a member of what was then called the Congregational Christian Church. Today it’s called the United Church of Christ, but it has strong connections with New England. This pastor arranged for me, while I was a teenager and in my early twenties, to go to a large number of youth conferences in the North.
I got exposed to ideas that I would never have gotten if I had had all my youth experiences in Alabama. I learned about the social dimensions of the Gospel largely in the North from those conferences I attended. The South tends to have a pietistic approach to religion. They try to get you saved so you can go to heaven, but they don’t have a concern for social conditions around you, believing that is relatively insignificant, because the main thing is to get people saved so they can go to heaven. But when you correctly read the Bible, they’ve got it backwards.
I love to say in speeches – paraphrasing the 14 th chapter of John – “In my Father’s house, there are many Habitat houses.” Jesus says, “I go to prepare a place for you,” so for dedicated believers, Jesus is the head of the Habitat program in heaven, and you don’t have to worry about your abode in heaven if you’ve accepted Jesus as your Savior, your heavenly home is taken care of. What you’ve got to do is get busy taking care of the mess that’s on Earth. But if you focus all your energies on heaven, you’re worrying about something that Jesus took care of on the cross for all of us.
Q:Even though you chose a different path than you originally began, you are still the head of one of the most successful organizations in the country. To what do you attribute that? What motivates you? How do you deal with setbacks?
A: I’ll answer the last part of that question first. I’ve had setbacks, but I’m a person of faith, and I believe, “All things eventually work together for good for those that love the Lord and are called according to his purpose.” You know, the sun will come up tomorrow morning. God is still on his throne, he’s in charge, and the sun will come up.
I’ve written nine books, and my two most recent books are entitled, Building Materials for Life, Volumes, I and II. And in Volume I, there is a chapter, “God at the End of the Human Rope.” What I mean by that is that God created each one of us with a brain, for a purpose – to use it. That’s God’s gift to us.
When you’ve got problems in life, you need to sit down, prayerfully and thoughtfully, and consider how you can get through whatever the problem is. What I have discovered, time and time again, is that if you will diligently seek a solution to whatever problem that confronts you, there’s the “God dimension” that comes into play. And that’s the God-at-the-end-of-the-rope phenomenon.
If you want to solve a big social problem in the world, not only see the need clearly, but also see where you’re going to get the money to fulfill that need. From the beginning of our work with Habitat for Humanity, we have seen what we do as a new frontier in Christian missions – a new and creative way to share God’s love in a practical ministry of house building to incarnate what Jesus told us to do in Mathew 25: “I was a stranger and you took me in.” Every Habitat house that’s built is inviting a stranger in, in obedience to Jesus.
From the beginning, our primary partner in Habitat has been the church of Jesus Christ in its many manifestations. That is our number one partner, and we have tens of thousands of churches supporting us right now. It’s a partnership of the church and its many manifestations, coming together to do a ministry of house building that everybody feels good about and everybody agrees on in an environment in which the church disagrees on so many things.
And Habitat has reached out beyond the Christian family. We welcome Jewish, Hindu, Muslim people; and I think Habitat has become a catalyst around the world for reconciliation. It’s a wonderful demonstration – model—for how we, in this divided, broken, mixed-up world, can try to make some sense out of things.
Q:What is the greatest challenge facing the future of Habitat?
Getting good leadership. The brightest minds in the world typically chase money. And the brightest minds don’t go to the slums to help elevate the conditions of poor people. We need more bright minds to go and give of themselves and their talents to serve the least.
Don’t just serve the brightest. There are plenty of people to make sure that the bright among us get their needs met. But there are too few people devoted to helping the least among us, and that’s what Habitat is doing. We’re working among the marginalized, the people who’ve been left out as far as housing is concerned. We urgently need talented leadership.
I have another chapter in my book, Building Materials for Life, called “The Short Line.” There are many lines in life. These students who are graduating tomorrow, typically they want to get the prestigious jobs, so they go get in the long lines, where there are lots of applicants. So I say, consider getting in the some of the short lines of life where you may be the only applicant, because nobody else wants to do it.
Q:What responsibility do Americans have for civic engagement?
A: The Bible says, “To whom much is given, much is required.” I will say to the students tomorrow (at Commencement) that you are joining the privileged elite. Only one percent of the world’s population will ever sit where you are sitting to become college graduates. And since you are among the privileged elite, what is your responsibility? Having been given so much, what is your responsibility to give back, individually and as a nation and as companies and other organizations with which you will be associated in the coming years?
This country has enormous potential for good or for evil. We all have the capacity for good or evil within us. If you pluck the right strings, the good comes out. You pluck some other strings, and the evil comes out. And I think America needs to pluck the strings of goodness.
Q:Not everyone can or wants to sell all their belongings and commit their lives to the poor. What can people leading ordinary lives do to change the world?
A: I think everybody who is a serious Christian, no matter what his or her career might be, needs to get their priorities right. If you are a serious Christian, to get your priorities right means you put the kingdom first – that your relationship with Jesus Christ ought to be at the top of the list. And then, you can pursue all kinds of other things.
Q:What advice would you give young people who want to change the world?
A: I don’t believe that any of us are on this earth as an accident. I think you are created for a purpose, and if you live your life consistent with the purpose for which you were created, you’ll have a long and useful life and a happy life. Not one that’s free of trouble, but a happy, fulfilled, joyous life.
The Bible says, “Ask and ye shall find, knock and it will be opened to you, seek and you will find.” I think that’s true for everybody. If you seriously seek to find out why God put you on this earth, you will find it.