What follows is an excerpt from a book about the Salvation Army.

Two things distinguish us, and both are available to anyone: An openness to God's grace and a commitment to demonstrating it through service to others.

Hoard our assets (yearly budget of over $2 billion)? We exhaust them in the effort to reach more and more people.

Lower our expectations? We are out to save the world.

Trust no one? Our best customers - and future partners - are drug addicts, prisoners, the enfeebled, and the desperately poor.

If we are naive in our commitment, then God has blessed us for it, even if we count only the lesser blessings a hard-line business manager would acknowledge. We have survived and thrived for longer than just about any company in America. We are called "the most effective organization in the U.S." by the best-known management theorist in the world. By any material measure, our workers are vastly under-compensated; yet not only do we attract and retain dedicated life-long employees, we also have 3.3 million voluneteers, many of them prominent in their communitites and in the nation, who are eager to donate resources and time we could never afford to acquire or hire. And every year we are priveleged to serve 30 million people, many of whose lives are transformed before our eyes.

Our world, we believe, is the real world. It's as full of hope as it is of hurt. All we have to do is open our eyes and let its reality liberate our hearts.