It takes both vision and nuts & bolts to get to the moon. Leadership is as much about plodding as it is flying.
National and international events have a way of nailing our memories. We can recall exactly where we were when the twin towers came down or Nixon resigned from office or Kennedy was assassinated.
One other event from my youth indelibly etched in my memory is when Astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon. The year was 1969. I was 14.
Public Domain photo: Footstep on the moon, Apollo 11 mission
I’d followed the race to the moon, was only one link separation from the astronauts. Mort Dilks, a friend of my dad’s and from my hometown, had worked as part of the crew at Cape Canaveral. Mort was an engaging guy, full of life, a great storyteller. On the earlier space flights, he was the last guy off the launch pad.
That was as close as I’ve gotten to the moon. But we were all there glued to the screen that night as first Armstrong and then Buzz Aldrin stepped out of the Moon Lander and awkwardly down the steps, planting their feet in that ancient dust till then untouched by any earthling. With the words, “One small step for man, one giant step for mankind,” Armstrong’s words took on immortal singularity.
My father, who pastored the same church for half a century, only once tried out for a church elsewhere, at least that I know of. It was the weekend of the moonwalk. We were in East Brunswick, NJ. I remember nothing of the service itself or of the church. I only remember that afterward we were invited over to the home of church members to watch the broadcast from the moon.
Generally, life’s big moments fill our memories, leaving much else in the dust. A few people are blessed with total recall, I am told, but such recall may well be a curse. If you remember everything, then nothing stands out.
I do have other memories of being 14, some not so remarkable. But the moon landing was a true highlight. As it was for the rest of the nation. The 60s were tough on everyone. Some advances had been made – improved rights for persons of color, for example. But there was much else that was troubling, and the decade was ending on some very dismal notes.
The race to the moon was one of the most amazing stories of the 60s. People had been looking at the moon for as long as people existed. In more modern times, talk of going to the moon remained far-fetched, notwithstanding the stories of Jules Verne a century before. But with the invention of the airplane and then the jet, the beyond possible was approaching thinkable.
Then came the call to go to the moon. The space race had already begun in the 1950s and the Soviet Union had gotten into space first. Those were the tense, scary days of the Cold War. We kids were sticking our heads under desks at school during air raid drills. The first U.S. troops were on the ground in Vietnam. Russia was threatening in Cuba and with Khrushchev’s shoe.
As a new president, John F. Kennedy sensed the U.S. needed a major victory. Vice President Johnson met with leaders in the military and aerospace industry to determine if the U.S. could be first to build a space station or first to orbit the moon. The conclusion was the U.S. could be the first to land on the moon. It was one very audacious idea.
In May 1961, Kennedy proposed to Congress that the U.S. aim to land on the moon by the end of the decade. The nation was underwhelmed; 58% were opposed. But the Kennedy administration moved forward. Land was donated in Johnson’s home state of Texas and the government began to build the Manned Spacecraft Center. In September of the following year, Kennedy gave his famous speech at nearby Rice University in which he declared, “We choose to go to the moon.”
Kennedy would not live to see the fulfillment of that dream and Johnson’s star would rise and fall in the years in between. But in July 1969, before decade’s end, the impossible dream was fulfilled. And we earthlings were earthbound no more.
I don’t necessarily have an interest in going into space, let alone to the moon. Life is about making choices. For those who have gone into space and the select dozen who have been to the moon, it was not just a box to check on their bucket list. It took over a significant part of their lives. Big ideas are that way.
I recall as a teenager people talking about how foolish it was for us to spend all that money on the space race. Only time would show what technological advances came of that effort, great advancements improving the lives of people who never left the ground.
I recall people even then doubting that Armstrong had been to the moon, let alone walked on the moon. Others said the trips to space were causing natural disasters on earth. And then there were those who claimed the Soviets and Americans would duke it out on the moon, turning the moon to blood in fulfillment of biblical prophecy. The moon may well turn to blood one day, but such event-specific claims in the name of God’s will cast aspersions on the prophetic.
By the end of the decade, however, most of my fellow citizens as well as much of the rest of the world were cheering on that giant step for mankind.
I really don’t recall what I was thinking as a 14-year-old boy watching Armstrong take that first step. I am impressed I can still picture that living room and that TV 55 years later as if I were still right there.
The naysayers then and now notwithstanding, getting to the moon took someone – many someones – with a vision and the ability to communicate that vision. And it took far more someones with the skill, patience, and determination to fulfill it, step by step until that final one in the moondust.
A decade or so after that first moon landing, I launched out on a mission of my own, much more earthbound, to spread the vision of ministry to university students in states that had no idea what student ministry even meant. I embarked on this thing called Campus 80s and started traveling around the Lower 48 on a shoestring budget, talking to pastors and church leaders about the need for university work in their communities and states.
Dennis Gaylor likened me to a modern-day Johnny Appleseed spreading a lot of seeds around.[1] Dennis, the national director of Chi Alpha Campus Ministry, was the leader I worked most closely with on this mission. He firmly believed in what I was doing and helped me through some bureaucratic hurdles to make it happen.
A lot of seeds were planted. And like all seeds, some bore fruit. Some bore a lot of fruit. But there were times and places where the ground remained pretty hard and the seed died. Success in life is not about how much you fail; it is about persevering until you have those moments of achievement.
I still remember calling a leader regarding an event I was planning and getting chewed out for an hour about how what I was doing was detrimental to the work of God. The worst part of it was that we paid dearly for long distance calls in those days and his ranting was all on my dime. Try as I might, I could not convince him that I was not the enemy.
Campus 80s lasted only a few short years before I burned out on the endless travel, the rootlessness, and the extremely tight budget. However, some of the works that were started grew and bore more fruit. And the concept opened doors at the national level for university ministry in a whole new way.
I remained in campus ministry, taking another assignment. But through those years, I had learned much about building bridges with those who didn’t see things the way I did, about sharing vision with those whose attention is elsewhere, and about growing relationships even with skeptics.
At times I became envious of more charismatic characters running around. I still remember one friend telling me I was a plodder, not a flyer. At first, I resented that label, until I noticed how many flyers kept crashing and burning. There is much value in the step-by-step approach to seeing a vision come to pass.
President Kennedy was certainly a charismatic figure who could lay out the vision, an essential part of the process. But it took a lot of other people, including the likes of Mort Dilks, the last guy off the launch pad, to make sure all the nuts and bolts were in place. If Apollo 11 showed us we could get there, then Apollo 13 showed us how important the step-by-step plodding is.
It takes both the plodders and the flyers. Both must have the vision and the ability to communicate that vision. They may never leave the ground, but they know they are on that moon with Armstrong. And any Armstrong worth his salt knows it, too.
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[1]Dennis Gaylor, Growing a Student Movement: The Development of Chi Alpha Campus Ministries 1940-2020 (np, 2021), p. 109.