John Stott’s going-home-to-glory was announced yesterday.  I wrote the piece below last September, but the thoughts are just as valid if not more so now.  If you haven’t read Uncle John’s farewell message to all of us, please do so.  There’s a link at the bottom of the post.

There are few leaders in the Christian world greater than John Stott.  I first heard him preach at Urbana 1970 – forty years ago, when I was a senior in high school.  [You can read the actual talks here - I don't think the recordings are available on-line.]  I’ve followed his ministry career ever since, though almost always from a distance – we shook hands perhaps twice or three times, but my memory fades a bit at this point.  John is now at the end of his life, though he has not yet ended his service to the church and her Lord.  He has written one last book that is intended to be his farewell to those of us still here – and you need to read it. 

I’ve known many leaders who ended their careers in scandal.  I’ve known a fair number now whose ministries were cut short by illness or death – they left us too soon and without warning, without the benefit of any last words of wisdom to carry us forward.  There have only been a few who, knowing they were leaving, took the time to share with us from that unique and precious place that is halfway between earth and heaven.  Those who have lived their lives well, and know they are about to leave for another, better place – they deserve to be listened to. If you had an opportunity right now to spend a few hours with John Stott, knowing he is at the end of his life, wouldn’t you do that?  So get this book…

Stott has called this last message The Radical Disciple: Some Neglected Aspects of Our Calling. Like all of his teaching, his thoughts are disarmingly simple, and unarguably biblical – and because of that, dangerous to read.  Having read, you can hardly say you didn’t understand what he was getting at.  And if you are someone – as I am – who wants to build his life on the Bible, Stott leaves you with precious little to defend yourself if, as probably will happen, it turns out that you have been neglecting some of these aspects of discipleship yourself.

So what are these neglected truths that are important enough to be this man’s farewell message to his sisters and brothers? Here are a few quotes from the first four out of a total of eight:

1. Non-conformity: The church has a double responsibility in relation to the world around us. On the one hand we are to live, serve and witness in the world. On the other hand we are to avoid becoming contaminated by the world, So we are neither to seek to preserve our holiness by escaping from the world nor to sacrifice our holiness by conforming to the world. Escapism and conformism are thus both forbidden to us. (p 17)

2. Christlikeness:I remember vividly the major question that perplexed me (and my friends) as a young Christian. It was this: What is God’s purpose for his people? Granted we had been converted, but what next? …I want to share with you where my mind has come to rest as I approach the end of my pilgrimage on earth. It is this: God wants his people to become like Christ, for Christlikeness is the will of God for the people of God. [p 28-29]

3. Maturity: [Stott sees "growth without depth" as one of the greatest dangers the worldwide church faces today.  But what is this depth, or maturity?]  Paul’s most common way of defining Christians is to say that they are men and women “in Christ,” meaning not inside Christ as when our clothes are in a wardrobe or when tools are inside a chest, but rather as the branches are “in” the vine and our limbs are “in” the body, that is, united to Christ. So then, to be “in Christ” is to be personally, vitally, organically related to him. In this sense, to be mature is to have a mature relationship with Christ in which we worship, trust, love and obey him… [p 42]

4. Creation Care: [Surprised to find this listed alongside Christlikeness and spiritual maturity?]  The Bible tells us that in creation God established for human beings three fundamental relationships: first to himself, for he made them in his own image; second to each other, for the human race was plural from the beginning; and third, to the good earth and its creatures over which he set them. Moreover, all three relationships were skewed by the Fall. …It stands to reason therefore that God’s plan of restoration includes not only our reconciliation to God and to each other, but in some way the liberation of the groaning creation as well. [p 49-50]

That last happens to be the central theological pillar on which Care of Creation’s ministry is built – and fascinatingly his brief outline of three broken relationships (God, others, creation) restored by redemption is completely consistent with the  four relationships (God, self, others, creation) that I have made a key part of my own teaching and writing.  The fact that Stott has made it the first of his “application” truths reflects both his life – he has been one of the world’s most famous birders – and, I believe, his deep understanding of the wisdom of God and the word of God.

Creation care is not simply “one more nice thing to do”.  It is central to the message of the word and to the mission of the church, because it is a key part of God’s redemptive work in the world.

So let’s get to work.

[For completeness, the remaining four truths Stott expounds are Simplicity, Balance, Dependence and Death.  I won't take the time to develop those - you really do need to read this book!]

Flourish Online Magazine has been running a feature celebrating the 30th anniversary of the publication of Wendell Berry’s essay, “The Gift of Good Land”.  This essay draws lessons on “ecological and agricultural responsibility” not from Genesis 1 or 2 or even Romans 8, but from the Old Testament story of God’s gift of the Promised Land to Abraham and his descendants:  “a divine gift to a fallen people.”  And that certainly applies to us, doesn’t it?

Read the essay here, and comments from many leaders in the field of creation care here.  Below is my contribution to this collection…

On being introduced to the world of Christian environmental stewardship about ten years ago,  I found early on that I had a lot of catching up to do.  Wendell Berry was one of the authors I was directed to  who has taught and continues to teach me.  Evidently, this is true of many of my colleagues as well.  It is a privilege to be counted among those who have sat at Wendell’s feet and learned from him, and I am sure I am not the only one who wishes that that learning could have been in person rather than through the pages of his books.

“The Gift of Good Land” appeals to me not only for what it says, but for the method that Berry uses to discover the truths he wants to share.  This is not so much an essay as a sermon, in the very best sense of the word.  His purpose is twofold: “I want to attempt a biblical argument for ecological and agricultural responsibility” and “to examine the practical implications of such an argument.”  I’m not sure how Berry would feel about this analysis, but really, what he’s giving us is an old-fashioned expository message from scripture, complete with exegesis and application.  I know more than a few pastors who could learn from this essay.

This explains to some degree the timelessness of Berry’s message.  He has built his argument directly on the timeless truths of scripture, and he has done so carefully and, look – without using Genesis 1 or 2.  Not that there’s anything wrong with those two chapters, but they are used a lot in building the case for Christian environmental stewardship.  To the contrary, Berry leads us into one of the most important parts of the entire story of redemption, the gift of the Promised Land to Abraham and his descendants and thereby shows us how the principles of stewardship and ecological responsibility can be found on almost every page of the Bible.

The lessons Berry draws from his exposition call us to gratitude, neighborliness and good husbandry.  He reminds us, in one of my favorite lines, that “it might be easier to be Samson than to be a good husband or wife day after day for fifty years.”  These admonitions are useful and balanced because they are biblical.  One of the biggest challenges the environmental movement faces is to figure out what to do with people.  We are, without question, a blight on the landscape, but that is because we’ve lived and used creation selfishly and arrogantly – sinfully, as it were.  Berry gives us permission and shows us how to live in creation:  Not carelessly, nor greedily, but with thankfulness, wonder and awe:   “When we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament.”

Learning to do this in the present is our task.  With new technologies appearing every hour, we could do much worse than to follow Berry’s example in returning to the Book itself for guidance.

Regular readers are aware of my habit of collecting interesting conversations – usually on airplanes – and using these to draw out observations and occasionally conclusions about the state of the creation care effort as it relates to ordinary people.

Keeping in mind that we’re dealing with anecdotes, not data, there are still useful things that can be learned from talking with ordinary people. This month’s candidates are a business college Dean and an automotive company executive, and I want to say at the start that I plunged in hoping to learn from them. As far as I was concerned, they were experts.Our business colleges ought to be as forward looking as anyone, I thought. And here is the Dean of one of the finest (sorry, I’m keeping his affiliation anonymous for both of our sakes!) and I have an hour to learn everything I can from him. It’s his job to see the future. He has to prepare students to be successful over the next 30 or 40 years of their careers – surely he’s given some thought to things like sustainability, alternative energy, accounting systems like the ‘triple bottom line’ that measure more than money.

The auto guy had worked much of his career in Europe, and his task is even more specific – he is responsible for helping his company (yes, one of the world’s largest) to plan for and design future products (cars) that people will buy. A golden opportunity for a guy like me with not much more than a seminary degree to learn what a somewhat progressive car company is doing to prepare themselves and by extension the rest of us for the future.

So those were my hopes.

Didn’t happen.

Oh, they were both willing to talk – that wasn’t the problem. But I felt more like the teacher than the student I had hoped to be. My friend the Dean wasn’t sure at first what I mean by ‘sustainability’, and then thought for a bit and finally concluded that ‘our students can sort of get that here and there in the curriculum’ but that they have no kind of degree or certificate that would allow a student to specialize in sustainability. My impression was that graduates of this particular business school would come out into the real world with the idea that alternative energy or sustainability or the triple bottom line were as relevant to business as faith-healing or herbal medicine would be to a new doctor.

My car friend was little better. He was knowledgeable about hybrids, and I learned much about why, for example, European diesel engine vehicles don’t get imported or sold much in the US in spite of high fuel mileage and long-life engines. (Technical – has to do with how they need to treat the exhaust, expensively…) What shouldn’t have surprised me, but did, was his view of the future – again, something he’s being paid a lot more than me to think about. Gas will never be more than $3 per gallon. I think it will be $10 in 10 years, and would have made a bet except that I don’t think I’ll ever see him again.

He hopes to position his company to sell hundreds of thousands of new vehicles each year indefinitely into the future, but he has no idea of where those cars will drive. “We’ll have a new smart grid”. What does that mean? “Cars will talk to each other, anticipating traffic jams, rerouting themselves around the bottlenecks.” But what happens when – as any commuter in Chicago knows – all of the routes out of a city are clogged? When there are no alternate routes? What about rail? “It will never happen. Americans won’t ride trains.” Any thoughts about running out of oil? “We’ll always find more…”

And so on and on and on. We actually talked all the way from take off to landing on a 90 minute flight.

My take on this?

Great disappointment. I have talked with lots of people in business and have had many encouraging discussions. (Here and here).There are companies – lots of them – and leaders in those companies who are trying to be successful by understanding the present and by trying to anticipate the challenges of the future before it gets here. I’ve written about some of these before. But there seem to be far too many like these two who are stuck in the present, convinced that the future isn’t going to be much different than what we have now. “If we just keep on doing what we’ve been doing but more of it we can’t help but be successful.” Sorry, guys. That is one path that is guaranteed not to succeed.

If you’re in business – or planning to go into business, you have a challenging task. You need to figure out how to make money in a world where material and energy resources are going to be more and more scarce. But the best path to success is to get out in front of everyone else – be more environmental, more sustainable, more green than anyone around you. If you’re a student, become an expert in sustainability – management, manufacturing processes, whatever. If you’re a manager now, don’t fight regulations! Get in front of them – become your sector’s leader. Based on these two conversations, it won’t be difficult. Your customers and shareholders will thank you, all the way to the bank.

Oh, but this column is “God-centered and Green”. Ed, you’ve wandered so far you’ve almost fallen off the platform this time. What’s this lecture about business got to do with godliness?

Just this: If you, like me, are a disciple, someone who seeks to follow God’s will in your life, and if you agree that this means we have to learn to apply creation-care principles to how we live… doesn’t that apply to how we do business, how we work as well?

[Further reading, I highly recommend Paul Hawken, Natural Capitalism.]

[Cross-posted at Sustain Lane]

James Krenov (NY Times photo)

James Krenov died recently.

No, you don’t remember him.  It would be quite surprising if you’d ever heard of him, unless you are one of the dwindling number of genuine ‘cabinet makers’ in the world today.  I hadn’t heard of him either – but his obituary in the New York Times this week makes me wish I had known him.

“Through his school and his furniture, Mr. Krenov inspired a generation of furniture makers with a high regard for both materials and craftsmanship and design with an aesthetic informed by organic, subtle details,” the Web site FineWoodworking.com said…

Behind the shaping and the teaching, said David Welter, the shop technician for the woodworking program, was Mr. Krenov’s credo “that the work had life in it.”

“It wasn’t about showing off technique as much as about having a personality in the work,” Mr. Welter said in a telephone interview last week. “He worked with material rather than on material; it wasn’t a matter of conquering the wood. He had just a killer instinct for wood combination, the colors and textures, melding them to make works with an elegant simplicity.”

He “worked with material rather than on material.”  That is the sign of a craftsman.  And the sign of someone who is “in sync” with the pieces of God’s creation with which he is working (see “Three Cheers for Luddism” and “When You See My Farm…” and “What’s in a Calling?“).

Let us know our wood as we do our hands, and work with it in common respect and harmony,” he wrote in “The Fine Art of Cabinetmaking.”

Wendell Berry would approve.

walk into a bar…

Actually, they walked onto a plane…

Flickr CC License

Not long ago I flew from Madison WI to Hartford CT for a speaking tour, and returned by the same route 10 days later. Two flights each direction (Madison to Detroit, Detroit to Hartford) yielded a total of four seatmates, the aforementioned engineer, priest, airline pilot and salesman, and four very interesting conversations.

Keep in mind that I work with a faith-based (ie. evangelical), environmental nonprofit. I often use a brief but effective tag line to summarize what Care of Creation does: “We think the people who believe God made the place should be the ones taking care of it…” That’s usually all it takes to start a fascinating conversation that almost always ranges from where we grew up (and how we were raised) to what we’re doing at home with regard to the environment to changes occuring in our workplaces for the same reasons. My conclusion: Almost no one thinks there is no environmental crisis; and almost everyone is involved in the current effort to confront our economic crisis either or both at home and at work. And almost every company or organization I encounter is doing something. It’s really quite amazing.

My first seatmate is an engineer who works with one of the largest dairy corporations in the country. They have plants in several states, and he spends a great deal of time on the road, visiting these factories – and, often, working to implement plans to cut CO2 emissions, reduce water usage, or minimize energy consumption. At his suggestion I took a look at their “Corporate Responsibility Report” – it’s still large-scale, industrial agriculture producing highly processed foodstuffs. And yes, all of us will eat better if we can eat local and eat fresh. But few of us are in a position to house a cow in the garage or spend time making cheese, and so we’re probably stuck with large food companies for the forseeable future. This is a company that seems to be taking environment seriously. And my friend appeared to be someone who sees his engineering skills as a tool to be used to improve the world. If not quite a man on a mission, still a person trying to make a difference. Encouraging.

The priest – well, he slept most of the way. I didn’t actually discover his occupation until five minutes before the end of the flight, but as an Episcopal Rector (pastor), he’s in a denomination that has been active in creation-care, and as an individual, he cares.

The pilot – he was a fascinating travel companion. He was flying back to Detroit from his home near Hartford to pick up his next flight assignment. Not much he can do about the environment with regard to his job; all he does, after all, is drive people like me from city to city across the country. But was he ever enthusiastic about things at home. Solar water heater? He’s had solar panels on his roof for years – saves him about 50% on his heating bill.

The salesman was on his way back from a trade show. He works for a distributor – a middleman that provides a long list of products of every possible kind for independent grocery and drug stores around the country. His situation is like that of many of us: He would love to be offering more “green” products, but he’s caught on both sides. He can only offer products that are provided to him by manufacturers, and he can only sell what the stores want to buy. His distributorship isn’t large enough to put pressure on those who make the products. But, also like many of us, he seems to be ready to do his part when – and if – truly environmentally friendly products show up.

All of which reinforces something I’ve believed for quite some time: With regard to our environmental crisis, the scientists have done their jobs. Now it’s up to the rest of us. The engineers. The pilots. The salesmen. And especially the priests (and pastors).

Because the people who believe God made the place should be the ones taking care of it…

Cross-posted at Sustainlane.com…

]]> http://www.ourfathersworld.org/2009/05/02/an-engineer-a-priest-a-pilot-and-a-salesman/feed/ 3 http://www.ourfathersworld.org/2009/03/04/when-you-see-my-farm-you-see-my-soul/ http://www.ourfathersworld.org/2009/03/04/when-you-see-my-farm-you-see-my-soul/#comments Thu, 05 Mar 2009 03:34:26 +0000 Ed http://www.ourfathersworld.org/?p=122

Drive about forty-five minutes northeast from Madison Wisconsin to the town of Columbus. Then go northwest out of town on State Highway 16 and you’ll come to Fountain Prairie farm. Pull into the driveway and park between the house and the barn, step out of your car, and take a look around.

You will quickly realize that this place is different from other farms. You have been driving through farmland for an hour – mile after mile of rows of corn and acres of soybeans. Here you are standing on grass. Grass pasture and prairie stretches from border to border. And you’re looking at some of the most interesting – and beautiful – cows in the state of Wisconsin.You’re not actually seeing a farm. Well, yes, you are – but you are seeing more than that. “When you see our farm, you can see our souls,” is how John and Dorothy Priske explain their relationship to their land.

Fountain Prairie used to be just one more farm like all the others. Corn at 200 bushels to the acre – no problem. But something didn’t feel right. All that corn required tons of chemicals – fertilizer, pesticide, who knows what. When two family dogs died of cancer, farm chemicals being a likely source, John and Dorothy decided there must be a different way of caring for their land that would still allow them to live on it and make a living from it.

So they read and studied – a lot. (Watching John and Dorothy I’ve decided I probably don’t have enough brains to be a farmer.) They decided the best use of their land for its own health and their own would be to put the land back into grass. Grass pasture. Restored native Wisconsin prairie. But how could they live on grass? And how would the grass itself stay healthy? The answer turned out to be Scottish Highland cattle – those beautiful beasts you’ve been admiring on your walk around the farm. The cattle would harvest the grass, and fertilize it at the same time. John and Dorothy would harvest the cattle. As John told me, “I picked this breed because they would be good for the land – and then discovered they produce some of the best tasting meat I’ve ever had.” Good for the land, good to eat – it’s been a winning combination.

You can find Fountain Prairie beef at the finest restaurants in Madison – or buy your own at the nation’s number one Farmer’s Market in downtown Madison. You can even order it from their website. And they have helped several other farmers start their own herds of Scottish Highlands in the area. They aren’t rich – at least not in money – but Fountain Prairie farm is doing very well. Even dealing with neighboring farmers who just don’t get it, I don’t think John or Dorothy regret the path they’ve chosen for themselves and for their land.

But this is a column about “Godly and Green” – have I wandered from the topic?

Not as much as you might think. John and Dorothy admit that they don’t go to church much. [And they aren’t afraid to tell you why, but that’s up to them, not me.] But I’ve known them for more than a year now, and I see in them a “green godliness” that is hard to match. The first time we talked – at the Farmer’s Market – John had tears in his eyes as he flipped through an album of pictures from the farm. John cares deeply about his land, his cattle, the farm God has asked him to care for. He cares about what God cares about. That’s green. And it’s godly.

“When you see my farm, you are looking at my soul.”

I’ve seen his farm.

[cross posted from SustainLane]

Find Fountain Prairie Inn and Farms at www.fountainprairie.com . If you visit the farm or see them at the Madison Farmer’s market, be sure to tell them Ed sent you!

In my hometown lives a baker.  The very ordinary name of his business (“Madison Sourdough”) hides the fact that he’s a European trained master pastry chef.  Croissants, danish, brioche – the stuff is, if not worth dying for, certainly worth driving several extra miles across town early in the day to grab the last items before someone else gets them.

Still-life with Brioche by Chardin (Wikipedia Commons)

Now, I’ve been a fan of most of what he makes for quite a while, but his brioche are some of the best pastry I’ve ever eaten.  Which has led to a couple of very interesting conversations:

About a month ago my faithful readers may recall I was in Washington DC during the time of the Inauguration.  One of the mornings there I found myself, with Daughter #1, in a very authentic french patisserie in Bethesda Maryland.  Guess what was in the pastry case?  Brioche!  But these looked a bit different from those I’ve become accustomed to  in Madison.  A long conversation with the woman who ran the shop followed.  She had baked everything in the shop herself.  She had serious doubts as to whether the so-called brioche from Madison was the real thing, and in what would have to be described as a passionate defense of her craft, grabbed a brioche, sliced it in half, and stood there while we sampled it, with the following (please imagine a strong French accent):  “If this is not the best brioche you’ve ever had, I want to know it…”

Not wanting to offend, and appreciating the free pastry, we agreed with her – it was certainly pretty close to the best we’d ever had.

Fast forward to this morning, and the serving counter at Madison Sourdough.  I simply had to tell my baker friend the story of his competition in Bethesda.  Before I knew what was happening, he had a brioche on the counter, as well as a croissant.  He sliced them down the middle and proceeded to instruct me.  [Please insert strong midwestern accent here].   “The layering in this croissant is so **** perfect I could win a prize.”  And more of the same.

And I walked out with what I had ordered, plus the remains of the examined brioche and croissant, two more croissants for good measure – and a couple of pieces of chocolate.  Because “the way a french baker starts his day is with a croissant, a piece of chocolate and a hot cup of coffee.  The coffee melts the chocolate in your mouth.  THAT is how a croissant should be eaten.”

Why am I sharing this?

Here are two craftsmen in a world of high-tech, efficient production who are doing something ancient and ordinary and who not only love doing it but are passionate enough about their craft to wax eloquent and give away samples to try to persuade me of what they already know:  They are creating something good and beautiful and tasty.  They are both luddites in the best sense of that word – people who reject the relentless advance of ‘progress’ because they understand that sometimes an advance is really a retreat.  Long may they prosper – and all of their brothers and sisters with them wherever they may be found.

And they are prospering – at least my friend in Madison is doing so.  In this time of recession, *his* business is up.  Significantly so.

If there is a path forward in our chaotic and unhappy world, it may well start here:  With a man – or woman – who is doing what he loves, to the best of his ability, and giving joy and happiness to the people around him.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s a piece of chocolate and a hot cup of coffee waiting for me.

I have recently been invited to provide a guest column once a month for the Creation Care page of Sustain Lane, which is a pretty cool environmental ‘gateway’.  Check it out.

Here’s this month’s column:

I recently spent almost two weeks in the Library of Congress, discovering some new heros to add to my collection. One of the names that kept appearing was that of Sigurd Olson. Previously unknown to me (and I suspect to many others today), he was a genuine hero of the wilderness movement in the early 20th Century. Among his writings are Singing Wilderness and Listening Point, both written in the first half of the last century.Olson’s work is fascinating for a number of reasons. He was a contemporary of Aldo Leopold, and lived not long after John Muir(all three, fascinatingly, have roots in my own home state of Wisconsin – along with Gaylord Nelson, founder of Earth Day. Maybe there’s something in the water?). He was a man of the outdoors, and truly believed that we can only really get in touch with ourselves when we spend time in the wild. Writing during and after World War II, he was someone who could read the ‘signs of the times’ and he foresaw much of what we have been dealing with since that time: Rapid and unplanned urban and suburban expansion, explosion of air travel, the loss of wilderness areas. Even in 1950, he was pleading with the public and with the government to save the ‘wild areas’ before it would be too late. Read him – he’s worth your time.

What captured me, though, was a brief vignette about the start of Olson’s career as told by David Backes in The Meaning of Wilderness:

While attending the University of Wisconsin in Madison at the end of World War I, he became chapter president of the Student Volunteers, American Protestantism’s most important missionary organization [comment: This was predecessor of today's InterVarsity Christian Fellowship]. But during the same period doubts about his calling and his faith assailed him. The night before he was to publicly make his commitment to the missionary life he climbed to the roof of the YMCA building where he lived, looked out over Lake Mendota and up at the stars, and struggled with his conscience. He decided that his fascination with the missions had more to do with his interest in visitng the wild places fo the world than with saving souls. Whne he came down from the roof the nexst morning, he resigned from the organization, and in effect also broke from his Baptist faith. [p. xx]

Olson left “missions” behind, and his formal Baptist faith. I’m not sure he left God behind. Though his writings make few direct references to God, his relationship with the wild places of the world had more than a touch of the religious about it:

The sun was trembling now on the edge of the ridge. It was alive, almost fluid and pulsating, and as I watched it sink I thought that I could feel the earth turning from it, actually feel its rotation. Over all was the silence of the wilderness, that sense of oneness which comes only when there are no distracting sights or sounds, when we listen with inward ears, when we feel and are aware with our entire beings rather than our senses. I thought as I sat there of the ancient admonition, ‘Be still and know that I am God,’ and knew that without stillness there can be no knowing, without divorcement from outside influences man cannot know what spirit means. [Singing Wilderness, quoted in Backes, p xxi]

Could Olson have had a signifcant life’s work “saving souls” in some far corner of the globe? Certainly. Was the path that he ended up taking less significant than it might have been? I don’t think so. Here is a man who did as much as anyone I’ve found to try to preserve God’s creation for future generations. If we see the world as one of the ways in which God reveals himself to us, Olson’s life’s passion was to preserve God’s revelation for generations as yet unborn:

…he commanded our fathers to teach to their children,
that the next generation might know them,
the children yet unborn,
and arise and tell them to their children,
so that they should set their hope in God
and not forget the works of God… [Psalm 78:5-8, ESV]

This is not intended to minimize the importance of saving souls, or any of the more directly ‘spiritual’ aspects of service. I am an ordained pastor and the son of missionaries myself, and have felt God’s call on my own life. But, as it happens, my calling right now is a bit closer to that of Olson than what it seemed to be when I started out thirty years ago this year, and I couldn’t be happier and more fulfilled.

If God calls you to serve him as Olson did, listen up! You’re needed!