A homeschooling acquaintance of mine who goes by the online moniker “Prairie Chick” posted a story that inspired me about how to pass on and reinforce family values even among elementary school-age children (let alone older children and adults).

I saw her story on the Sonlight forums. When I asked her permission to share it here, she noted that she had also posted it on one of her blogs, The Prairie Schoolhouse. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been writing about some tools that can help you record your personal, family history.

I recently finished Bill Gates, Sr.’s book Showing Up for Life: Thoughts on the Gifts of a Lifetime. It’s not a particularly remarkable book among all the books one might read. But it struck me, as I read it: It is one man’s testament, one man’s summation of “lessons from life,” and it’s a good model of the kind of thing parents might do for their children in terms of memorializing family history, values, purpose, and so forth. Read the rest of this entry »

Some questions for evaluating “how you’re doing” in your life and “where you’re headed.” Read the rest of this entry »

Last August I wrote a brief outline of what one might want to include in a Gifting Criteria Statement.

As I was picking through a pile of papers on my desk on Saturday, I came across the actual document our family has at the moment. I thought you might find it interesting and, possibly, useful–at least as a discussion-starting model for your family’s statement: Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve touched on it before. I have no question I will be writing about it again. This, perhaps more than anything else, is what distinguishes legacy planning from estate planning: the content of what some call the “ethical will,” and others refer to as a person’s “testament” or “legacy letter” or what our second legacy planner called the “family wealth letter of intent.” It’s the device–or collection of devices: written, audio, video, or other–that conveys to members of future generations the special messages the estate plan donor wants them to know and remember, the stories of the people and events that shaped their lives, the special life lessons, the heart of the donor. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the last of the the articles I bumped into Saturday on my personal blog. It was originally posted, in slightly different form, in late November 2006, at Purpose in life

Sarita and I attended a Wycliffe Associates meeting and I was shocked. Before I get to the specifics of what shocked me, let me talk about demographics for a moment. Because what I want to describe is most surprising primarily because of the demographics. What I observed is simply not what I am used to seeing among people who match that particular demographic profile. 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 greater caution with respect to Mr. Phillips than I was aware of at the time I first wrote this post. I call your attention to the series of articles at Ministry Watchman and Jen’s Gems. There is much more, if you care to search. I believe these sources should provide warning enough.

–A continuation from Keeping the long view.

The word toledoth is the Hebrew word translated as “generations” in such passages as Genesis 2:4, 5:1, etc., in the King James version of the Bible:

• “These [are] the generations of the heavens . . . “
• “This [is] the book of the generations of Adam . . . “
• “These [are] the generations of Noah . . .”
• “Now “These [are] the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth . . . “
• And so forth.

According to Wilhelm Gesenius’s Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testamament Scriptures, toledoth means “genealogy” or “pedigree” or, “As a very large portion of the most ancient Oriental history consists of genealogies, it means . . . history.”

Strangely, Doug Phillips uses this Hebrew word as a key component in the title of his second set of presentations concerning a 200-Year Plan, two presentations he described as “The Family Toledoth.”

He mentions that toledoth means “generations,” but then, Read the rest of this entry »

As I noted last week, I wrote an official Holzmann Family Foundation Gifting Criteria document and presented it at our family meeting last Thursday.

It was received rather well, all things considered.

Our legacy planner, who has been in the business for over 15 years, said, “This is the best family foundation gifting policy document I have ever seen.”

He wasn’t commenting on the purposes or directions toward which I was suggesting our family ought to give. He said it was the thoroughness and the depth of thought that had gone into it. That was certainly gratifying to hear!

I thought maybe you would like to know what I had included in the document. So here’s an outline of the subject matter covered in the document. Read the rest of this entry »