Rite of passage: A fresh trust
One of the things I have taught my students is that each one needs two mentors: one living and one who has passed on. I have had both. My living mentor was Avery Willis, a well-known name among Baptists worldwide. For some reason, Avery picked me to travel with him to teach MasterLife, a very popular discipleship process. He told me never to call it a “program,” because a program has a beginning and end; discipleship is a process, and...
Rite of Passage: Honk if you love Jesus
I was born and raised in the state of Missouri; our state is called the Show Me State. We got that name because in the early days, we Missourians were rural farmers, and we didn’t cotton to all that highfalutin’, slick, double-tongued city folk talk. So the bottom line was to put up or shut up; just “show me.” Now the state of Missouri is a beautiful place, and we have a lot of caves—over 6,400. I think the only state that has more...
Rite of Passage: Preparing a Place
I have lots of friends who take their grandchildren to Disneyland or Disney World. They take each grandchild, one by one, on a memory trip there at about the time of their ninth birthday. They tell me about the memories they have made on these special journeys. I think this is a great idea, but my wife and I don’t have the financial means for it. And at the age I’ll be when my grandsons turn 9, I don’t know if I want to chase them...
Rite of Passage: $5 Dilemma
When I was growing up, my family wasn’t poor, but we used to eat cornflakes with a fork to save milk. Even though we lived somewhere between upper poor and lower middle-class, my parents always had enough to provide us with a summer vacation. I have written about our vacations before because we usually got lost, and each picture had the same word written on it: “somewhere.” “Look at this picture, it was taken ‘somewhere in Colorado,’...
Rite of passage: Weird foods
We are deep into our recipe contest! If you haven’t sent yours in, please do so. The different ways you can connect with us are listed at the end of my column. Can you guess the No. 1 question I get asked as a missionary? It’s not “What’s it like living in a foreign country?” It’s not “What is the spiritual condition of the people you serve?” The No. 1 question is “What is the weirdest food you’ve eaten?” The answer to that question...
