Robin SmithTuesday morning, a large annual gathering of men and women from the region will line up for breakfast and assemble for a morning of inspiration and prayer at the Chattanooga Area Leadership Prayer Breakfast.
Founded by members of the Chattanooga Christian Business Men's Connection, the event averages about 2,000 in attendance and, since 1978, has featured nationally known speakers and business leaders who offer words from experience, success, failure, perseverance and leadership, all drawn from the wells of their personal faith.
Past speakers of the Chattanooga Area Leadership Prayer Breakfast have included Chuck Colson, President Richard Nixon's special counsel who founded Prison Fellowship; Adolph Coors IV; Interstate Batteries' Norm Miller; and Two Men and a Truck founder Brig Sorber last year. The 2016 featured speaker is J. Frank Harrison III, chief executive officer and chairman of Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated.
What a timely event in our city. Unimaginable violence continues within our city limits; too many parents and children treat our schools like a day care facility; and too much value has been placed on politics rather than our institutions that have proven their worth, such as the family, the church and a supportive neighborhood.
So, Chattanooga, what are you praying for?
While thousands will be challenged tomorrow morning to take the mantle of leadership in their businesses, communities and families, there is a reality. Our problems won't be fixed by a government program, a nonprofit organization or some other external intervention without individual and personal commitment to change.
The dignitaries, business and military leaders or sports figures who've opened their hearts to speak about their journeys and personal testimonies over the last 38 years express a common theme - unfailing determination coupled with a recognition that effective leadership is rooted in the Judeo-Christian virtues of honesty, decency and the law of the harvest, or, what you plant, you reap.
Not only will Chattanoogans be called to prayer in the morning, but Franklin Graham, the eldest son of the Rev. Billy Graham, will be in Nashville at noon Tuesday on the steps at our state's capitol to lead citizens in a call to prayer. Leading his "Decision Tour 2016," Graham has declared, "I'm going to every state in our country to challenge Christians to live out their faith at home, in public and at the ballot box - and I will share the Gospel."
The goal of the Nashville and the Chattanooga events is identical: to unite the hearts, minds and actions of men and women of faith to positively impact their homes, schools and places of business - their personal mission fields.
But it's easier to relegate the work of "the community" to nonprofit organizations, to fuss and stew at politicians who create some manufactured crisis just in time to have a government solution or to abandon our roles and duties.
Folks, most of you won't have a ticket to the prayer breakfast or won't drive to Nashville, but each of you is able to pray. We pray about what we care about. Let's unify our hearts for wisdom to live a disciplined, decent life, to strengthen our families and to work toward a community that rejects the violence, the evil and the wrongs embraced as truth.
Robin Smith, a former chairwoman of the Tennessee Republican Party, is owner of Rivers Edge Alliance.