Listen to “The Museum of Me” by Fred Smith   Two of our best friends are moving away so we had one last dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant. Among so much else, we talked about the emotional difficulty of deciding what to keep and what to throw away. We all face that when we move but there is something about what feels like the last move that makes everything seem more final and serious. It’s not just tossing trash and the normal detritus we’ve accumulated.  Much of that has been dispatched in previous moves but now we are down to what really matters. These are things that define us…

Listen to “Ties that Bind” by Fred Smith   In his address to the National Parliamentary Prayer Breakfast in Westminister Hall last month, Tim Keller tells the tragic story of the shooting of ten little Amish girls in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania in 2006. It is a remarkable account of forgiveness and grace on the part of the families. In fact, over half of those in attendance at the killer’s funeral were Amish. Three scholars of Amish history and culture were prompted to write the book “Amish Grace” that exposed many for the first time to the deeply rooted practice of forgiveness in Amish spirituality that is an everyday part of…

 Listen to “The Soil of Partial Truth” by Fred Smith   A humorous article on Christian music included this quote from Joe Bob Briggs: “Christian music is bad songs written about God by white people.” My friend, Steven Garber then at the Washington Institute and now at Regent College, messaged me back with a piece he and Charlie Peacock had done at the Art House in Nashville. It began with the question “Can you sing songs shaped by the truest truths of the universe but in a language that the whole world can understand?” In the course of our back and forth Steven passed along this observation from writer Walker Percy…

Listen to “The Beginning And The End” By Fred Smith   I have worked with a number of entrepreneurs over the years and there are a few common themes and characteristics in their lives. One of them is an extreme focus and a personal identification with projects. They start things, grow them, and then look for exit strategies. In fact, the exit strategy is built into the plan from the beginning. In non-profit work, there are very few exit strategies – especially for founders. A familiar and common characteristic of entrepreneurs founding ministries is, for a variety of reasons, they sooner or later start looking for other partners. Sometimes they…

Listen to “A Picture or a Thousand Words” by Fred Smith   Several years ago I read an article in the Boston Globe about research being done on the reasons people give and motivating them to give more. This week, ten years later, I found an update and new insights. “What we find is when people are thinking more deliberatively . . . they end up being less generous overall ” said Deborah Small an associate professor of marketing and psychology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Is it possible to be both generous and smart about it? A lot of donors would like to think so but new…

Listen to “Never That Far Apart” by Fred Smith.   In 1977, it was not common to hear a young man in his 30’s considering giving away a fortune.  But, there we were, Bob, Linda and me, all three of us in our thirties having dinner at Nieman Marcus in downtown Dallas, the flagship store, talking about just that. Seven years passed before we had dinner again but this time it was more than musing.  That same young man had decided to act on his intentions and invited me to join him in the adventure.  Who in their right mind would say no to that?  No one mentioned what great…