More Than Fine…

I’m a coward, Help I Love Baseball

// July 13th, 2009 // 70314 Comments »http://www.chrissulli.com/im-a-coward-help-ilb/I%27m+a+coward%2C+Help+I+Love+Baseball2009-07-13+04%3A18%3A34chrissulli // Barahona, Faith, Featured, I Love Baseball

Let me be blunt. I’m a coward. I left my job and in 7 days I’m getting on a plane to the Dominican Republic. I won’t be back until Christmas. I’ll be working with young men whose dream is to play professional baseball. Most, if not all, of them will fail. Our goal, while helping them pursue their dream, is to build up Godly men who will transform their communities. Normally many of these young men would leave home at 13 or 14, abandon their education, move to Santo Domingo and pursue their dream of becoming a professional baseball player. When 99.9% of them fail, they return home with no education and no real options. The program I’m working with, I Love Baseball, keeps these young men at home in Barahona and provides them the same training and opportunity to be signed that they would have in Santo Domingo while holding them accountable in school and being mentored by men and leaders in their community.

Sounds pretty noble right? It is brave to walk away from a great job to go serve right? Not really. I’ll happily walk away from my salary and pay $9,000 to serve. Crazy to some but that is the easy part for me. That is what makes me feel alive. That is what makes my heart beat.

The hard part for me? Not limiting God’s vision for my trip to what I am capable of. I’m a coward because I’m scared to ask people to partner with me. I’m a coward because I’d rather pay the $9,000 than be obedient, tell people about the work I’m going to be doing, ask them to partner with me, and go and pray while I wait to see what God does.

I love supporting people. I don’t like asking for support. God has been revealing to me this week that by being disobedient in asking people to partner with me in the Dominican, I’m denying them the opportunity to be obedient to His call and limiting God’s vision for my trip to my own vision, to what I can fund, to what I am capable of.

Can I share a growing desire in my life? I don’t want to do things I am capable of doing. Why? Because then I can take the credit for them. I want to see God do things in me and through me that I am absolutely incapable of so I can’t possibly take credit for them.

- Mark Batterson

God has been breaking me of my fear this week. He has been calling me into obedience. So here I am, humbled and willing to serve, asking you to partner with me in the Dominican Republic.

I’m not believing for getting my trip funded. That is a me-sized vision. I’ll pay for the trip and every penny raised can go into the program. I’m believing we can get every young man in I Love Baseball sponsored. I’m believing the funds we raise will allow the program to bring in new young men. I’m believing we can raise enough money to make the dream of purchasing a piece of property, building a field and building a high school a reality. I’m believing God has vision for I Love Baseball that goes beyond anything I can comprehend or be responsible for.

Here is how you can partner with I Love Baseball:

1. Pray for I Love Baseball and my time in the Dominican
2. Donate to support I Love Baseball http://www.cotni.org/opportunities/15
3. Sponsor a player http://ilovebaseball.org/sponsor-a-player.html They are amazing kids
4. Tell your friends or readers
5. Come visit on a short term mission trip!

The primary reason most of us don’t see God moving is simply because we aren’t moving.

- Mark Batterson

I was moving by going but my movement was incomplete. Now I’m going to go pray and wait for God to move through yall. Thank you in advance and God bless.

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End of an Era: 3 Years of Raymond James Investment Banking

// June 29th, 2009 // 6718 Comments »http://www.chrissulli.com/end-of-an-era-3-years-of-raymond-james-investment-banking/End+of+an+Era%3A+3+Years+of+Raymond+James+Investment+Banking2009-06-30+01%3A21%3A40chrissulli // Featured, I Love Baseball, Life

After 3 years at Raymond James, it makes me a little sad that I’m not sad to be leaving. It isn’t a reflection on my time there. I’m just ready. Not much else to say. It is time. Time for change. Time for risk. Time for adventure. Time to live. I feel like the last three years and maybe longer have been building up to this moment.

I’ll always look back fondly on my time there but I changed and the job stayed the same.

My first year was a whirlwind. There was no time to think much less stop and reflect. We worked hard. We worked late (into the early hours of the morning if necessary). And amidst all the craziness, we had fun. I can’t exactly explain it but those were my favorite times at RJ (thank you Paul and Justin) .

Second year was more a series of highs and  lows. The year started slowly and with my new found free time, I started thinking more about life outside work. I felt a distinctive call on my heart to go abroad. I specifically had a passion for and interest in organizations that use athletics as a means to promote social good (education, aids awareness, etc.). I wasn’t quite sure where this call would lead me. I thought maybe Africa. Maybe I would go work for a non-profit. Maybe a microfinance organization. Maybe I put my finance skills to work in some kind of economic development/finance organization in the third world. Missions was not even on my radar.

Then I got distracted: by work, by relationships, by life. And I think it was a good thing. I needed the distractions. I’m not sure I would have had the guts to go if not for distractions of that year lighting a fire in me and being a catalyst for dramatic life  change and spiritual growth as I entered my third year at Raymond James. At that point in my life I had nothing I was willing to fight for, nothing I was passionate about, nothing I was willing to sacrifice for. More than anything, I had nothing I was willing to leave my comfort zone of risk-less worldly success and personal mediocrity to risk failure for. All that changed second year. I went after something. I failed. Life went on but I was never the same. I was alive.

I started serving and that changed me even more. Thanksgiving 2008 I went on a week long mission trip to the Dominican Republic. While messing around on the Children of the Nations website (the organization I went on the trip through), I came across a program they had in the Dominican Republic called I Love Baseball.

“[I Love Baseball's] goal is to help develop young men into leaders and encourage them to pursue an education and spiritual growth while training for a career in baseball.”

I feel like alarms should have been going off in my head screaming, “This is it! This is what you have been looking for!” But there weren’t. I was just intrigued. I asked a question. The person I asked had no idea about I Love Baseball and asked another person. She didn’t know either. I don’t know how exactly it came about other than by divine provision, but without any pushing or prodding and a question as simple as, “What is this I Love Baseball thing?”, we became the first venture team to primarily focus on I Love Baseball during our trip.

I was smitten and the rest is history. July 20th I leave on a 5 month mission to the Dominican Republic working with I Love Baseball.

Thank you to everyone who played a part in the best three years of my life. It was quite a journey to get to this point and I can only imagine what the future has in store. I think it only gets better from here.

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I Was On A Path

// June 24th, 2009 // 63413 Comments »http://www.chrissulli.com/i-was-on-a-path/I+Was+On+A+Path2009-06-24+04%3A11%3A40chrissulli // Barahona, Featured, I Love Baseball, Life

The path was simple and well trodden:

Ivy League Athlete…..check

Investment Banking…check

Private Equity………….

Business School…………

$$$…………………….

The path was boring. The path was too easy. The path was too safe. The path was somebody else’s. The path wasn’t God’s path for me. The path led to complacency. The path led to valuing things that would never be fulfilling. The path led to worldly success and personal mediocrity. The path isn’t mine anymore.

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

-Teddy Roosevelt

I can’t see the end of my path…

but I can see around the bend…

The path isn’t particularly pretty and I’m sure it will be rockier and more treacherous than it appears.  But amidst the risk, loss and danger, it is filled with hope, purpose, love and glory.

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Vote or Die? I Choose Death

// June 11th, 2009 // 5844 Comments »http://www.chrissulli.com/vote-or-die-i-choose-death/Vote+or+Die%3F+I+Choose+Death2009-06-11+19%3A34%3A41chrissulli // Featured, Politics

Fewer than 47% of America’s 18- to 24-year-olds cast ballots in the 2004 presidential election, compared with nearly two-thirds of citizens 25 and older. “It’s an embarrassing statistic,” says Burstein, sipping coffee on a rainy morning in Manhattan. The previous night, he’d accepted a $10,000 Do Something award. “We’re an involved generation, and we should care enough to vote. Young people weren’t getting that message from other young people.”
Getting the Facebook Generation Out to Vote

Is voting a proxy for caring? I’m guilty of never voting but I’m certainly not guilty of not caring. Call me apathetic to our political process. Call me disenchanted witht the two party system. Call me uninspired by the available candidates. Call me disenfranchised by the lack of a candidate that I feel represents me. Call me disinterested because I only see superficial differences between Democrats and Republicans. Call me unmotivated because I don’t particularly think it makes a difference who wins. Call me angry because our politicians and political parties are more interested in maintaining their positions than changing the world for the better.

Don’t tell me I don’t care but don’t call me a voter either. And that won’t change until there is a candidate that actually represents me or there is a candidate so grossly out of touch with my world view that I need to act. My only means of expressing my dissatisfaction with the current state of political affairs is to not compromise and not vote for anyone. In the meantime, I’ll keep trying to change the world one person at a time and not wait for someone in Washington to do it for me.

If you feel passionately about a candidate, party or cause, vote your heart out but don’t assume not voting is an act of laziness or ignorance. I care too much to make a vote I don’t believe in. An educated abstention is preferable to an uneducated vote.

I don’t expect anyone to agree with me. There is a lot more to say but I will leave it at that. It isn’t election season. So no reason to get myself all riled up. Was the title sufficiently dramatic?

[farlane]

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