GREEK SUMMER 2011
MISSION. SERVICE. LEADERSHIP.
PART I
Introduction
I was engaged by Bruce Lansdale in 1978 to be his Associate Director for Administration and worked with him till he retired in 1990. Christine and I were married in 1988 and becoming a family member gave me additional insights into a man who has had a very deep impact on my life. Bruce died 2½ years ago but his spirit is still felt here at Metamorphosis, at the Farm School, among the graduates, retired staff and long-term supporters of the school.
Last year we celebrated Greek Summer’s 40th anniversary in New York when the honor and appreciation given to Tad showed that Bruce’s spirit is still felt by participants of Greek Summer.
Because Bruce has become my role model for a ‘life well lived’ or ‘a successful life’ I welcome this opportunity to say a few words about why he had such an impact on so many people and what he had in mind when he started the Greek summer program.
Giving: The importance of role models
Bruce learned early on that you get most out of life by giving because he had two very fine role models. His father, Herbert Lansdale, had been sent by the YMCA of America to establish the YMCA in Thessaloniki. The ethos of the YMCA has always been community service, service to your fellow man, and treating your neighbor as you would like to be treated yourself.
As a child Bruce made visits to the American Farm School because his father was good friends with Charlie House, the second director of the American Farm School. After his retirement as a missionary, John Henry House, Charlie’s father, founded the Farm School in 1904 when northern Greece was Turkish territory. Charlie House was an engineer just like Bruce but endowed with a missionary spirit. Bruce took over as head of the school while still in his twenties and Charlie House became Bruce’s second role model.
The American Farm School: Mission, Service, Leadership
This passage is taken from Tad’s book My Metamorphosis:
‘One evening soon after we arrived in 1949, we sat before a blazing fire in the Houses’ living room. Charlie wanted to tell us something of his father, something of his courage and of his leadership. “He didn’t just preach an ideology,” Charlie said, “he lived it. And, he expected everyone else to. This is what the American Farm School was and is all about. Mission. Service. Leadership. When a fellow missionary, Miss Ellen Stone, along with her companion, Mrs. Eleni Tsilka, were kidnapped in 1901 by Bulgarian brigands, it fell to father, as leader of their small Protestant community, to mediate for their ransom in a situation garnering international attention. The kidnappers demanded $65,000 in gold bullion for the return of Miss Stone, an amount equal to her weight in gold. Even President Roosevelt became involved as a widespread campaign to raise money spread across America. It was an enormous amount of money in those days.’
Leadership
Expressed in every day terms Mission, Service and Leadership is working continually to improve the civilization around you. Each day, though your actions may seem as just a grain of sand on the sea shore, you attract like-minded people to the cause and a great institution like the Farm School results. Bruce wrote the book Cultivating Inspired Leaders: Making Participatory Management Work in which he described inspired and inspiring leader-managers in these words:
‘Those who have themselves been inspired by others in their lives. Inspired leader-managers have a sense of dedication to their organization, to their associates, and a commitment to a spirit within themselves. These individuals may, however, lack the self-confidence or the ability to inspire others. It is the inspiring leader-managers who are eager to share their inspiration with associates and customers of their organization.’
Mission at the American Farm School
John Henry House clearly stated his goals in the school’s Charter of Incorporation:
‘providing agricultural and industrial training under Christian supervision for youth in order that they may be trained to appreciate the dignity of manual labor and be helped to lives of self-respect, thrift and industry.”
The results of that mission
After just 23 years John Henry House was able to say:
‘The land we had purchased was a desert-looking waste with no water upon it and a doubtful possibility of finding any. A school like this in a land where work with the hands was considered degrading by the educated, might well have been considered a desperate experiment even under the most favourable conditions, when there was well-watered and fertile land, with a kindly climate, but under the desert conditions in which we were placed, some of our friends felt sure we were doomed to failure. But we were working with faith in a great Master who had said, “All things are possible to him that believeth.” It was indeed a small beginning but it was a work of faith and love. A little over twenty three years have passed, and that barren spot is now a beautiful village, with orchards and vineyards, vegetable and flower gardens, and grainfields, barns, workshops, electric and water plant, with pure blooded cattle, pigs and fowl. There are dormitories, residences with equipped infirmary, a fine hall with library, natural history museum, and laboratory.”
Service at the American Farm School
A life of service is out of fashion today when success is measured by the size of your greed and how well you manipulate the financial system to your personal benefit. From the beginning the Farm School was based on service. When John Henry House founded the school in 1904, Thessaloniki was under Turkish rule, but after years of bloodshed the Greeks were in charge in 1912. The first students were orphans and the first teachers worked without pay in exchange for learning English. Then in 1922 northern Greece was flooded with 1.5 million refugees due to the exchange of populations with Turkey and once again the school was serving orphans and families with no possessions.
Service in the Farm School’s early days was providing the poorest of the poor with an education to feed themselves and the wider community and the skills such as plumbing and carpentry required to create a model village. These were the first steps to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger in northern Greece. It was a philosophy of educating the head, the heart and the hands. It was a philosophy of Mission, Service, Leadership.
Greek Summer: Mission, service, leadership
Bruce created Greek Summer, nursed it through its challenging early years and believed that it was a good way to introduce American youth to the Farm School’s philosophy of Mission, Service, and Leadership. You will serve by working on a village improvement project. You will be working within a culture that is strange to you. You might not be used to work that requires hard physical labor under the Greek sun. It is during these times when the going is tough that you will have opportunities to develop your leadership skills.
Bruce also wanted you to be exposed to the wisdom of the ancient Greeks about whom you will learn much on your tour of the ancient sites. In our society that has lost its way, more and more people are realizing that the ancient Greeks organized themselves much better than we have organized our present-day society.
Bruce also wanted you to get a feel for what he referred to as generosity of spirit, through the overwhelming hospitality of the Greek villagers that you will experience during your village stay.
Bruce also wanted you to have fun, and as you will find, the Greeks are wonderful fun-loving people, even in these days of financial crisis.
But perhaps most of all he wanted you to be challenged and stretched beyond the limits of what you previously thought possible. He was fond of quoting Nikos Kazantzakis expressed in the opening lines of his Report to Greco:
I am a bow in your hands, Lord,
Stretch me lest I rot.
Don’t stretch me too hard, Lord,
Lest I break.
Go ahead and stretch me, Lord,
Even if I break.
May your Greek Summer be enriching, enjoyable and life-transforming.