“God gives a man riches, property and wealth so that he lacks nothing that his heart desires, yet God does not enable him to enjoy the fruit of his labor.  Instead, someone else enjoys it!” Ecclesiastes 6:2 My first reaction to the “Giving Pledge” by Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates was mixed. On the one hand I was encouraged to see so many who had spent their lives accumulating wealth  power and influence making pledges to give the majority of their assets to philanthropy in their lifetime. I don’t know if it was a reaction to the wild media response or the sheer flamboyance of the venture that…

When I was young people would say to me "It must be difficult growing up in the shadow of your father." Yes it was. It was not until years later that I understood there is a difference between the "shade" of a father and the shadow. While there were struggles that were painful to us both about my being "Jr. ” the advantages gradually eclipsed the difficulties ” and today I am grateful for the shade of wisdom my father provided. Years ago I asked him to reflect on giving. While he had practiced giving all his life” I had never seen anything in writing. On one of our several…

I spent part of a weekend with 95 young “social entrepreneurs” at a conference in Austin Texas. They were all part of Echoing Green an organization funded by General Atlantic founder Charles Feeney. Through a two-year fellowship program Echoing Green identifies individuals with ideas for social change and provides them with seed money and strategic support to help them launch new organizations. Since 1987 ” Echoing Green has invested $33 million to help nearly 600 social entrepreneurs create positive change in more than 40 countries. Their graduates have raised more than $1 billion in additional funding.  As I sat in on conversations – they favor peers over outside experts –…

"Troy went into debt and bought his new equipment because he didn't want to be held back by demanding circumstances…He was young and strong and ambitious. He wanted to be a star…When it came time to plan for next year wishing them to be friends and eventual partners before Athey would die and Troy would become the farm's farmer Athey walked Troy over the sod ground that was to be broken for row crops showing him the outlines of the plowlands and where the backfurrows were to run…Such knowledge ought to have passed from Athey to Troy as a matter of course in the process of daily work and talk. And…

The author pastor and speaker Gordon MacDonald was in Tyler this weekend but I didn’t get to see him because we were both busy. He was leading a retreat and I was helping out with a session on the topic of ethics for a local civic group of young professionals. However we had an email exchange to catch up with our lives since the last time we saw each other ” and I reminded him of the powerful influence his book The Life God Blesses had on me years ago. One thing almost always leads to another” ” and our conversation made a connection in my mind between his opening…

The author pastor and speaker Gordon MacDonald was in Tyler this weekend but I didn’t get to see him because we were both busy. He was leading a retreat and I was helping out with a session on the topic of ethics for a local civic group of young professionals. However we had an email exchange to catch up with our lives since the last time we saw each other ” and I reminded him of the powerful influence his book The Life God Blesses had on me years ago. One thing almost always leads to another” ” and our conversation made a connection in my mind between his opening…

The new executive director of the Veritas Forum David Hobbet came by the office this week and I had a chance to get to know him. In the course of the conversation we talked about the role of the board for a nonprofit and I shared with him the expectations and design of the board of The Gathering. Our board is a bit unusual in that the board is composed of seven couples – not just men and women but families. I described to David what we call the Four F’s of board membership. These are the four characteristics of our board I proposed in 1996 when the original board chair Jack…

“A wise person should have money in his head but not in his heart.” Jonathan Swift One of the earliest scandals around insider trading involved Ivan Boesky. While many have forgotten him he lives on through the one quote attributed to him – and his being the basis for the character of Gordon Gekko (played by Michael Douglas) in the film Wall Street: “Greed is good.” It was one of those unforgettable (and maybe unforgiveable) lines that summed up an era in one way but signaled the advent of another that was more irresponsible and harmful than even his own. In some ways Boesky was merely a precursor – or…

When I read Sarah Pulliam Bailey’s post last week about the funding crisis at Books & Culture  I had two immediate and opposite reactions. First was the saying I keep on the wall over my desk “When The Horse Is Dead Dismount.”  Second was “Too Good To Fail.” I’ve bounced back and forth between them all weekend. It’s not quite like the tension of conflicting opinions about whether or not to bomb Syria but in my mind it is an important moment. While I might agree in part with Gregory Wolfe’s analysis that “the religious culture of North America is playing a role in the current financial challenges faced by…