In the wonderful, compelling, memoir “Same kind of different as me” a rich art dealer is nudged by his simple, sincere, servant wife to begin serving the evening meal once a week at the Union Gospel Mission in Fort Worth, Texas.

His wife Deborah has had vision about a poor man rising to lead the city. When a homeless man named Denver shuffles eyes down through the meal line, she realizes with a start, “That’s him!” She encourages Ron, her reluctant husband, to befriend Denver.

It takes months because the distance between their universes is light years.

Denver was born and raised a sharecropper in Louisiana, a modern slave. He could not read or write, never attended school a day in his life. He never even knew there was such a thing as a school that he was missing.

One day when he was 23 he just left the plantation, still in debt to “the man” for the clothes on his back and for rent on his two-room, windowless shack that had no plumbing or electricity. He caught a slow freight train to California.

With the help of hobos and homeless, he learned to survive by panhandling, or feigning a “hamburger drop” in which he would scrounge through a garbage can for a hamburger he’d put there earlier. When a likely “donor” approached, he would pull the burger out and start eating, a revolting sight that compelled the approaching mark to say, “Don’t eat that! Here is some money, get a real meal.”

He eventually migrated back to Fort Worth where Ron, over time, reached out him. They went to eat, shared coffee, even toured some art museums and hung out. Street wise and guarded, Denver finally asked Ron, “What do you want from me?”

Ron said he simply wanted Denver to be his friend. Denver asked for a couple days to think about it.

When next they sat over coffee, Denver said he’d learned of a curious white man’s practice of fishing. While a poor black man is proud of everything he catches, takes it home and makes it a meal, he’s learned that white men sometimes throw their catch back into the water. They call it “catch and release.”

If Ron was interested in a “catch and release” friendship in which he reaches out to secure Denver’s friendship, and releases Denver once he’s gained it, then Denver was not interested in being a friend.

If, however, Ron was interested in a forever friend – a mutual, supportive friendship through thick and thin – then he would like to be Ron’s friend.

It is a moving scene in a riveting, true story.

Denver recognized that some who strive to “do good” might be crossing social barriers to notch a credit, or gain a good feeling, only to realize the energy and commitment required to maintain a friendship across boundaries is too great. And they release it.

Are we willing to cross social barriers to “catch” a soul for Christ, but then “release” the person after we’ve witnessed to him or her because the burden of actually being a friend is more than we intended?

While North America creaks in the throes of a seeping, penetrating cold snap rare in its intensity, sights like a frozen pond in North Carolina push me down the zip line of memory to my childhood playing hockey on ponds in Wisconsin.

Every culture has rites of passage and one of them for me was opening a gift to find my first pair of ice skates on a Christmas morning. I couldn’t wait to slip on my coat and boots, slosh through the snow, slide under the fence and slog over to the wide spot in the creek to teach myself to skate. How hard could it be?

My parents stayed in the warm house and simply urged me to be sure the ice was thick enough to support my sisters and me. Well, how thick is safe?

And how do I determine thickness?

With an ax we chopped a hole close enough to the edge that we could leap to solid ground if the ice was too thin. Hmm, seemed safe. After a few tentative steps toward the middle, listening for ominous cracking, then some cautious jumps up and down without falling through, we were certain.

I discovered it is very difficult to stand up on ice skates. But my ankles lasted long enough to encourage me and we later frequented a much larger pond. Some winters it would snow during the first deep freeze, leaving the surface crunchy and worthless for skating.

On good years my buddies Dennis, Jay and I would shovel off a large area, tie magazines around our shins to protect them from whacks and play some hockey. Usually we were so tired from shoveling that the eventual hockey game was short.

When other kids found our snow-free patch of pond, they quickly gathered to take advantage, a theft of our labor we greatly resented.

If the ice was really thick we could use a tractor and blade to clear rink space. One winter our neighbor took us onto the pond in his car. We spun around totally out of control – but relatively safe – sliding effortless and quietly across the flat, clear ice.

In the winter of the really big freeze, it was far too cold to be outside for anything other than emergencies. My dad drove a fuel truck then for the local farmer’s cooperative. Of course, people were running out of heating fuel faster than normal and way ahead of schedule. So dad suffered through enormously long days in -50 degree wind chill.

I’m amazed his truck would start on those mornings. He kept it sheltered between sheds but the engine still screeched and complained when asked to turn over. Lubrication hardened in the oil pan, so metal rubbed metal briefly, creating the ruckus.

Temperatures like that freeze your nose hairs and crystallize your breath into icicles on your eyelashes. It’s literally too cold to snow.

But when it did snow we wrapped chains around the tires for traction. Snowplows shoved snow off the roads, filling up ditches. When the ditches were full snow blowers spewed snow over the top creating walls of heavy drifts. Driving was as if through a tunnel and intersections became exercises in risk management.

Of course the snow of memories is always deeper; the temperatures always colder; circumstances always more dire. My dad remembers working for a dairyman who could not afford a milk bucket. So dad had to ferry milk from the barn to the dairy one handful at a time; uphill; both ways.

I suspect our children’s eventual memories of how they survived the deep freeze of 2015 will grow with time and fill their children with awe over how they foiled fear and fate and survived in the face of all odds.

When a man who bought a house for the value of its unpaid taxes noticed that the previous owner’s car remained on the property, he asked Sandy Run, SC deputies to investigate.

Inside, they discovered the body of Mary Sue Merchant, 74. She had died of natural causes – 18 months earlier.

Civic and utility workers had done their duty. They’d cut off her electricity for non-payment. I’m sure they sent her a notice before they did so. Then, they sold her property at auction when her taxes went unpaid.

But no one talked to her.

Merchant was a widow, had no children and had lost touch with her sister long before. Her husband – who died years earlier – was a retired prison guard who feared retribution from prisoners, so they lived quietly and reclusively.

The awful sadness is, as the sheriff said in a 2009 Associated Press story, “This lady had absolutely nobody who cared enough to check on her.”

Earlier that same year a 93-year-old man froze to death inside his Bay City, MI home. Bay City Electric Light & Power had recently installed a device to restrict Marvin Schur’s electricity use because the chronically late payer owed about $1,000. The device would shut off electricity when the bill reached a certain point and could only be reset by the homeowner. No one told Schur it had been installed and he slowly froze to death in his unheated home.

A neighbor who found Schur dead said his windows were covered with ice – on the inside.

Investigation later showed he had money to pay the bills. He just hadn’t.

A surveillance camera video a few years ago became a YouTube hit when it showed 78-year-old pedestrian Angel Torres struck by a car and flipped upside down while trying to cross a street in Hartford, Conn. He was left severely injured and motionless in the middle of the road as cars passed and bystanders watched. One motorcycle driver circled, looked, and drove off. A few drivers called 911, but no one stopped to help.

Have we become so calloused, so self-absorbed that people live and die in quiet desperation all around us with no one even knowing if they’re dead? Or if they ever lived?

You cannot be responsible for the world. But you can take the initiative to know your neighbors, their names, their situations, whether or not they have someone who cares if they live or die.

That could be a good senior adult ministry for your church: to create a daily calling circle for people who live alone, to check in on them, let them know someone cares, to help if the utilities get cut off or the cupboard is bare.

One day you will call and no one will answer. But your friend will have lived every day knowing she was not alone.

My route to work for several years took me down the same road at about the same time every morning. And, more often than not, I would see the same woman, power walking down the sidewalk in my direction.

I knew she was out there to exercise, so I didn’t offer her a ride.

When Blake Pollock of Rochester, MI kept seeing the same man walking along the road on which Pollack was commuting to his bank job – no matter the weather – he eventually offered him a ride. He learned that James Robertson was walking to work – a commute of 21 miles each way. Daily.

Pollack took Robertson’s story to the Detroit Free Press, which published it front page. Here’s a man working for just over $10 an hour, who hasn’t missed a day of work in years, even after his car gasped its last years ago. He could not afford to replace it so he walks, catches a bus, and walks to work 21 miles each way, five days a week from areas that no metro Detroit bus serves.

When his 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. shift is over, he hikes seven miles to catch the last bus for a ways, then walks the last five miles home in the dark.

After the story of Robertson’s grueling commute appeared in the newspaper, a 19-year-old Wayne State University student started a crowd-funding site to raise $5,000 to get Robertson a car. Within three days donors inspired by Robertson’s dedication contributed more than $210,000. Plus two dealers each offered a new car.

Now, instead of saving money for a new pair of work boots, Robertson is weighing car options, and he has money for maintenance and insurance as long as he’ll need it.

This is a rich story on many levels.

First, it demonstrates the power of a story. We may think people are getting harder and more isolated and tribal. And we are. But a powerful story still moves us.

Use stories to communicate. Whether you’re preaching, disciplining a child, giving a speech, training an employee, extract a story from your experience or reading, or listening, to demonstrate your point.

If you are leading an annual giving campaign, put a person up front to tell her story of sacrificial giving and the blessings that follow. I still remember a couple at my church who told of selling their dream house so they could lower their cost of living and be more generous. Our annual giving reached an all time high after that.

Second, this story illustrates that money follows the information flow. Robertson’s could still be walking for the next ten years if no one knew his situation. What are you doing to tell your story? It doesn’t just happen.

Third, the story of James Robertson illustrates the importance of having and supporting the mediums through which we receive our stories; be they the newspaper, NPR, publications of your favorite organizations or reader supported web sites like my favorite baptistnews.com.

Fourth, Robertson’s story is a heart-warming reminder that our self absorbed, insular, tribal society can still respond with a generous heart.

If you have a project to get done, money to raise, people to help – tell their story.

‘It was different because it was better’

It takes more than a tithing sermon from Malachi 3:10 to create an effective annual stewardship campaign in your church.

An effective effort requires a major time commitment to plan, enlist volunteers, establish committees, design materials, conduct meetings and prepare sermons. Ministers serious about issues larger than raising a budget – such as teaching stewardship and leading a congregation to grow in generosity – must do all of this while keeping all their other ministry plates spinning.

This is where I can help you.

Two pastors of churches that recently conducted highly successful annual stewardship campaigns utilizing the expertise of a development consultant confessed that they could not do it all.

Davis Chappell, pastor of the 8,000-member Brentwood United Methodist Church, realized he had “so many wheels turning” in his second year at the megachurch that “I really needed someone I could count on who could help us.”

“As a pastor, you say you can do that in addition to your other duties, but you cut corners,” Chappell said. “The more you have someone who can take some of that off you the more successful you’re going to be.”

Chappell led the church’s annual giving campaign the previous year himself and saw growth. “We could do it ourselves,” he said. “But we’re stronger when we have a consultant who comes in to help.”

Bruce Cochran, pastor of 250-member First Baptist Church of Seymour, IN agrees with Chappell that the professional help they received increased their effectiveness, developed leaders, freed them for regular pastoral duties and resulted in significant financial gains to support church ministries.

Cochran said the difference in conducting their campaign internally as they have done, or in using a consultant “was polish, professionalism, efficiency and comprehensiveness.”

“It was different because it was better,” Cochran said. “It was communicated better, participation was better, and it was not just the pastor standing up and saying we should do this.”

First Baptist’s priority was to return to the place where it could again devote 20 percent of its income to missions – an historical standard the church had to back away from during the recession. Results were so positive the church is again giving to missions at that generous level.

The Brentwood church also gives missions high priority and dovetailed one of its satellite churches into its annual campaign effort. The benefit of using a consultant, especially one who has been a minister, is “pastoral experience,” Chappell said. “He’s not going to do anything to embarrass us. He brought us a pattern and a stick-to-it-iveness.”

Chappell said stewardship is about trust, first an expression of trust in God and then of trust by the donor in their leadership.

“That’s a blessed burden,” he said. “We’ve got to live up to that.”

During their annual campaign the church did not emphasize a financial goal or the need to fund a budget. “We pointed out that the stronger our generosity the deeper our outreach,” Chappell said.

The result was a growth in commitments of “roughly 340” new giving units and an $800,000 increase in committed gifts. “That is “really significant” for us, he said.

The satellite church, which was conducting its campaign at the same time, saw an increase of 65 percent – or $100,000 – which was “enormous.”

“They had never done an operating campaign,” Chappell said. “We are very, very excited that our daughter outpaced us.”

Chappell encourages pastors to address stewardship as a spiritual discipline. Besides, he said, “everybody’s talking about money” and the conversation is better directed from the pulpit than in the parking lot.

“The only thing worse than a church that always talks about money is one that never talks about money,” he said. “I’ve never known a person who accidently tithed. Discipleship is not an accident, it’s an intention.”

In Seymour, Cochran originally was planning a capital campaign but he liked the idea of “getting a head start” by doing an annual giving emphasis first. TCP consultants are finding many churches electing to teach generosity through annual stewardship before beginning a capital campaign.

After an outstanding success in their annual giving effort, First Baptist held a Legacy Campaign and secured $600,000 in planned gifts through which they will fund long-term physical plant and mission needs.

 

For a no-obligation conversation, call me at (919) 607-4991 and we’ll discuss the possible.

 

As a cyclist, I’m always aware of the wind. Thinking of the wind today reminded me of living in Oklahoma where a constant, ceaseless wind never leaves you alone.

Like a pushy neighbor, wind squeezes uninhibited and uninvited through the slightest crease in your front door, obtrusive, obnoxious, constant, leaving behind a layer of dust, like empty bottles and potato chips after a loud party.

Leaning against wind on the soccer field, it snaps and flaps my pants legs like an old mother beating her rugs.

Short, stubby trees lean chronically north, backs to the strong south wind like bent old men looking for a seat. Trees don’t develop long torsos, don’t’ extend long arms into the sky. Trees keep their arms down and hands close to their breasts.

I know it’s windy in Oklahoma because one day it stopped blowing and I fell down.

I was told that in the Dust Bowl days people hung wet sheets over closed windows. Yet they still found dust – in their refrigerators! Today Oklahomans just run a dust rag over the counter and tell the kids to button up.

Face the wind and its roar against your ears and blocks other sounds. Like a hot, dry towel it wraps itself around your head and draws until our face feels like the peeling separated from yesterday’s orange.

Your face shrinks into a permanent scowl. Your lips curl inside protectively, and squint against the onslaught of dust.

Through downtown buildings devil wind lurks against the wall and jumps onto the sidewalk to flip up a frilly dress, then roars down the street, scattering papers and blowing off hats.

Firemen say the wind evaporates moisture so fast that prairie grass can be tinder dry an hour after a soaking rain.

Cyclists get so excited by a tail wind they must take care not to ride it so far in an hour they cannot return in a day, struggling against their benefactor gone bad.

Oklahoma’s wind is bare knuckled and hairy chested, unencumbered by any subtlety. It clings to you like a too friendly dog or an ugly date. It grinds off tooth enamel and makes contact lenses torture.

Big trucks blasting through the wind are a blessing to other drivers. Although empty semi trailers have been capsized by wind on the Arizona desert, you don’t think about that when you struggle up behind a moving air dam like a big truck.

Wind is buffeting you, drowning out the radio, and you’re pulling against it like a swimmer against the tide. Suddenly the truck’s vacuum pulls you into its protective pouch and your world grows silent, smooth and easy.

Oklahoma wind gets to newcomers. They’re not used to wind flipping their car hood against their windshield when they check the oil, or chasing their wigs across the yard, or searching the neighborhood for their trash cans and small dogs.

We may not be Oklahoma wind rookies, but winds still catch most of us, sometime. A death, unwanted transfer, church conflict, downsizing, child’s problem or spouse’s health are all winds that can sweep us like tumbleweeds over barren plains.

You can roar in frustration and anger, throw up your hands, pull your hair and give up the ghost.

Me? I’m going to slide in behind a big truck.

All signs pointed to rain.

With work on a four-day summer schedule I was looking forward to a good long bike ride on Friday. But the newspaper said rain. The weather channel said rain. The computer said rain. My bunions said rain.

My primary weather monitor is the modern miracle of glass. I looked out the window and saw no rain. I saw squirrels falling all over themselves scrambling for access to the bird feeder; and I saw rabbits nibbling at the herb garden, but I saw no rain.

I waited and debated. I pondered and wondered. Should I ride and risk a soaking, or stay home and kill two hours wishing I’d gone?

Then I remembered: hey, rain only affects a bike’s handling, braking, traction and visibility, so I thought even if it rains, what could be the harm? I’m not going to melt. So off I went.

I enjoyed a great ride and stayed mostly dry. By the time it rained a little on me, I was close to home and the rain felt refreshing.

Of course, I was glad I took the chance. I stayed within a radius fairly close to home and had my phone with me in a plastic bag in case of a hard storm. So rain posed little risk, actually.

Do you live under threat of rain? Are you waiting for the next step, wondering if you should go back to school, change jobs, ask that girl out, try something new? You’d like to and if you were honest, you’d realize you’re killing a lot of time waiting for the answer to fall from the sky like summer hail.

People around you are the weather report, warning you, urging you to buy bread and milk and be on the road only if absolutely necessary.

You’re afraid failure might soak you so instead of anticipating success or even working as hard as you should at whatever you’re doing now, you fall into weather report mode; listening to everyone else; paralyzed by opinion; rotting by option.

You can lose a lot of sunny summer days that way.

What’s the worst that could happen? Do you risk failure? Yes. But failure is just your first step to your next starting point. Don’t let the threat of rain keep you from trying.

I attended a statewide meeting of Baptists several years ago felt like I needed to be watching ceiling tiles and checking out cracks in the floor. Speakers spouted lots of catastrophic imagery.

As the seasonal Christmas tune says, “The weather outside was frightful.” It was constant rain one day and blow-me-down wind the next. But those natural conditions were nothing compared to the forecast from inside the building.

A seminary president said an earthquake had occurred in the Southern Baptist Convention and a tsunami is on the way. A pastor said, “When God wants to do an impossible task, He takes an impossible man and crushes him.”

Then he said God wants us to be “broken before the Lord.”

Other speakers implied that unless we are crushed, broken, humbled, living in dangerous places, bruised and trampled we will not be in condition for God to use.

Yikes.

I got the sense that I need to be like Private Beetle Bailey after Sarge has beaten him into an unrecognizable pulp.

But I knew what everyone was talking about. Until we are willing to deconstruct the “self” we’ve so arduously built, we’re not very usable to God. We’ll get in the way because we have our own agendas and are subject to our own self-constructed limitations.

God does not want to break us for no good reason. He just wants to crack the shell to get to the nut. Or for you northerners, he wants to crack the ice to get to the fish.

We spend a lot of time painting, patching and primping the veneer to make ourselves presentable to God. But He’s most interested in what’s hiding beneath. If He needs to take a whack at that shell, He will.

It might be better for you to start the deconstruction ahead of time.