Toni Collier is a Texas native (she pretty much always mentions Texas first in her introductions), but resides in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband Sam and daughter Dylan. 

With a degree in business logistics and entrepreneurship, she has used her talents to help ministries, leaders, and non-profits in the areas of student ministry, creative marketing, leadership, innovation, strategic planning, and diversity and inclusion. She’s a host and communicator and has had the opportunity to proudly stand on stages like North Point Community Church, Chick-Fil-A, Orange Conference, and MomCon. 

With a background in helping to build bridges across racial and gender divides and a heart for a radical wave of peace and love to overcome our world, Toni serves as the Director of Gathering for Preemptive Love and the Gathering communities movement.

In case you do not travel via plane and frequent the “unfriendly skies” much: flight attendants, during their Father Abraham refresher course, instruct adult passengers that, in case of cabin depressurization, an oxygen mask will fall from the ceiling. They ask the adults to place the oxygen mask over their own mouth first and then help a child. 

Isn’t that cruel? 

I remember the first time Kellee and I flew with our children and really thought about that instruction. My love for our kids totally out-ruled the wisdom and reasoning behind the instruction. I just can’t see myself enjoying a life-giving flow of oxygen while our children are turning different shades of blue and purple. It was only after I was off the flight and driving that I realized the significance of the directive.   

It makes so much sense. If I am not conscious, if I have passed out due to oxygen deprivation, how am I going to be of any help to our son or daughters? I can’t serve our kids if I am unable to function. Regardless of my deep love for our children, the wisest thing I can do in that situation is to make my physical welfare priority over the physical welfare of our kids. 

Counterintuitive? Yes. But true.

If you are going to become a student who is influential, who can endure the maximum dynamic pressure that is our culture, this same line of thinking must enter the equation. You have to decide to put your own spiritual welfare before the spiritual welfare of others. Mark it down. There will come a time when you find yourself being drawn into things you have no business doing. You will find your motivation shifting from the overall wellbeing and flourishing of your peers to acceptance or the need to be liked. You will have to choose to be responsible to what is true. 

When you get to that point, you will need to be able to discern if it is time to back off, or, perhaps, bail out. You will have to have the integrity to back off or bail out. 

INFLUNSR. defines integrity as choosing to be responsible to what is true. 

God isn’t going to do anything that will hurt our relationship with Him. He can’t. It is against His nature. It contradicts His character. Along the way, you will be tempted to sacrifice your integrity and perhaps your intimacy with God in order to be friends with a person(s) whose relationship is detrimental to your own personal growth. Are you willing to breathe deep from God’s oxygen mask and make your own spiritual health the priority?

The same principle on a depressurizing plane holds true with you and your friends. Your integrity has to take precedence over your peers. 

How much of a priority is your relationship with Jesus to you? Record your thoughts. Let’s talk about this at length in the Circle…

Just months after winning his 1941 Academy Award for best actor in The Philadelphia Story, Jimmy Stewart, one of the best-known actors of the day, left Hollywood and joined the US Army. He was the first big-name movie star to enlist in World War II.

An accomplished private pilot, the 33-year-old Hollywood icon became a US Army Air Force aviator, earning his 2nd Lieutenant commission in early 1942. With his celebrity status and huge popularity with the American public, he was assigned to starring in recruiting films, attending rallies, and training younger pilots.

Stewart, however, wasn’t satisfied. He wanted to fly combat missions in Europe, not spend time in a stateside training command. By 1944, frustrated and feeling the war was passing him by, he asked his commanding officer to transfer him to a unit deploying to Europe. His request was reluctantly granted.

Stewart, now a Captain, was sent to England, where he spent the next 18 months flying B-24 Liberator bombers over Germany. Throughout his time overseas, the US Army Air Corps’ top brass had tried to keep the popular movie star from flying over enemy territory. But Stewart would hear nothing of it.

Determined to lead by example, he bucked the system, assigning himself to every combat mission he could. By the end of the war he was one of the most respected and decorated pilots in his unit.

But his wartime service came at a high personal price.

In the final months of WWII he was grounded for being “flak happy,” today called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

When he returned to the United States in August 1945, Stewart was a changed man. He had lost so much weight that he looked sickly. He rarely slept, and when he did he had nightmares of planes exploding and men falling through the air screaming. In one mission alone his unit had lost 13 planes and 130 men, most of whom he knew personally.

He was depressed, couldn’t focus, and refused to talk to anyone about his war experiences. His acting career was all but over.

As one of Stewart’s biographers put it, “Every decision he made (during the war) was going to preserve life or cost lives. He took back to Hollywood all the stress that he had built up.”

In 1946 he got his break. He took the role of George Bailey, the suicidal father in It’s a Wonderful Life. 

The rest is history.

Actors and crew of the set realized that in many of the disturbing scenes of George Bailey unraveling in front of his family, Stewart wasn’t acting. His PTSD was being captured on film for potentially millions to see.

But despite Stewart’s inner turmoil, making the movie was therapeutic for the combat veteran. He would go on to become one of the most accomplished and beloved actors in American history.

When asked in 1941 why he wanted to leave his acting career to fly combat missions over Nazi Germany, he said, “This country’s conscience is bigger than all the studios in Hollywood put together, and the time will come when we’ll have to fight.”

While Stewart was fighting in Europe, his Oscar statue was proudly displayed in his father’s Pennsylvania hardware store. Throughout his life, the beloved actor always said his father, a World War I veteran, was the person who had made the biggest impact on him.

In 1949, Stewart married Gloria Hatrick McLean, adopted her two young sons from her first marriage, Ronald and Michael, and two years later celebrated the birth of his twin daughters, Judy and Kelly.

After serving his country for more than 20 years, Brigadier General Stewart finished his US Air Force career at the mandatory retirement age of 60.

In June 1969, Stewart’s adopted son, Ronald, a 24-year-old lieutenant in the Marines, was serving with Company A, 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion, 3rd Marine Division, in Quang Tri, Vietnam, when his six-man recon patrol came under heavy attack. During the ensuing firefight, Lt. McLean killed eight communist soldiers, sacrificed his life to save a wounded Marine, and was posthumously awarded the Silver Star.

“I don’t think there’s a day goes by that I don’t think of Ron,” Jimmy Stewart told a UPI reporter in 1982. “He wanted to be a Marine. And I, and I encouraged it. I thought it was wonderful. He wanted to serve his country … I don’t think it’s a tragedy. It’s a loss … it’s a terrible, terrible loss, but tragic, no. He died for his country.”

Jimmy Stewart was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1985 and died in 1997 at the age of 89.

INFLUNSR. defines integrity as choosing to be responsible to what is true. This holiday season, many of us will watch the classic Christmas film, It’s A Wonderful Life, and revel in the classic tale of honest George Bailey. It’s a Wonderful Life teaches that everyone can make a difference by living a responsible, integrity-filled, caring life. It presents the counterargument to the contention that, to be influential, the next generation should follow their own star, leave the community in which they grew up, and go out into the world. In the view of this film, a wonderful life depends upon family, friends and having an honest job that contributes to the community. Finding the right balance between self-fulfillment and dedication to others is really the work of all of us. 

The letter of 1 Thessalonians is written by Paul to a church in northern Greece.  1 Thessalonians 4:11-12 says “… make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.” In these days of rampant corporate and business greed, Bailey, as head of the town’s Savings and Loan Association, keeps his own salary at a reasonable level. He makes sure that the Savings and Loan is operated for the benefit of its members and serves the interests of the community. He has a lifelong competition with the town’s richest businessman who, despite his vast wealth, will do anything to make another dollar. How does this instruction in 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12 and the example of George Bailey contrast what culture considers influence?

Let’s dive into this in the Circle…

We asked you ask for your parents or guardian’s permission, connect to Amazon Prime or click on the Vimeo link above and watch the classic Christmas film It’s A Wonderful Life. George Bailey has spent his entire life giving of himself to the people of Bedford Falls. He has always longed to travel but never had the opportunity in order to prevent rich skinflint Mr. Potter from taking over the entire town. All that prevents him from doing so is George’s modest building and loan company, which was founded by his generous father. But on Christmas Eve, George’s Uncle Billy loses the business’s $8,000 while intending to deposit it in the bank. Potter finds the misplaced money and hides it from Billy. When the bank examiner discovers the shortage later that night, George realizes that he will be held responsible and sent to jail and the company will collapse, finally allowing Potter to take over the town. Thinking of his wife, their young children, and others he loves will be better off with him dead, he contemplates suicide. But the prayers of his loved ones result in a gentle angel named Clarence coming to earth to help George, with the promise of earning his wings. He shows George what things would have been like if he had never been born.

Rated PG for thematic elements, smoking and some violence.

How does the moral of this film apply to today’s more anonymous society in which we haven’t grown up with the people that we live near or work with and don’t know their families? Compare the lessons of this film, that happiness lies in friends, family and a responsible job in your own hometown, to the contention that it is a good thing to leave your home and culture and develop your talents to the fullest. How should a leader worth following balance self-fulfillment and dedication to others? 

Let’s discuss this in the Circle…

We asked you to listen to an episode of the Unlocking Us podcast titled Brené with Dolly Parton on Songtelling, Empathy and Shining Our Lights. Dolly Parton is the most honored and revered female country singer-songwriter of all time. Among many accolades and accomplishments, she’s also garnered ten Grammy Awards and 49 nominations, including the Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1999, Parton was inducted as a member of the coveted Country Music Hall of Fame. Parton has donated over 147 million books to children around the world with her Imagination Library. Her children’s book, Coat of Many Colors, was dedicated to the Library of Congress to honor the Imagination Library’s 100 millionth book donation. From her “Coat of Many Colors” while working “9 to 5,” no dream is too big and no mountain too high for the country girl who turned the world into her stage. Dolly’s songwriting and storytelling seem to be driven by a deep calling to turn toward pain and heartbreak so she can shine a light for all to find our way.

Dolly Parton tells Brene Brown, “I try to find that little God light in everybody, and I know that it is in there, some people let it shine more than others. A lot of people don’t even know they have it, unless somebody can, with enough love or reaching out, kinda help shine it up a little bit. And even if your pilot light is going out, that can be ignited too. You can kinda get that back, and if you got enough of somebody caring.” How does Dolly’s perspective mesh with the idea of being responsible to what is true? How do you mesh this with Ephesians 2:10? How is this integrity? 

Let’s discuss this in the Circle…

We asked you to watch the Ted Talk entitled Theranos, Whistleblowing and Speaking Truth to Power. 

In 2014, Erika Cheung made a discovery that would ultimately help bring down her employer, Theranos, as well as its founder, Elizabeth Holmes, who claimed to have invented technology that would transform medicine. The decision to become a whistleblower proved a hard lesson in figuring out how to do what’s right in the face of both personal and professional obstacles. With candor and humility, Cheung shares her journey of speaking truth to power — and offers a framework to encourage others to come forward and act in the service of all.

Erika Cheung says, “… moon shots are these highly innovative projects that are very ambitious, that everyone wants to believe in. But what happens when the vision is so compelling and the desire to believe is so strong that it starts to cloud your judgment about what reality is? And particularly when these innovative projects start to be a detriment to society, what are the mechanisms in place in which we can prevent these potential consequences? And really, in my mind, the simplest way to do that is to foster stronger cultures of people who speak up and listening to those who speak up. So now the big question is, how do we make speaking up the norm and not the exception?” How does this connect with what Ephesians 4:15? What does it mean to “speak the truth in love?”

Time to dive into this in the Circle…

We asked you to read the New York Times article titled The Rise and Fall of Carl Lentz, the Celebrity Pastor of Hillsong Church.

A charismatic pastor helped build a megachurch favored by star athletes and entertainers — until some temptations became too much to resist.

Please Note: This suggested article is not to disparage the parties involved, but for the next generation of leaders worth following to learn from example, both good and bad.

Ruth Graham reports that “Congregants also described a distinct caste system at the church that corresponded to appearance, wealth and fame. “If you’re a pastor, you’re more important than everyone else,” said Josh Canfield, who used to attend the church and sang with the local church’s worship band. “If you’re a celebrity, you’re more important; if you’ve done something to make you famous, or if you’re rich, you’re more important.” How do you contrast this with what James 2:-12 says about showing favoritism? How does this mesh with choosing to be responsible to what is true? 

Let’s discuss this in the Circle…

We asked you to watch the Christmas According to Kids – Southland Christian Church video and read the Time article The Revolutionary Politics of the First Christmas by NT Wright.

What happens when you ask a bunch of kids to tell the story of Christmas? Enjoy this story of Bethle-ha-ha-ham and the magical star that appeared.

Wright says, “The stories that begin at Christmas end with Jesus’ followers sent into the world to launch a new way of being human; a new kind of power; the divine power of self-giving love. Once we put Christmas back into its proper historical context we might just find that Christmas could reshape our own historical context. God knows we need it: the homeless asylum seekers, yes, and the rest of us too.” To choose to be responsible to what is true means you and i need to put Christmas back into its proper context. How do you need to do that?

Disclaimer:

INFLUNSR’s mission is to fuel the next generation of leaders worth following and to help students learn how to think, not what to think. Any articles posted and questions asked are intended for that sole purpose.