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Generosity

Belize, Generosity, PathLight, Philanthropy,

Alexandria

Lent starts on Wednesday. It’s never been a big deal to me. To be honest I was smug about it; all these people giving up chocolate seemed, well, shallow.

But a few years ago I read about the history of Lent and was impressed by the depth of the tradition. Lent could be summed up as a time to focus on three things:

Prayer to focus on our need for God’s mercy and forgiveness.
Fasting, or giving something up, to prompt reflection on God.
Giving as a way to respond to God’s love.

The last one is what …

Generosity, Leadership, Philanthropy,

The Podcast is Here!

Okay, shameless self-promotion and triumphal announcement, the Junkyard Wisdom Podcast will be released next week! I’m very excited about this so please be patient with my enthusiasm!

On Monday, January 24, the first three episodes will be released. The guests are:

The amazing Bob Goff, one of my first ever friends and a force to be reckoned with!

The remarkable Guy Kawasaki, a unique voice in Silicon Valley with strong takes on a variety of topics.

The amazing Kara Powell, who has incredible insights into the mind and heart of contemporary teens.

Each one shares their take on generosity, justice, …

Generosity,

In the scheme of things the gift was a small amount — about $500 — but it was more than this donor had ever been known to give. So it was noteworthy. The gift was in support of a new effort to help at-risk students outside of the USA. The donor, who I had known for years, said he’d give me a check the next time we saw each other.

Which he did a month or two later when we had lunch. I said thank you, of course, and then asked what had prompted him to be generous toward this …

Generosity, Goble Properties, Junkyard Management, Leadership,

Faith and work

My flight to Philadelphia was scheduled to leave at 11:35 AM. But there was no plane at the gate at 11:30 AM, which was obviously a bad sign. About that time the ticket agent explained the plane was ready and sitting in the hanger about a quarter mile away, but there was no one to move the plane to the gate. A classic worker shortage situation.

The drama continued for a few hours as they scrambled for crew, extra ticket agents, and maintenance staff. Eventually they cancelled the flight. I won’t bore you with the (irritating) details.

There’s a misplaced …

Generosity, Goble Properties, Leadership, Salvaged,

The Generous Boss

This morning I had the honor of speaking to the Campolo Scholars at Eastern University. The topic was leadership and the talk was centered around why I wrote the book Salvaged.

At one point we covered the leadership ideas of Max De Pree, which concludes that all leaders finish their job by saying “thank you” to everyone involved. The process for a leader is basically, 1) define reality, 2) become a servant, 3) become a debtor, and finally 4) say thank you.

There’s generosity to this model. It’s basically the servant leadership concept from Scripture, but expressed in more …

Generosity, Philanthropy,

Generosity is Messy For Everyone

You’ve heard that I’m going to release a podcast next year. You’ve also heard that the theme of the podcast will be Generosity is Messy. What you haven’t heard until now is just how universal that mess is!

Over the last few weeks I’ve started to interview folks for the podcast. One of the standard questions is asking the guest to describe a mess created by generosity. Some have even turned the tables and asked me for such a story, which is fun!

What I’m hearing is all kinds of messy stories. International messes. Local messes. Church messes. Corporate messes. …

Generosity, Junkyard Wisdom Book, Junkyard Wisdom Rebuilt, So you think you're a writer?,

Another Podcast?

Do we really need another podcast? Yes, yes we do. I’ll explain.

Junkyard Wisdom was released in 2016 just as the world was turned upside down by the surprising election results. What I’ve found in the five years since is that writing — books, blogs, articles, etc. — can quickly become out of touch with the changing world.

Some things stand the test of time, and I like to think most of my writing is still highly relevant. But that doesn’t mean its value is as evident as it might have seemed when it was written. Language changes, as do …