Keeping the Faith

By Kathleen Leavell

Often our founder, the late Rev. Ralph Beiting, was asked, “What would you say is the single most important accomplishment of the Christian Appalachian Project?” His answer is as true today as it was when he first set about this mission. He said, “We know that with God we can do all things and without Him we can do nothing.”

Of all the amazing stories and achievements over the last half century, this may not be the answer many might expect, but it opens the gate to everything we have been able to accomplish and all that lies ahead.

Poverty is powerful and relentless. It’s not the kind of adversary one takes on alone. It takes more than an individual, more than a team, and more than an organization.

Each of us at CAP has to know that we are dependent upon God first--first before our own talents, before our own ideas, before our own strengths and resources. We can’t just think it or just hope for it. We really have to know it. It isn’t a matter of logic. Sometimes it’s not even a matter of common sense. It’s a matter of faith.

It is in faith that we are called to begin each day here in prayer. Whether in one of our chapels or wherever our scheduled assignments have us, we are expected to begin each day connecting with our mission and with God’s Plan for this day. We are called to begin every meeting, every budget preparation, and every planning session in prayer to keep us mindful that we are not about our own work but about something truly sacred.

It is in faith that volunteers respond to God’s call to service here. There is no other way that volunteers can leave their family and friends to give a year of their lives, committed to service that they neither began nor will see completed, without depending upon their faith.

It is only in faith that our donors can give so generously to an organization they have never seen and can believe so passionately in the Appalachian people, whom they have never met.

For our greatest example of faith, we look to those we serve; those who find the strength within themselves to try one more time; those who summon the courage to emerge from isolation and develop new skills; those who are blessed to look beyond what is and believe in what they can become. It is our faith that ties us together. This is the common thread that binds every donor, volunteer, staff, and those we serve into one mission. This is the same faith that was given freely to each of us by God. And in the end, this is all that will be asked of us.