Of course, we’re all familiar with “Joe the Plumber,” the icon of the McCain presidential campaign for the last few weeks. Dr. Stanley Fish, a professor of law at Florida International University, Miami, and dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, wrote a moving tribute to–or memoir, character sketch, brief biography of–his father that appeared on yesterday’s New York Times Opinion page. The article was called “Max the Plumber.”

When I got finished with it, I wondered: What’s the legacy I will leave to my children and grandchildren when it comes to the stories they know of me and the images that will stick in their minds? What will they say of me when I’m gone? . . . And can I do anything that might help improve their understanding of who I am and what I wanted to be all about? Read the rest of this entry »

ADDENDUM as of 2/5/09: While I am still excited about the materials I discuss in this post, it is with great sadness that I feel compelled to note I have discovered there are reasons for caution with respect to the sources referenced herein. [Indeed, though I don't think our daughter, who is mentioned in this post, was aware of the depth of the issues, clearly, she was "on the alert." --I guess I'm suggesting you, too, should probably be on the alert.] With respect to Vision Forum Ministries and Doug Phillips, I call your attention to the series of articles at Ministry Watchman and Jen’s Gems. And with respect to Geoff Botkin, see Who is Geoffrey Botkin? at the Under Much Grace blog.

[Continued discussion of Vision Forum Ministries' program titled The 200 Year Plan: A Practicum on Multi-Generational Faithfulness.]

Start talking about a 200-year plan, and you may find yourself faced with some major opposition! Here’s the story of my first opposition. Read the rest of this entry »

ADDENDUM as of 2/5/09: While I am still excited about the materials I discuss in this post, it is with great sadness that I feel compelled to note I have discovered there are reasons for caution with respect to the sources referenced herein. With respect to Vision Forum Ministries, I call your attention to the series of articles at Ministry Watchman and Jen’s Gems. And with respect to Geoff Botkin, see Who is Geoffrey Botkin? at the Under Much Grace blog.

[Continued discussion of Vision Forum Ministries' program titled The 200 Year Plan: A Practicum on Multi-Generational Faithfulness.]

Sadly, the Vision Forum CD set I purchased provides a sanitized (indeed, in my opinion, overly-sanitized–to the point of being useless) PDF view of the spreadsheet Mr. Botkin showed his audience as he discussed how he built his family’s 200-year plan. (The spreadsheet displayed in the CD shows no headings, no titles, no data at all. It consists, solely, of a grid with a few of the rows and columns colored in. Period. That’s it!)

After persistent attempts to get the company to provide me an example of what Mr. Botkin’s original audience saw, a member of their customer service department wrote back, “The slides originally contained personal information which has since been removed at the request of the speaker. I apologize for any inconvenience that you have experienced and I am sorry that I am currently unable to help you further in this area.”

To their credit, they offered me a refund for the entire CD because this one set of PDFs wasn’t up to par with what I would have hoped for. But I wanted the information more than a refund! So I attempted to contact Mr. Botkin directly in order to acquire a readable example of the spreadsheet and at least an exemplary sample of the data he had developed for his family’s 200-year plan. I was thrilled when he graciously provided what I asked for. I am only now beginning to work through the implications of what he showed me.

Rather than burdening you here with a full rundown of what Botkin sent me; indeed, considering how little I think I really understand the plan, I am numbering this post as #1 in a series. I have no idea how many more posts will come nor how quickly. But let me at least begin working through with you where I am going with our family’s 200-year plan.

Botkin says he first acquired his own “long view” sense of time when he was a young man and Read the rest of this entry »

Chapter 6 of Beating the Midas Curse by Perry L. Cochell and Rodney C. Zeeb is prefaced by a quote from V.S. Pritchett:

“In our family, as far as we are concerned, we were born, and what happened before that is myth.”

And then the authors comment,

For most of us, the quote above rings true. We know a lot about our parents. A little about our grandparents, and next to nothing about our great-grandparents. Even if you have done some genealogical research on your family tree, for the most part, it is just that: names and dates on the branches of the tree. . . .

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m astonished at the wonderful resources available today to people who are interested in legacy planning. Somehow I stumbled into Beating the Midas Curse by Perry L. Cochell and Rodney C. Zeeb–probably the most compelling, easiest to read, and most comprehensive summary of the kind of process you will probably want to go through in order to create your legacy plan. The authors call their process the “Heritage Process.” It’s beautiful.

ADDENDUM as of 2/5/09: While I am still excited about the materials I discuss in this post, it is with great sadness that I feel compelled to note I have discovered there are reasons for caution with respect to the sources referenced herein. With respect to Vision Forum Ministries and Doug Phillips, I call your attention to the series of articles at Ministry Watchman and Jen’s Gems. And with respect to Geoff Botkin, see Who is Geoffrey Botkin? at the Under Much Grace blog.

I’ve been listening to a presentation called The 200 Year Plan: A Practicum on Multi-Generational Faithfulness–a CD set put out by Vision Forum Ministries.

It was about three weeks ago that someone suggested I look at the program. Considering my own emphasis on multi-generational, indeed, 200-year plans and more, how could I not take a look?

So I purchased the series . . . and am glad I did!

Wow! Read the rest of this entry »

“The world’s oldest continuously operating family business ended its impressive run last year,” the article began. I just ran into the article yesterday on a news feed, but when I looked at the details, I discovered it was first published on April 16, 2007 and in areferred to an event that had occurred more than a year before that.

But the date of the article is probably not too important. The company that went bankrupt was over 1400 years old, having been started in 578 A.D. The president at time of bankruptcy was a member of the 40th generation to run the company. Read the rest of this entry »

As I’ve noted before, our legacies are far more than financial. How we raise our kids provides a significant inheritance. With that in mind, then, I ran across a couple of posts on the Sonlighters Club forums that struck me as extremely wise. I asked the posts’ author, Drusha E A Mussmann, if I could reprint them. She gave me permission. So with thanks to Drusha, I am pleased to present the following.

A mom of a 14-year-old son wrote, “He is just so disrespectful I am boiling raging inside . . . or crying. . . . Talk me down. Pray for me. [Do something.]”

what did he do TODAY? Read the rest of this entry »