Search Results for: Friends and friends of friends

Sara and I are taking this week off to refresh, enjoy our children and grandchildren and some time with some dear friends we have known for 25 years. Before I go, I thought I would leave you with this. It is one of the most touching emails I received this year.

A few months ago we had a young couple who was visiting Los Angeles stay with us for a couple of days and really enjoyed their fellowship. One afternoon we went outside for a walk after it had been raining. When we got back to the house we found the young lady’s shoes were coated with mud on the bottom. As she took them off at the back door, I scooped them up so I could wash off the mud, knowing they were packing later in the day for an early flight out in the morning. Little did I know what God was doing in her through such a simple act. Here’s what she wrote me later:

It really was such a blessing to be with you guys for a couple of days and hang out. I think I shared once with you that I didn’t have a great dad growing up. He was very harsh, unloving and absent. One of my most frequent conversations with God is that he would just help me understand the love of a father. Since I didn’t get to experience the earthly kind, I sometimes have a hard time accepting/understanding the spiritual kind. God is pretty cool, because since I started talking to him about it, he’s placed some of the neatest people and visual examples of it in my life.

I know you weren’t even aware of it, but seeing what an awesome dad you are touched my heart deeply. The way you interacted with your daughter was especially impactingl to watch. I love how you’re kinda sassy with each other (I can really relate to that), yet it was so obvious how much you adore her. Julie was joking about you washing my shoes… but it actually meant a lot to me. I can only imagine what it meant to the disciples when Jesus washed their feet. It was honestly humbling to watch you wash my shoes, yet it was also a very powerful act of love. What a beautiful visual picture of how much father loves me.

And what’s so cool about you, is that you are just so genuine. I think that when we genuinely love the people in our life, others around us can not help but see God in that. It’s so freakin cool! So, thank you for just being you. Because of it, I now have a great understanding of father’s love.

I love her statement that genuineness resonates with people where pretense doesn’t. I think that’s pretty cool as well. It also points to one of the things I love most about this journey. God seems to work best when we’re least aware of trying to do something for him or have a specific impact on someone’s life. Maybe that’s what makes it genuine.

I wasn’t even aware that she was being touched so deeply. For me, I just saw some muddy shoes that needed to be cleaned so they would have enough time to dry before she needed to pack them. It was the simplest of actions and yet it profoundly touched someone. And what I like best, is that I was completely unaware of it at the time. For one who used to be a performer, who couldn’t do hardly anything without the conscious thought of what other people would think of me, this is a great joy and glorious freedom. What’s more, for all that performing, no one ever seemed to get touched like this.

Could it be that simply living alongside others and loving them will accomplish everything God wants to do through us? We don’t have to have the conscious agenda of doing something so others will be touched. In fact, maybe it is best that we don’t.

Reality wins! It always wins! Performances, are just that. It’s who you are when the lights are off and the crowd has gone home that makes all the difference.

Last night I received some photos taken during my time in Brazil and they brought back such warm memories of the people I grew to know over so brief a time. One of the best aspects of my travel is that I have friends all over the world. One of the worst is that I have friends all over the world that I never know when or if I’m going to see them again.

I loved the festive spirit, the humor, and the intense spiritual passion and hunger of the people I met there. This is a very religious country as far as Christianity goes, but most of these were paying a price to live and think outside the normal religious expectations and seek to find meaningful engagement with God and other brothers and sisters. For those that want a taste of my time there, I thought I’d include some of the pictures here. Enjoy.

Friday night through Sunday afternoon we held a retreat for some 200 people, some from great distances, to talk about living loved and loving others. It was also broadcast live on the Internet for those who couldn’t come. (I am in the red shirt with my back to the camera.)




But if you know me, you know I much more involved the interactions with people after meetings, over meals and in quiet conversations. The dialog, question and answer and sharing of insights was always rich with a hunger to know the truth rather than to simply find what was comfortable to believe.






Jalber (right) and Orlanda (left) graciously opened their hearts, home, and their churrasco (bbq) to me and others that wanted to visit when I was there. They have a delightful family and we all shared a farewell feast together the night before I left. Those are their grandchildren in the picture.


Vivian was my mouth and ears in almost all of the conversations I had. She was a delight and had a personality not unlike my daughter’s, which made it really fun to navigate the culture and to work through the language together to help communicate with the people.

Such incredible memories and joy! They all begged me to come back some day. We’ll have to see when that might happen…

I’m off to Brazil in the morning for a week of conferences down there. Never been to South America before, so this will be all new. Thought I’d leave you with this. I always enjoy finding powerful words and thoughts in unlikely places.

Recently professional golfing legend Lee Trevino was asked what is the greatest lesson he’s tried to pass on to his children. I loved his answer.

“One thing I’ve told them is that your word is your bond. That once you’ve lost your word, you’ve lost all your dignity. So when you tell someone that you’re going to do something, you do it. Regardless if it costs you. And it will cost you money sometimes, cost you time. But you gave them your word.”

I read that to Sara and lamented how few people live by that anymore. Everyone wants the freedom to make every decision new each day, even if their change of mind betrays the trust and love of others. I really don’t understand people who live that way. If people won’t abide by the simplest words of their own mouths how can any meaningful exchanges take place? Our society has concocted an entire legal system of contracts, lawyers, and courts, in hopes of getting people to stand by their word. But even that is a bit of a sham, because it may not count if you don’t sign a document or swear an oath. Like all systems it eventually becomes something to manipulate, rather than rely on for the truth.

That was one of my father’s bedrock lessons to me. The quality of your character rests in whether or not people can trust the words of your mouth. Even David talked about the one God loves “keeps his oath, even when it hurts.” (Psalm 15:4) Even Jesus sought to instill that in his followers: “And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. Simply let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one. (Matt 5:36-37)

How much clearer could Scripture be? If you don’t fulfill your promises when it hurts, then what good are they anyway? If you don’t respect your own words and promises, how can you expect other people to have any respect for you?

The two greatest betrayals in my life came because people wouldn’t follow through on promises they made, and refused any conversation that might have found a better way forward through any legitimate frustrations in their commitments. Interestingly enough both brothers who couldn’t justify their actions with any reasonable explanation resorted to the same lame line, “God told me to do this.” The fact that they refused any discussion of their decision tells me God didn’t. One thing I know about people who listen to God, it makes them more humble and open even to being wrong, not more arrogant, demanding and dark. Those who truly hear God are always willing to discuss, to listen and to care about those their decisions affect.

I agree with Lee Trevino, if you lose your word you lose your dignity. If you want to live in the power of friendships, let your yes be yes and your no be no. Even when your promises cost you something you didn’t expect, stay faithful to them anyway. God will do marvelous things out of your faithfulness even to your own hurt. And Jesus was right, the enemy has a field day where people deny that simple reality.

Looking through Parade Magazine on Sunday I saw this little question and answer:

Q I’m curious about what happened between Crystal Cathedral founder Rev. Robert H. Schuller and his son Robert A. Schuller. The younger Schuller no longer appears on the church’s Hour of Power Sunday telecast. Do he and his father still speak?—P.K. Sharpe, Tampa, Fla.

Apparently not. The family rift that caused the famed 83-year-old televangelist to remove his 55-year-old son last fall, about two and a half years after naming him as his successor as senior pastor of the California megachurch, seems deep and bitter. Leadership has passed to Robert H.’s daughter, the Rev. Dr. Sheila Schuller Coleman. Interestingly, the telecast is now led by one of several ministers, including Rev. Coleman and her father.

Now I’ve never been a fan of the whole mentality behind the Crystal Cathedral, but I nonetheless find it horrific that a father and son would end up no longer talking to each other over their differing views on whatever they think that fellowship should be doing. Is doctrine that important? Management style? Something else?

I know of nothing more powerful to destroy close friendships than religion or love of money. I’m always amazed how even families who profess God’s name can be torn apart over an issue of church management and end up distant and bitter. I feel bad for the Schuller’s and pray God will work a better reconciliation in their family and the wider body.

But it is an old story to be sure, but unless we put relationships of love ahead of every other consideration, even where we think we’ve been wronged by others, the body of Christ will continue to leave a wake of damaged and broken relationships in the world. A close brother and I got separated years ago. It remains one of the biggest regrets of my life, not just that the friendship ended, but that people weren’t willing to fight for the relationship against all enemies!

I’m sure glad God thought nothing more important than relationships of affection with his children and fought for it even putting his own life on the line. At the end of the day, that’s what has to come first with us too. The world has had enough division between brothers and sisters. It doesn’t need one more broken relationship.

I realize that isn’t always our choice, and despite our best efforts and our most passionate pleas, it only takes one person given to selfish ambition or vain conceit to throw away a friendship. Friendships are just too precious to toss away any one of them, so as much as it lies within me I’ll always fight for a friendship above anything else. I just that sometimes I realize I end up fighting alone.

As I was getting dressed this morning the news was playing in the background that included a story about last night’s Country Music Association Awards. One of the things that absolutely confounds me is our celebrity culture’s infatuation with itself. I know it is in part it is driven by the publishers, agents and producers to keep their products in the marketplace. These award shows are the way to give further shelf-life to books, records and movies already in the marketplace.

But it is more than that. I’ve brushed shoulders enough with many celebrities to note their constant fascination with themselves and their expanding circle of famous friends. Watching video clips of them fawning all over each other made me shake my head in sorrow this morning. They are so delighted with their own success they have no idea how out of touch with real life and real people they actually are.

That may be painting with a broad brush, and I do hope there are some genuine souls among the celebrities of our day, but my experience tells me otherwise. And I’m not saying that celebrities are bad people, but rather that our celebrity culture damages people in ways we don’t get to see. What amazes me is how much fascination our world has with these celebrities. Look at any magazine rack, or entertainment show. It is all about exalting other humans with admiration, most of which you wouldn’t be friends with if you had the chance.

Two thoughts came to mind this morning while watching this. Why are so many people driven to live in that space? I can’t tell you how many interactions I have in year’s time with people who are driven to be the next big author, musician, actor, or movie-maker? Some want it for ‘Godly’ reasons, or so they say, but I don’t think they have any idea what celebrity will do to them. I know precious few who fly at that level that stay grounded in reality and appreciation for the people who they knew before it happened.

I read an interview this weekend with American actor Robert De Niro. He talked about how rich and famous people only surround themselves with others who only tell them what they want to hear and who give them permission to indulge their own selfishness because they have earned it. Sad, isn’t it? Believe me, there is no amount of money that makes it worth living in that space. Celebrity culture is a lie at its very core.

That was even more clear to me during my time in Australia. Most of my time there was spent with brothers and sisters on the journey of learning to live loved who saw me just as another brother on a journey. But I also did some media interviews and had some interactions with people who put me on the author pedestal for my own books, or for my work on The Shack. They are groupies, enamored with fame more than they are the Father I write about. Those conversations are less enjoyable to me and far less fruitful. One driver I had for an interview even apologized to me for even mentioning someone else’s book in my presence. When I expressed dismay that he would think to apologize for that, he told me that he knew how much famous people wanted to be the center of attention.

So my second thought in hearing this news clip this morning was this: The best thing about celebrity is that it makes you irrelevant to the people who matter. People enamored with celebrity have little else going on in their lives. People who are really grounded in the life of God aren’t impressed with celebrity. They don’t put people on pedestals, and aren’t too interested in those who are. They look for people to walk alongside them knowing we are all flesh and blood with the same human experiences, hopes and fears as anyone else. As I have often said the people I know who live most alive and free in Jesus are unknown except to the friends and family that live in their corner of the world.

Whenever we are tricked into the lie that there are people above us, or beneath us, we have lost the truth and the reality that Jesus invited us into. That’s why James warned the followers of Jesus:

My brothers, as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, don’t show favoritism. Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in shabby clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?

Listen, my dear brothers: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him? But you have insulted the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court? Are they not the ones who are slandering the noble name of him to whom you belong? (James 1:1-7)

What a journey, what a discovery!

I got this email the other day from a life that Jesus is transforming in a wonderful way. It really touched me and I knew it would encourage so many others who feel as if they believe a reality in their head, that their heart has not embraced. I hope her story opens the door for many others to recognize the ways in which God has already expressed his love to you, even if you might have missed that at the time, and how to recognize ways in which he’s making love known today:

My name is Melissa and I’m from Oklahoma I met you when you came to Oklahoma a few months back. I have found your podcast and books most helpful in this journey that I have been on, which started about 2 years ago. That would be the journey out of religion and into relationship. Also, The Shack had a profound impact on me, but not in the happy emotional good way. My first response once I had finished it was feeling very jealous. I knew that this was a fiction story, and this hadn’t actually happened, but I knew that God ‘could’ do this for real if He wanted to.

He could come to me in some sort of physical way and spend time with me they way He did the guy in The Shack. It was through all of these different things, podcasts, books, experiences, etc that I realized that what I was really searching for was God’s love. I have been working my whole life on trying to make myself lovable to God, and my head was starting to understand that I already am deeply loved by God, and that NOTHING could change that, but my heart had a VERY hard time grasping that. I found myself asking what many of your readers and listeners ask themselves… how can I make myself “get” that? I wanna make myself feel unconditionally loved by God. I know from listening to you and talking to others that I’m not going to be able to “make” that happen.

So, I’ve found myself here, in the place where my head knows the truth about God’s love towards me, his affection, his favor, and slowly but surely, my heart is starting to get it too. I most certainly can say that there are days where I know it inside and out, and there are days where I don’t. But Praise God there are actually days where I do! That’s a big leap from never feeling it at all. During all this searching, and grumbling to God how I was jealous of those who have had a very supernatural kind of experience with Him, and how I desperately wanted that too… guess what happened?! God brought back to my memory something that happened to me many many years ago…. and I had forgotten about it until recently. As soon as I started rethinking the story, I suddenly realized that He HAD done that for me, and at the time my heart just didn’t get it. WOW…. I couldn’t believe it. I had my own ‘shack’ type moment with God, and am just now realizing it. Here’s that story….

Once upon a time there was a teenage girl named Melissa. She spent most of her life trying to earn God’s affection. Her view of God made her think that her mere existence alone wasn’t enough for God, she would have to do the right amount of Bible Study, Prayer, Church Attendance, and all around general kindness to be able to come close to the heart of God.

One day however, God did something very strange. It was back in the year 1997… Melissa had a close friend, and they had gotten in a little disagreement, and weren’t speaking to each other. Naturally, Melissa felt like this was completely unacceptable to God, to not perfectly get along with someone, and knew that God was probably mad at her for not living in complete harmony with a friend.

After school she went to the mall. She was on the way out the door, passing by the food court on her way…and an elderly man at a nearby table stopped her. “Hello there,” he said. She smiled and waved at him and said “Hello”. He kept looking at her as if he had something else to say… so she slowed down and he asked her, “Where are you from?” and she said, “well, I live here in Lawton, but I spent most of my life in Ohio.”

Now, Ohio was very very important to teenage Melissa. Growing up there her whole life, she struggled in the early years to make friends, but around age 15 finally started getting attention from the more popular crowd, and was starting to have more friends and aquaintances. When someone is working really hard for affection, popularity is a wonderful feeling. Melissa was starting to feel like she fit in somewhere! However, in 1995 Melissa’s parents got a divorce, and her mother decided she wanted to move back to Oklahoma where she was from so she could have the support of her family. I’m sure you could imagine how well that went over with Melissa. She was, hm…. how do I say it… unwilling to move. She thought about trying to live with her Dad, but of the two parents, he was the one she was most uncomfortable around. Deep in her heart, she knew there was more to this than just deciding who to live with. She knew that God was asking her to take a huge leap of faith and trust him and move with her mom. Through a lot of anger at God, tears, and feelings of losing everything, she did move. And I imagine you can guess what ended up being the best thing that ever happened to her… but that’s another story for another time…back to this one…

The elderly man looked at Melissa and said, “Ohio, huh? That’s the buckeye state isn’t it?” “Yes it is!” Melissa replied, thrilled to come across someone who knew about Ohio. And he said, “Well, do you have a buckeye?” And Melissa said, “No, I wanted to get one before I left, but I didn’t get the chance.” (they weren’t in season when she moved in the summer). The man reached into his jacket pocket and held something in his hand. “Well, here you go!” he said, as he held out his hand to Melissa. Melissa put out her hand, and into it he dropped- a buckeye. Melissa stood there with her mouth hanging open…she coudn’t believe it! A buckeye, a real buckeye! “THANK YOU!” she told the man, smiling from ear to ear. He smiled and said, “your welcome.” And Melissa walked away, still in shock.

Melissa looked at the buckeye and tried to wrap her mind around what just happened. What are the odds that a man in Lawton Oklahoma would be in the mall as a girl from Ohio who just happened to really miss Ohio would walk by and stop her, and ask her about Ohio, and just happen to have a buckeye in his hand, which is the one souvenier from Ohio that she didn’t get before she left?

Later that night, while still pondering this, she wondered… was that an angel? Or maybe just a regular human being, a divine nobody who God had asked to help him out? Why on earth would God want to be nice to Melissa while she is in the midst of a disagreement with a friend, and hasn’t done anything spectacular for God lately? What was God trying to tell her?

It would be years later, the year 2009 to be exact before she would be able to answer those questions. Now, grown-up Melissa realizes that all of that ‘doing’ to earn God’s affection really got her nowhere with God. You can’t earn what you already have. She now knows that her existence alone is enough for a God, a heavenly Father that loves her very much. And through good times and bad, wrong choices and right, loves her all the same…. that buckeye said that and so much more. Maybe it was also a ‘thank you’ for giving up the life she wanted in Ohio and taking the life that God gave her in Oklahoma, the life that led her to her soulmate husband, her beautiful children, wonderful friends, and would be the exact path to this new journey she is on where she gets to see God for who he really is, and how he really feels about Melissa, and where the buckeye makes sense.

I just wanted to share my story with you, Wayne, because you are part of the journey that helped this event in my life make sense to me. Thank you for sharing God’s love with me. I mean, REALLY sharing God’s LOVE with me. I grew up hearing all about it, but now, I’m starting to ‘get’ it. Thank you.

Wow! I love the ways God makes himself known, even if it takes a few years for us to grasp what was going on.

Sara and I have arrived in Johannesburg, South Africa and are now trying to get our heads to find the same time zone as our bodies. We’re staying at the home of a dear couple I stayed with last time I was here, and got to touch base with some old friends last night, and some new friends as well.

I really don’t know who Chris Rice is and haven’t read any of his books, but someone sent be a blog of his this morning shortly after I arrived in South Africa that I want to pass it on to you. It’s especially poignant for me since I’m currently dealing with some broken relationships of my own with a couple of dear brothers who have been a significant part of my journey. The attempts I’ve made to get together and risk relational reconciliation have been spurned. That’s probably why this article touched me so.

I just don’t understand those who so easily walk away from relationships when they grow uncomfortable or difficult, instead of working through those whatever issue might exist to a greater grace and freedom. This article expresses so well God’s desire to make our relationships with others more important than ‘being right,’ and gave me focus for my own life and prayers today. I hope it is an encouragement to you as well.

And I know we’ve already missed Chris’ Grace Day for 2009, but couldn’t every day be Grace Day?

Celebrating “Grace Day”: From Trying Harder and Doing More to a Culture of Grace

“All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful” — Flannery O’Connor, The Habit of Being

Twelve years ago yesterday, I was born again … again. After 17 years of intense church-based racial justice and reconciliation ministry in Mississippi, my gospel had largely become a matter of trying harder and doing more. And things I held dear began to fall apart.

At the same time that my African-American colleague Spencer Perkins and I were traveling the nation preaching about reconciliation, we could hardly sit at the same dinner table together at home, where our families shared daily life in an intentional Christian community called Antioch. Our long friendship and ministry partnership was on the verge of breaking up. We each held tightly to our “lists”—“you did this to me,” “well you did that to me.” The final straw was when I shared that my wife and I were considering leaving the Antioch community. Spencer blew up, accusing me of being a deserter to the cause….

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“I’ve heard that there are two kinds of Christians in the world,” the young woman said perched on the couch of a home I visited lately. “People either see God as mad or sad.” On a normal day, that would have sounded fine to me. Either he is mad at our sin and wants to blast the world into oblivion, or he is sad over our sin and hopes to rescue us. Of those two, I’d choose the latter.

But the way God works these things out, I’d had breakfast earlier in the day with a group of men and one of them said that the truth that began his exploration of a greater journey was when he’d heard someone say that God is the most joyful presence in the universe.

So when I heard he was either sad or mad, I was already alert to a third alternative. Mad or sad still focuses on us and our sin. Isn’t it interesting how we are taught in religion to view God through our sin, not to view God beyond our sin? Instead of celebrating the essential nature of God at work in a broken world to rescue us to himself, we’re left to sulk in the brokenness and failures of this temporal age.

Jesus told his disciples the night before he died that he was telling them all these things so that his joy to be in them and for their joy to be full. This is his passion, to see us find the same joy in the Father that he knew. When Jesus said that he was only hours away from his trial and crucifixion. He said it despite the fact that his countrymen lived under the repression of Roman rule. He said it in the face of a world still being devastated by sin, disease, war and great pain. And in the face of all of that he let’s us see that God is neither mad or sad in his creation. He is the most joyful presence above it and inside of it.

It is that joy that he came to share with us—a joy that consumes any pain, trial, failure, or struggle we might be in at the moment. It is a joy deeply based on the pleasure of God, his desire for us and his unfolding purpse in the world. He invites us to live in that space with him and let it prevail over the temporal pains of the world we live in. Paul called those “momentary, light afflictions” that produce in us an “eternal weight of glory.” This was the apostle who’d been stoned numerous times, shipwrecked three times, robbed on his journeys and lied about by close friends. Obviously he was focused on something far greater and far grander than those circumstances.

The joy Jesus spoke about is not temporal and thus swings with the fickle tides of circumstance. It goes deeply into his own character and purpose unfolding in this broken world.

That’s where I want to live—every day, in every situation. And, boy, do I have a ways to go there.

I hope you have a blessed weekend. Sara and I are getting read for our trip to South Africa for the next two weeks.

I got this email the other day. I love the journey this dear sister is on, even if it is a bit disorienting at the moment. Listen to her heartbeat. There are so many like her and I’m blessed that God is waking us up to find greater life and freedom in him, wherever he places us:

My parents gave me your book He Loves Me and I have been listening to your podcasts. My parents are currently finding a lot of freedom from guilt-based living after many years of service in a traditional church.  Its exciting to see their passion for Christ reawakened after the burden of religion has been lifted.

For me, I am in a very wounded place, but I appreciate your message as it seems at its core it is simply the Gospel message. I have spent the last ten years in the organic church movement, thinking I had found somewhere where we were all passionate about the true message of Christ and were free from the religious abuse of programmatic church.  Now I find that its simply religion without a building, another system, only it just doesn’t look like one.

I appreciate that you are advocating for Christ, for love, for simple Gospel message. I really thought that it is what we were about.  I feel more wounded coming out of that setting than I ever felt in a traditional church setting.  In fact, now I find myself back in the traditional church where I grew up, feeling guilty for participating in “religious church,” but realizing that i have a lot of friends there, a lot of relationships.  I feel like I am always looking back and forth, wondering who is God, have I really lost the faith by returning to a traditional church, will I inevitably become a Pharisee by hanging out there, was I really one before? I don’t know.  

I listen to your podcasts and you talk about living by God’s love and grace and I that is how it began with our little group, then it was about the movement, about the sacrifice, about the five fold leadership, and somewhere in there I lost that simple Christ message.  But I see it everywhere; its in individual people, people in a Baptist churches, in Episcopal churches, in Orthodox churches, sometimes I even seem to see a glimmer of it in people who claim to be atheist.  And religious striving… I find it everywhere too.  I wasn’t half the Pharisee I was in a traditional church as I became trying to escape it.  Oh, to return to that simple faith of a child…  washed white as snow.

I loved this statement: I wasn’t half the Pharisee I was in a traditional church as I became trying to escape it.” I’ve seen people struggle with that same reality. Whenever we give ourselves to movements and look down on others who don’t share what we do, we are in danger of even being more captive to our hope for revival, than we were even to our religious obligation systems.

And I pray she finds real peace in him and lets go of the guilt and second-guessing. Then she can find the real joy and contentment wherever God chooses to place her to engage his people and his life with freedom.

Tomorrow morning I leave for Canada, Toronto to be exact. I’m connecting with some old friends and new ones up that way.

On Saturday I will be doing an interview with Drew Marshall on his radio show that runs throughout Canada. He has been a real fan of THE SHACK and my SO YOU DON’T WANT TO GO TO CHURCH ANYMORE book. I have been on his show by phone a few times. I’m looking forward to spending some time in studio with him. You can listen live on line if you like. I’ll be on Saturday 4:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, or 1:00 Pacific Daylight Time. They also podcast the show and archive it if you want to listen later.

On Monday I’m moving on to Maine for a week with friends from throughout New England. Sara will be joining me for that part of the trip.