My tank was pretty much on empty.  I was showing up to work every day and was pretty proud of how I showed up to every game, practice, or other children’s event for my first 3 children who were 13, 10, and 7 at the time.  I was super present in my children’s lives, but knew in my heart that I didn’t really have much to offer.

At a men’s weekend in Colorado a little over 15 years ago, we were forced to take a hard look at our lives, our parenting, and our marriage.  It wasn’t a “beat down” like I had experienced at so many faith-based men’s events, but an open…

Despite managing $1 Billion in bank assets and outperforming virtually everyone in my high-performing peer group, I was still making only a few thousand more than when I started as a credit analyst just out of college.  Add to the fact we were expecting our third child and I felt like it was time to go around the boss (who said he was unable to adjust my compensation) and speak directly to the CFO we all reported to.

I was incredibly nervous.  My presentation included 3 years performance against the relevant Lehman indices, the incremental…

Some of my favorite conversations have happened while sitting around a campfire. I realized that there have been prolonged seasons of my life where my normal conversation seemed to profoundly shift when I sat around a fire with other men.  I talked about things there that just didn’t seem to come up in my everyday conversations.  I don’t know if it was that I was more primed, the other men there were more open, or somehow the Father orchestrated conversational magic as we looked into the flames.

It was likely all of those things, but I’ve come to realize that the real catalyst for significant conversations lies far beyond the campfire.  Progressively, I am having campfire conversations in every conversation.  Whether I am sitting around a fire…

As we celebrate our independence from a king and a kingdom, I am increasingly aware of our crucial need for greater interdependence with a King and a Kingdom. The incredible courage and self-determination it took to escape the control and tyranny of an oppressive monarchy might have lingering costs greater than we could have imagined.

The prototypical small American business owner is an extension and celebration of that pioneering spirit that made…

I think we started thinking about grandkids almost as soon as we started having kids. We hoped that our six children would produce a quiver full.  

“Like arrows in the hands of a warrior

    are children born in one’s youth.

Blessed is the man

    whose quiver is full of them.

Not only did our children start to marry young, our two eldest have now blessed us with grandchildren as well. We heard all the rhetoric about grandchildren:

• "You won’t believe how much you can love those kids."

• "It is even better than parenting your own."

• "All the best stuff without some of the challenges."

Even with 25 years of anticipation and all that rhetoric…

Apparently, the monarchy is alive and well. Most estimates target global viewership of Prince William’s recent nuptials at about 2 billion.

2 billion! Over 25% of the world’s population!

Okay, at least 2 of my daughters and my wife (tape delay) watched the royal event. We definitely factored into those numbers, but it is still pretty staggering. There is an incredible amount of focus on the royal family and the events…

Americans spent over $10B at movie theaters last year. We are pretty aware of the fact that there is a diversion offered there that cannot be replicated anywhere else. With 2 hours and about 10 dollars, we can escape the mundane and get lost in adventure, intrigue, and romance. We can forget that the story we are living is likely much smaller and less interesting than the ones we are experiencing…

I had a simple principle that guided every day of my investment career:

I was just smart enough to know that there were a lot of people smarter than I am.

Now the brokers that called me from all over the country were used to talking to investment managers that thought they had it all figured out. The questions they usually posited were intended to stroke my ego and feed the misconception that I didn’t need their suggestions and that all my ideas must be the right…

My friend Bill told me about a vision God gave him for me.  He said that there was a free flowing river of God’s provision, freedom, life, and abundance.  I was standing right out in the middle and the water was washing over me.

He also said that the other picture he had was of him standing on the riverbank barely dipping his toe into the water.  

I think about those two images often.  

The contrast.

The embedded hope and longing.

The deep and powerful truth they hold.

Increasingly, the leaders I meet are exhausted, overwhelmed, and often discouraged.  They are not operating…

This story begins almost 20 years ago. A man with a wife of 11 years, a son of 10 years of age, and two daughters of 7 and 4.  The protagonist in this story is a banker managing a large investment portfolio (10 digits worth) with a carefully constructed spreadsheet of his future net worth (7 digits worth).

He is on track. Everything is happening according to plan. Numbers don’t lie, correct?  Well, at least they don’t, until they do.  Because the scoreboard our protagonist is trying to light up is the wrong one. This one is motivated…

Our kids enjoy a show called “Expedition Unknown” on the Travel Channel.  Every episode has the incredibly likable everyman Josh Gates taking us into the great unknown mysteries: the origins of Stonehenge, the Mayan lost city of Gold, and even the whereabouts of the Ark of the Covenant. 

He is often digging for and unearthing “treasure”. And I say that in quotations because what he typically finds looks more like a rock, a lump of clay, a shred of wood, or a piece of broken off something. Of course, once it is cleaned…

A biathlon requires athletes racing around a course totaling 20km at pulse rates of 180-190 beats per minute and then completely calming themselves well enough at four intervals to shoot a button-sized target 50 meters away.  

What the heck does the one thing have to do with the other?  

How were these things combined into a single sport in the first place?

The essential skills of both skiing and marksmanship were born out of necessity. They have played an important role in combat for centuries. For instance, in World War II, 50,000 skiing riflemen held off a Russian army that had them outnumbered 10 to 1. The History Channel…

I used to live a pretty button-downed life with a pretty button-downed faith. I felt like I had it all figured out. That I had God all figured out.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

God is unknowable. If you think you have Him all figured out, it isn’t God, it is some subset of who He is that you have landed on and defined. It is a portion of the unknowable God, but it isn’t Him.

A perfectly known and articulated life removes the specter of surprise, adventure, or discovery.  That is a subset of the life intended and not the abundant one we are all desiring to find (whether we have quit desiring it…

Before Sam Rockwell won an Oscar for his unforgettable performance as Officer Jason Dixon in “Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing Missouri”, his favorite performance of mine was as the lovable loser, Owen, in 2013’s “The Way, Way Back”.

Owen had resigned himself to a pretty pathetic life as a slacker manager of a tired small town waterpark on the upper East Coast. Over the course of a pivotal Summer, he encounters the lonely and discouraged 14-year old Duncan. He offers to give Duncan a lift and tells him he can stow his bike in the back seat…

We love rooting for the underdog, right? Whether it is the 1980 U.S. Hockey team, the kids from Sandlot, or even the Goonies. We love it when against all odds, the unthinkable happens. When the one that no one expected to come through, does.

The bible is replete with these kinds of stories, like the Israelites escaping slavery or David taking on the giant Goliath. And then there is maybe the most likely a tribe of underdogs as the world has ever seen, the disciples. With all the religious elite….

I don’t remember taking vacations as a kid. I can remember some awkward visits to see some relatives in Dallas, sleeping on the floor, and going to an amusement park one day. I remember my dad taking me on a one-day business trip with him to a bigger city and taking in a new movie called “Star Wars”.

But I never really gave it much thought. I remember a distant memory of spending time on a deserted island and a trip to Hawaii, only to realize that I was blurring my recollections…

Cinderella Man is one of the great all-time movies about one of the great all-time stories.  It is about a mid-ranked fighter in the depression era America losing everything and then clawing his way back into the ring and into the championship fight. He is the ultimate underdog because everyone else down on their luck is identifying with his success.

In a way, he is not only contending for his family, but for every man and woman who is suffering.  When his wife Mae (who hates him fighting) shows up at their local parish to pray for Jim…

I was having a conversation with a wise, mature, and Kingdom-minded leader. I’ve known him for about five years and really gotten to know him through working with him and his company over the last couple.

He was talking about turning 60 and what he was feeling about this next season of his life.  He was contrasting what most of the people he knew were doing at his age with what he desired to do. They were planning increasing amounts of vacations to increasingly exotic places.

He isn’t.  Nor will he be.

Don’t get me wrong, this guy likes vacations…

Most leaders we talk with feel pretty captive to their circumstances. As if there were something cosmic or predetermined about their situation that is beyond them and cannot be altered. I certainly know that feeling. There is a good chance you have felt it as well. Maybe it is the predominant operating system you are under right now.

It is interesting how fanciful a series of books like “Choose Your Own Adventure” feels. The idea that by making a simple series of choices could result in a completely different story sounds preposterous when you apply…