One of the more useful powers granted to foundations is that of convening. It’s not forcing people to show up or collaborate but inviting people to a useful exchange of ideas and stories, such as the conversation we are hosting tomorrow with Michael Wear, author of Reclaiming Hope. Preparing to talk with Michael started me thinking about who I would like to invite to future conversations to share of the stories and experiences that have shaped us. If you examine the trunk of a tree when it has been cut down, it is the rings that tell the story of its life – the years of growth and struggle. The times…

Someone once wrote that freedom has an expiration date, and this may prove true. A little more than 200 years passed between the time Moses delivered Israel from slavery in Egypt to the time the Israelites had to choose between trusting God or returning to slavery by giving up their unique form of government. Their leader, Samuel, was an old man, and both of his choices for successors were corrupt. His sons had “turned aside after dishonest gain and accepted bribes and perverted justice,” and the people were rightfully concerned about leadership once Samuel was gone. They knew they didn’t want his sons, but what was their option? With little thought they demanded a king. It’s not wrong to desire…

After my father died we were sorting through his papers and found a stock certificate for 100 worthless shares. They were all that was left of what had once been his retirement plan. He had worked for the company for years when he was young and had such confidence in the leadership that he put virtually everything he had in the stock. All his plans for retirement were based on his belief in that single corporation. For a time it was well-placed trust and the value soared. Then the leadership changed, the value evaporated, and Dad was left with a future that was nothing like what he had planned. I vaguely remember that…

If you read biographies, you notice a pattern that is frequent in the lives of many great leaders. Early success and then years of obscurity and hardship – even rejection and exile. Two good examples are Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln. Child stars and prodigies often experience the same. Writers and artists may show promise and then languish for decades before creating anything again. One-hit wonders are common in music, as are novelists who cannot produce a second best-seller. Sometimes circumstances change beyond their control. Silent movie star Rudolph Valentino’s voice was not suitable for movies with sound. Yasha Heifitz was brilliant as an untaught prodigy but being taught how to read music…

For his Easter column, “President Carter, Am I a Christian?”, The New York Times journalist Nick Kristof interviewed former President Jimmy Carter. In the column Nick asked, “With Easter approaching, let me push you on the Resurrection. If you heard a report today from the Middle East of a man brought back to life after an execution, I doubt you’d believe it even if there were eyewitnesses. So why believe ancient accounts written years after the events?” While Jimmy Carter’s response was he did, in fact, believe in the physical Resurrection as well as the virgin birth, it was the question that puzzled me. Not because Nick asked it or because it implied that he does not believe in the Resurrection. (Actually, if he did not believe in…

It’s interesting how one slip of the tongue can fuel an outsized reaction. Because many people are reading the appointments of the Trump administration to mean leadership is being selected with the implicit agreement that their role will be to either downsize or even eliminate the work of those departments (like Betsy DeVos in Education and Rick Perry in Energy), it was no surprise that Mick Mulvaney’s slip that funding for Meals on Wheels through the Community Development Block Program may not be justified sent tremors through the nonprofit world.  It did not matter that he confused things by not making it clear that most of the funding for the 5,000 Meals on Wheels organizations around the country does not come through…

Many ministries and nonprofits have a section on their website for interviews and articles about them in the media. As you can guess, all are positive and speak in glowing terms about the work and impact of the ministry. You might wonder why The Gathering doesn’t have a tab like that. Honestly, it is because most of our press is not what you like to have said, and until now I’ve been reluctant to share any of that. From the start, we have been labeled as shadowy and secretive. Conservative evangelical magazines have questioned our being fully Christian, while left-leaning publications have skewered us for being intent on eradicating every belief but…

On a hill above the lake of Galilee there is a chapel that sits on the site from which Jesus delivered the Beatitudes. As a boy, I had to memorize the whole passage from the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew, so I can still recite most of them. As I sat there going over each one again, I thought how idealistic they are compared to much of the common-sense exhortation we hear today about leadership and how to be a winner. Frederick Buechner put it best for me: Jesus saved for last the ones who side with heaven even when any fool can see it’s the…