Marilyn and I often pass each other walking in the mornings. She comes out her front door and turns to the right going up the hill as I am coming down from my home. Sometimes we only wave and smile as I am always listening to something on headphones and distracted. Other times I stop and briefly ask how she is doing. She doesn’t have the same compulsion to make this time well spent with podcasts or NPR. She simply walks her course every morning in silence. Her husband, Frank, died several years ago after a long bout with cancer and a host of other complications. Even though she now…

Many years ago, a friend and I set up a new fund for our giving to ministries. While both of us had our favorites, we wanted to do something other than simply write checks to those select few. We started looking for a way to create categories for our giving, thinking that would give us some guidance and diversity. After a search, we landed on Matthew 25 and the parable of the sheep and the goats. It looked like there were six acts of showing mercy (hunger, water, strangers, clothing, sickness, prison) that made the eternal difference and, wanting to be on the right side, we chose to name the…

I’ve made light of country and western music for as long as I can remember. The titles like “I’ll Be Over You When The Grass Grows Over Me” are catchy but embarrassing. As well, it seemed so blatantly hypocritical to sing about carrying on Saturday night at the honkytonks while the next track would be “Just A Little Talk With Jesus Makes It Right.”  The world of country music is filled with paradox and contradictions. But my opinion has begun to change after listening to “The King of Tears,” the latest episode of Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast, “Revisionist History.” On the way home from Dallas I listened to Malcolm discuss the reasons…

Two times in the Gospels the disciples are caught asking who will be great in the Kingdom. It’s not a bad question. In fact, asking questions about ambition is something I encourage younger people to be serious about for how we define greatness sets the course for our lives. What does interest me most is the differences in the two times – three years apart – it is asked in the Gospel of Luke. The first is in the early days of the ministry where the words tell us the disciples are having a debate among themselves. It’s not an argument. It’s almost a good-natured competition. They are going at each other about greatness…

I have a couple of quirks – or so I am told.  I never read ahead of time about places I am going to visit.  I don’t do travel guides or look for the best places to eat or even the history of the country.  But when I return home I will buy several books about a country or a city to learn more about what I saw and even what I did not.  Then there is this.  I have never fished in my life but I have read eight books on fly fishing.  Even though I think it is the most elegant sport of all and I love hearing…

I believe there has been a good deal of misinformation floating around for years about the idea of ministering to donors. I am not arguing with the overall concept of caring for people – just with a couple of assumptions about what ministry is to donors. First it assumes donors (especially major ones) need a particular kind of attention due to their circumstances. Those donors are typically described as being isolated, lonely, spiritually dry, weighed down with family problems that include shaky marriages, troubled kids and misplaced priorities. There are more, but these seem to be the most common. I have heard these circumstances described in generous detail in fundraising…

In the last 10 years the term “exit strategy” has become common and typically means how a private equity investor or founding entrepreneur plans to sell their investment in a company they created. Ideally, they leave with a considerable profit, but everyone is told well in advance that one way or the other they will be leaving at a defined point. The advantages are obvious in that from the start all of the other investors and owners can prepare for their leaving. The transfer of risk and reward is orderly and well thought out. All the players are prepared for the change. As I’ve been driving on all sorts of…

Earlier this summer I was hurrying to a meeting with our Chief of police and was pulled over and given a ticket for going too fast through a reduced speed zone. Yes, I did think about mentioning why I was speeding but thought better of it. So I found myself this week in a defensive driving class making sure the citation didn’t affect my insurance or driving record. Even though there is the option of taking the class online, I am glad I chose the live version. Things have changed since the last time I did defensive driving. It is now done by an instructor who works for “Comedy Guys…

Part of the appeal of Rod Dreher’s book, The Benedict Option, is his invitation to a time before the modern world conspired to eliminate the continuity of more tight-knit communities with shared beliefs. Instead, what we have today is what Zygmunt Bauman calls “liquid modernity” to describe a way of life in which change is so rapid that no social institutions have time to solidify. The most successful people nowadays are flexible and rootless; they can live anywhere and believe anything. The ancient ways are irrelevant. I thought about that this week while preparing to teach on Psalm 78: “I will open my mouth with a parable; I will utter…

I hear a growing amount of conversations about where people are in the various stages of their lives. It’s good to have a general framework – especially when wrestling with something that otherwise would be either a surprise or make you think you are alone. Some stages are predictable, natural and shared by many. Erik Erikson identified eight stages of life beginning with our earliest being whether or not to trust or mistrust and our last being the choice to develop wisdom. Shakespeare described the seven ages of man from childhood to mere oblivion. I especially like a sampling of “Dominant Questions in the Decades of Our Lives” by Gordon MacDonald:…