I probably shouldn’t look at social media during church. But honestly, I was just opening the Bible App on my phone (!) The local “Nextdoor” link on my email was a post from someone living nearby: “Neighborhood too dangerous.” The author wrote, “We were talking about how annoying it is that we cannot walk outside without fear of being held up at gunpoint and it might be time to move to a safer place…”
It has been something of a bad week for our neighborhood. Someone was held up and robbed on the street I walk to work and a young man was shot a few blocks from our home. But none of this is new to West Baltimore or to the city where more than three dozen people have been killed since New Years. Perhaps it was just a little too close to home.
The post made me think of our pastor.
He was born and raised in Baltimore and despite growing up in one of the city’s toughest neighborhoods in a single parent home he has a college degree and is among the best read men I know. He had every reason and every opportunity to move away from the conditions in a city that Hobbes would likely agree are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”
But he didn’t leave. Instead he studied, trained and prayed and with his wife planted a church in West Baltimore within a mile of the highest density of gun violence in the city. He was with the line of pastors at the uprising after the events surrounding the death of Freddie Gray two years ago this spring. He leads by example in the city of his birth that he could easily and justifiable have left behind.
This morning I was stuck by what drew me to his leadership and to this church.
We spent thirty years in the Army where among the highest virtues was the willingness to run toward the sound of the guns.
Now we are serving with this leader and these brothers and sisters who have chosen to do the exact same thing – literally and figuratively – on some of our nation’s most dangerous streets.
A couple commented at a dinner recently that it is not uncommon in our neighborhood to hear gunshots at night. These men and women whose church meets in a local public school; who are led by a courageous pastor and his wife are far more familiar with the sound than we are.
Perhaps I am drawn to this leader by the same qualities I have long recognized in those with whom I served in uniform:
True leaders run toward the sound of the guns.
We have found a community and leaders who live this.
And it feels a lot like home.
Chuck Callahan Henry V 4.3 – Lead from the Front https://henryv43.wordpress.com/
Henry V 4.3 
Another great post, Chuck, and I’m grateful for the reminder. Sometimes we need to stop and listen for the guns. Then pick up our tools and armor and head for them.
At Oxford during PhD research from 2006-12, we heard gunshots 2 am to 4 am when gangs prowled the streets to vandalize cars and store windows. Although my church made deliberate effort to reach out, feed, cloth, and witness during the day… some of us received broken noses, teeth knocked out, and blackened eyes from encountering the “local community”. The uniform of tattoos, piercings, shaved heads, and spikes enabled identity distinction on the battleground of values, faith, duty, integrity, personal responsibility, and citizenship. The skill of navigating the hearts and minds of the willful, rebellious and defiant souls requires discernment, wisdom, and experience. HOWEVER, my experience testifies that: willful, defiant, power-oriented gangs are more direct, transparent and truthful in their communication than tribal uniforms at USUHS and Walter Reed Hospital … Although Patient Safety and Leadership of GME Program Directors for ACGME-CLER are “passively acknowledged in the hallway” and “signed as an action item”; in fact, such talk is not valued enough for Generals and Admirals to task Colonels with completing the Tri-service GME surveys at DHA, and thereby generate a next-gen culture of patient safety with significant measures of mitigating risk in curricular gaps during resident transitions. As the ACGME will affirm during our conference in 3 weeks, and the National Patient Safety Foundation publishes; “stats in patient safety must be recognized as someone’s spouse, parent and/or child with a name and identity before any patient safety culture change for next-gen happens in the hospital.” Therefore, it is appropriate to report; the gangs in Oxford were not as dangerous to navigate as the silent tribes in some Tri-service hospitals.