- [Announcer] This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

- Never underestimate the power of one.

How one person with vision and faith can transform countless lives.

Reverend Morris Hintzman embodied the power of one.

In 1982, Reverend Hintzman and a handful of volunteers began transforming a small group of church soup kitchens into Metropolitan Ministries that over the past four decades has served nearly 50 million meals, provided nearly 3 million nights of shelter, and impacted more than 3 million children's lives in Greater Tampa Bay.

WEDU's Suncoast Business Forum profiled Reverend Morris Hintzman in 2012.

He passed away in September, 2024.

As a tribute to Reverend Hintzman and his profound impact on our community, we proudly rebroadcast that 2012 interview in his memory during the holiday season when Metropolitan Ministries brings joy and hope to thousands of people's lives.

- [Announcer] Suncoast Business Forum brought to you by the financial services firm of Raymond James, offering personalized wealth management advice and banking and capital markets expertise all with a commitment to putting clients' financial wellbeing first.

More information is available at raymondjames.com.

(suspenseful music) - When Morris Hintzman took over as director of Metropolitan Ministries in 1982, he saw it as a temporary position before he returned to his congregation as a Methodist minister.

That was 30 years ago.

When he took the job, it was just him plus 75 volunteers and a budget of $100,000.

Now, Metropolitan Ministries has a staff of more than 100 people with 16,000 volunteers and a budget of more than $16 million.

According to Morris Hintzman, success is not measured in dollars.

It's measured in how well Metropolitan Ministries alleviate suffering, promotes dignity, and instills self-sufficiency in the families it serves.

Morris, welcome to the Suncoast Business Forum.

- Thank you, Geoff.

- Metropolitan Ministries started in 1972.

You got there in 1982.

At that time, it was serving about 1,500 people a month.

Now, it's serving 25,000 people a week.

Now, we're talking about serving food, and there's more to it than just serving food.

What was the original genesis of Metropolitan Ministries?

How did it get started?

- Its genesis was simply a handful of people from different congregations here in the Tampa community that saw the suffering going on, on the street, and they decided that they would at least help alleviate some of that by making some sandwiches and soup and just serving it.

So, they met in kitchens in churches and built these sandwiches and went down to St. Andrew's Episcopal Church where they had a little room and they served it out of the door on the north side of that church.

- Now, that was in 1972.

The organization, as we've pointed out, has grown enormously and serving food is actually, just a part of what Metropolitan Ministries does.

What are some of the other services?

- Well, we have services that are both what we call residential on campus.

And then we have these programs that are outreach programs that were all over the Bay Area in three, four counties actually.

- [Geoffrey] Well, what would be the outreach programs, for instance?

- Well, outreach has to do with us providing close to 2,000 meals every day that are cooked and prepared at the ministry.

And then we have these partners, like 28 partners all over the Bay Area that are willing to raise the volunteers and do the serving and have a place to serve it.

But the food, we raise the food, cook the food, they come pick it up and they serve it.

- Now, you also have residential services.

What are those?

- Well, residential services where we have room for 45 homeless families that live on campus on North Florida Avenue.

Plus, we have about 20 transitional units away from that campus.

So, we're dealing with about 60, 65 families every night, 24/7.

The important part is a thing we call Uplift You and that's a program in which we evaluate the people and they evaluate themselves and see where is they want to go and what do they wanna do with their life.

So, we create a setting in which they can measure where they are and where they want to get to and what it's gonna take to get there.

So, that's a big part of it.

But a couple of the other things that help make that happen is most of the families need vocational training.

They don't have marketable skills, therefore they can live with us from six to eight months.

We have childcare, head start there, we have an academy or partnership school with Hillsborough County, and then we have parenting classes, budgeting classes, everything possible to try to get them self-sufficient.

- Now, in the 30 years that you've run Metropolitan Ministries, how have you seen the causes and the nature of homelessness change?

- Pretty dramatic.

When I came there in 1982, the families that we were seeing, 65% were two-parent families.

Today, it's about five to 7% two-parent families.

It's mostly, all single moms with small children.

One of the sad things that we have learned is that there's a statistic out there that says that 70% of the children who experience homelessness as a child are apt to become homeless as adults.

So, our whole focus is to eliminate this concept that they're homeless.

I mean, don't talk in terms of shelters and don't talk in terms of like there's something wrong with you and you're committed to a shelter.

Let's talk about what it is that the children are off at school and childcare, learning and growing.

Mom is going to school, learning and growing, and this is almost like a mini college in which we don't focus on the things that would appear to be bad or send bad signals to the kids.

- Let's talk about your upbringing, where you grew up, your family.

- Life was good.

I was one of eight children, and I lived on a small dairy farm in West Central Wisconsin.

We always had enough to eat and we always had a place to sleep.

And I went to a little small, one-room, eight grade rural school and life was good.

28 students, couldn't beat it.

By the time I was an eighth grader, I had heard every lesson plan for the first grade, the second grade, all the way through, and I knew all those lesson plans.

So, whatever I missed in the first grade, I could pick up in the second or third grade.

So, it was a great life.

- Now, I imagine being one of eight kids growing up in a dairy farm, work was a part of everyday life, am I right?

- It sure was, and we learned early, and everyone had to do something.

And probably the worst job I ever had that I just despised it was going to the garden and having to pull weeds with my mother.

I mean, it wasn't so bad picking the beans, but pulling the weeds.

There was nothing very entertaining about that.

But we started out as small children.

You started out by carrying the wood in at night after school, and then gradually as you got older, then you had to take care of the chickens and gather the eggs, you know?

And then you had to feed the sheep.

And then finally, as you got older, you had to take care of the cows and milk the cows and, you know, it just sort of followed a chain based on skills and size and what needed to be done.

- As you look back upon growing up on a farm, how do you think it shaped your character?

- Well, work ethic was one.

It was just, we actually took pride in working and accomplishing something, and that meant whether it was a fact of preparing the soil to plant the corn, the seed.

And then when it came up, started to grow, you had to cultivate it and all the way to through to the fall when you harvested the corn, and you could see what you had accomplished.

And it sort of gave you a vision that everything I do has a season, whether I'm out trying to win new supporters for Metropolitan Ministries' cause.

There's this whole thing of planting the seed and cultivating the donor, and finally, asking for a harvest.

And just those simple principles that really helps me visualize what status I am with the community itself.

- Was religion and spirituality an important part of your family and community life, and what did it mean to you as you were young?

- It was, my mother the saint in the house.

My dad was not the devil, but I mean, he was this farmer, and he was out in the field, but my mother made sure that we all went to Sunday school, went to church, and rarely ever missed a Sunday and drive 10 miles into town.

And my father would go occasionally, but in the church, I learned to serve, to be aware of other people's needs, and then finally, ultimately, had a sense of calling, while I was involved in the life of the church.

- Now, after high school, you decided not to go to college, you actually worked.

You had a number of years where you were working.

Why did you make that decision and how did this period in your life influence where you ultimately ended up?

- Well, I worked for a farmer, and a very successful farmer.

Was a good mentor about business and continuing.

He and I just worked like terrific partners and I had no interest in the farm.

I benefited nothing, but through my salary, what he paid me.

But I'll tell you, he and I never had a cross word either way ever in three and a half years.

And he empowered me, he made me feel like I could go and do anything on that farm.

And he taught me and showed me things to do that would help the farm grow better crops, the herd to produce more milk and all that stuff.

And so, I took pride in that, and that was a learning curve, although I knew I didn't wanna milk cows the rest of my life.

- So, at the age of 22, you decided to go to college.

You went to Asbury College in Kentucky, am I right?

- Right.

- Did you know what you were gonna study at that point in time?

- When I went to college, I worked inside, did some chores for in the dormitory, and I'll make a few bucks a month.

But when I got to seminary, I carried a full load for three years in a row.

And two years I worked at United Parcel from 11:00 to 02:00 every night and came home, took a full load in seminary, and then pastored two rural churches in Kentucky on the weekends and graduated in three years, which was as soon as you could graduate.

So, I was afraid of failing when it came to scholastics.

So, I studied and worked pretty hard.

- Did becoming a minister, did preaching come naturally to you?

- I don't know if it was natural.

I was used to talking to the cows and the pigs and the sheep and the chickens.

And matter of fact, it was interesting when I had this sense of calling, I remember going to my home little church one day, and of course, the church was always unlocked and still is to this day, they don't lock the door.

And I went up into the pulpit and I just thought, well, it'll just come out.

Well, it didn't just come out.

But when I got to seminary, of course, you take preaching classes and once you began to acquire the knowledge and the theology and things that you know, and you have to interpret and communicate to the people, then it's a calling.

You have a responsibility to communicate truth.

And so, it wasn't natural, but I enjoyed preaching.

I just never enjoyed the preparation.

- In 1970, you graduated, got your degree in theology, and you moved to Florida actually, you moved down to the Naples area.

- Right.

- And you had a church in North Naples, is that right?

- Yes.

- Tell us about having your first church and the leadership lessons that you developed there.

- When I got to Naples, it was a new congregation, three and a half years old.

And here I'm supposed to be the leader of a fledgling congregation, and I haven't led anything, but a herd of cows or sheep, you know?

But I learned enough about some key learnings, and that is to see myself as the leader, and figure that one out.

Don't let anybody else know too much that I didn't know what I didn't know, but you're the leader.

And I remember when I was about 30 years old and it dawned on me.

I had been there about two and a half years, it dawned on me, I have to be the leader here, you know?

They're not gonna take care of me.

I'm supposed to be sort of leading them.

And I began to do some studying and reading on leadership, and it was pretty meager at that time, but I began to develop and had confidence, you know, built confidence about what I was doing and I pastored the people, that was the key.

Just take care of the people in their need and they'll just cut you all kinds of slack, you know, while you're growing and learning.

And I learned that there, and those people were good to me.

- After seven years at a church in Naples, you then moved to Brooksville, - Right.

- several miles north.

And you became the minister at First Methodist Church in Brooksville, right?

- Right.

- When you got there, the congregation's about 750 people after five years, it doubled in size, am I right?

- Right.

- What was it about that experience that helped you continue to grow and allowed you to make this church so successful?

- When I got to Brooksville, and you walk in on 7, 800 people and say, "Here, I'm your leader."

Well, they say, you know, "Prove it," so to speak.

But one of the things that helped me in Brooksville was so many of the families that moved to that area were Midwesterners and I was Midwestern.

And I almost could use that language and that expression to my advantage of winning their confidence in their heart, and that really helped me.

And I could tell some, I'll call it stories of the soil or stories of the land and things like that were biblical, and they could all relate to it.

And the school experience, and yeah, it was a good connecting point.

- After five years in Brooksville at the First Methodist Church, you took a temporary assignment in Tampa at a little church-run center for people who were homeless or at risk of being homeless.

How did you find the organization when you got there?

What condition was it in and how did you see your role then?

- Well, first of all, it's interesting.

I didn't plan on being there long.

I committed to 11 months, but I came in and I just said this, "I'm gonna apply all of the skills I have, and we're gonna make some suffering disappear in some people's lives here."

So, I came in, but I was not, it was different, you know?

I was used to preparing a message and I was used to visiting sick people, and all of that, but here it was almost like a 09:00 to 05:00 job.

I wasn't used to that.

But the evening stuff became visiting churches, and visiting civic clubs, and getting the word out.

And so, that is how that changed.

I spent myself more scattered across the city here.

- So, when you got to Metropolitan Ministries, it had been around for 10 years, but you were the sole employee with a handful of volunteers and a flock that needed attention every day, and a flock that kept changing, new people with new needs.

- That's right.

And I was kinda like an evangelist, you know?

The crowd changes, but you don't change, and you have to keep conveying the message of hope.

And I did, I did the counseling, I bought the groceries, you know, I did all those things, but I needed to do those things to understand what it would take to put together a ministry of hope in the city and on North Florida Avenue.

- Even though you originally intended to be there for 11 months, what was it that made Metropolitan Ministries the right challenge for you that allowed you to stay there now 30 years and build it to what it's become?

- Well, I do think that I have some gifts, and one is a gift of listening to people in the community and learning and growing from them.

I am open to suggestions on how we might do things different or better and then try to implement those.

But I will say this, that I have never been afraid to ask for help for the poor.

Now, if it was asking for help for me, I can't do that.

But to ask for someone who has no real voice, I don't have a problem with that.

And that's what I feel I've been gifted in that way, and I've tried to use that gift to help hundreds and thousands of people.

- What were the things that you did to help you learn those important management lessons that have allowed you to grow it so successfully over the years?

- I think a lot of it actually, came from the board members, Bob Thomas and Jimmy Gray, just a host of laymen in this community that loved that work and wanted to see it prosper and were willing to invest in it, and then the community and the churches.

So, I was willing to learn that, tell me what I need to do here and what I need to do there.

Gordon Campbell was a wonderful mentor to me, and he shared with me how to build the board and how to pull the people in to help us.

So, I did a lot of listening, and then tried to implement things that they were suggesting for me.

So, I did learn, and I learned fast, because in the church, when you're pastoring a church, it's kind of like the flock comes to you.

I had to go to the flock, the community, and there were people who literally took me by the hand, so to speak, and introduced me to a lot of leaders in this community that gave me credibility, because of their role in the community.

And so, that was sort of the springboard to getting it going, but never dreamed that it would ever become what it is today.

- What has guided those decisions as far as the expansion is?

- Well, I think that I've tried not to introduce new things that did not somehow bring transformation to someone's life.

If this is not gonna transform someone's life, even considering the donor, or the volunteer, or the person we serve, if it doesn't have some type of life-changing opportunity that's for good and will help the greater community, then I'm not going to be a part of.

I mean, we could build a barn big enough to shelter every homeless person in the city.

You know, you could build a building big enough, but if you don't have the compassionate people and connections and the care that it takes, that will deliver transformation, then why would you raise that false hope by just putting 'em in a barn somewhere?

So, I'm not into treating it like cattle on a farm.

I'm into treating it more like higher education, or a hospital, or something where change can really take place.

- How do you see your leadership and your management skills and your style having evolved over the last 30 years?

- About 15 years ago, the light really went off in my mind and heart about leadership.

And I learned from a gentleman that I heard make a presentation in Chicago, and he said, "You are ultimately responsible for the development of your own leadership."

Well, whether or not you are, the point was it made me think.

And he just said, "You gotta read every book you can.

You gotta listen to every tape you can.

You gotta go to every conference you can."

You know, not everyone, but you've gotta do enough of this that all of a sudden you say, "If I'm lacking in some way, it's my responsibility to do it."

There's a lot of things that I can't do and I don't try to do anymore.

There are people a lot more skilled than me, and so, I try to harness those people and let them fulfill their dream and their vision, and I sort of direct traffic now.

- What role does your faith play in the way you lead and the way you manage?

- Well, I have to tell you, and this is a statement I trust of humility for the right reason, and that is prayer.

Actually, prayer is something that is almost on my lips at all times.

That doesn't mean I'm good, it just means I need a lot of wisdom and understanding and patience and knowing that what we're doing is the right thing, and using energies and resources in the right way.

- Metropolitan Ministries is getting ready to undertake a very, very big expansion in 2012.

Tell us about that.

- Well, it's been 25 years since we really added any capacity, and we've added a lot of staff, we've added a lot of volunteers, and the community has grown itself.

Plus, the number of families that needing our help has grown.

So, we decided that we needed to more than double our capacity, because you already have one CEO and you got a financial officer.

You don't need a bunch of those.

What we need to do is be able to serve twice as many people, and it turns out that we'll be able to do it with only about 25% more resources than we currently use to run what we have there.

So, it's a very, just from a business point of view, it's a very wise thing to do.

- What does servant leadership mean to you?

- It just means that you do before you tell others what to do.

You demonstrate where your heart is, and you actually, serve as a leader not to be recognized as a leader, but to witness that there is a right way of going about in a humble way of touching people's lives and being a positive influence on young people.

- Morris, I'd like to thank you for being our guest today.

- Well, thank you, Geoff.

It means a lot to me to have this forum in which we can communicate what a wonderful community we have and how they all come together and accomplish all the good things, and you're part of telling that story.

- I appreciate that.

- Thank you.

- If you'd like to see this interview again or any of our other CEO profiles in the Suncoast Business Forum archives, you can go to wedu.org/sbf.

Thanks for joining us for the Suncoast Business Forum.

(suspenseful music) (suspenseful music continues) (bright music)