Dwight’s story

We were sent here, you and I.

Sent here for a reason.

Finding and pursuing that reason is the whole purpose of our existence.

That’s what I’ve always believed.

But belief doesn’t mean anything until it costs you something.

Someday

On a warm August night in 1975 on a side street in Madison, Wisconsin, Jim Eberline, my youth pastor, put his hand on my shoulder. I was 17 years old, full of dreams, giddy with possibility. Jim was getting ready to say goodbye. In a few days, I would be leaving home forever, heading off to college at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago.

There, under the glow of street light, he looked me in the eyes, and said eleven words that remain etched in my heart today a half century later:

“Dwight, someday God is going to use you for something great.”

It was a magic moment.

And—for better or for worse—I believed him. The call of God was on my life. I didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t know where it would take me. But I just knew I was ready to step out of the boat and take the hand of Jesus.

Little did I know that I would soon be in a very different place.

Really?

Toward the end of my senior year of college, I was kicked out of Moody Church.

Here’s how that happened: My fiancee and I were sitting in the balcony. And, yeah, I was paying more attention to her than I was to the sermon, I admit. I might have had my arm around her shoulders. I might have kissed her hand. But that’s as far as it went. Certainly nothing sexual. Nothing suggestive. Nothing over the top. No kissing on the lips. Nothing like that.

Nevertheless, after the service was over, an usher walked up to us and said, “I’ve been watching you two all evening. You have five minutes to be out of this building.”

We stood up, looked at him, smiling, waiting for the rest of the joke.

But the rest of the joke never came. He was serious. We had to leave.

I wish I could say this was an anomaly, an exception. But things like this happened several times to me.

This place that was supposed to elevate me into Christian ministry turned out to be—in my mind at that time—just another bully in a long line of bullies in my life.

I started college with the clear call of God on my life. “Dwight, someday God is going to use you for something great.”

I ended college discouraged, confused, unsure what to do next.

To tell you the truth, I almost lost my faith.

Finding our calling

We don’t find our calling by aiming to do some great thing for God. Instead the calling God has for us finds us as we invite Him into our laughter, our tears, our anger, our shame, our triumphs, our failures.

It starts and ends with Him.

It is a beautiful thing if it’s an extension of His presence in our lives. But it’s a monster if it takes on a life of its own, apart from Him.

That’s why, above all else, we need the presence of Jesus—the real Jesus—to permeate our lives.

And somewhere along the line, I had lost that presence of Jesus.

Found again

But God knows how to find us when we’re lost.

He sent a man named Roy Hession to find me. It happened like this. I was married, working as a parole officer, and one weekend we were staying with my wife’s parents. My father-in-law was a pastor; Roy Hession was a visiting speaker.

And there we were—Roy and me—in my in-law’s kitchen, alone together.

He was hungry, so I rummaged through the kitchen and found him something to eat.

We didn’t talk for long. But in the few words that were exchanged, I found in Roy something that I didn’t even know how to ask for.

I found the real Jesus.

Not the usher who kicked us out, or the professor who gave me D for being original, or the pastor who told me I could no longer speak to his church because I might infect the flock with strange ideas, or the maintenance manager who threatened to kick me out of the dorm and throw me out on the street in downtown Chicago in the middle of winter, or any of another dozen so called representatives of Jesus.

I found the Jesus who actually cared about me.

I found Him when I was beginning to doubt He even existed.

I found Him, and He called me back.

Taking a risk

I found Him just in time.

My wife and I had a problem. Our marriage was in trouble. I’ll spare you the details; it’s enough to say that baggage from our past was doing a lot of damage. Divorce wasn’t an option, but neither was a lifetime of misery. And we were savvy enough to know that we didn’t want to bring kids into the kind of dysfunction we were living at the time.

We found a therapist. He helped. But not fast enough, not far enough.

There was another option. It was better. It was faster. It was pricey.

Not something I could afford on my salary as a parole officer.

So we took a risk. I gave up my parole officer job, cashed in my retirement savings, uprooted us from my wife’s home state of Ohio, returned to my home state of Wisconsin to go into business, to make money to buy the expensive psychotherapy that would save our marriage, put to rest all our challenges, and break any kind of generational curse so our future kids wouldn’t struggle with the same issues that troubled us.

I was high on hope.

But I landed in pain.

That first year I made -$1,500.

That’s one thousand five hundred dollars with a minus sign in front of it.

My wife kept us alive by cleaning houses for $4 an hour.

After we filed our taxes, the Wisconsin Department of Revenue wrote us a letter:

“Based on what you’re reporting for income, we don’t understand how you survived.”

Yeah.

Moving to Wisconsin also allowed me to be part of a new church some friends of mine had recently launched.

And they were happy to see me.

Until…

Until they found out we planned to see a secular psychotherapist.

That, I discovered, was a no no.

They tried being polite.

When that didn’t work, they tried being direct.

Again and again I was summoned before the board and threatened with excommunication unless I repented of the psychotherapy heresy.

I felt ambushed, trapped, misunderstood, misjudged, and bewildered.

The message to us was clear: Why couldn’t we just be good little Christians and let the cross of Jesus Christ heal all our hurts?

I wanted to believe that church would be a place where you would be nurtured, cared for, cared about, understood, respected, taken care of.

I haven’t always found that to be the case.

Where do you flourish?

When my wife had her first miscarriage in 1990, I gathered up the swirl of emotions we were experiencing, and wrote a letter to God. I typed it up and called it “Little Vial of Light.”

Someone read it and told me I should send it off to a Christian writing contest.

I did, and ended up with first place in the nation. They invited me to come and speak near Chicago, they gave me a plaque, and handed me a check for $1,000.

My Christian writing career was now official.

And I naively expected that if I kept on writing, the money would flow, and we would be okay.

I was wrong.

Maybe you believe what I believed: You write a good book. It becomes a best seller. You cash in. You’re set for life.

Sorry.

No.

That’s not how it works.

You write a good book, and everybody—almost everybody—ignores it.

Let me tell you what it’s like to be a Christian author.

You need to be famous.

That’s not an ego trip. That’s a job requirement. If you want to get paid for the work you do, you need thousands of people to know who you are, trust you enough to buy your books and read them, care enough to go to Amazon, leave a glowing review, and call up all their friends and tell them they should be reading your books also.

Just one problem.

I’m not famous.

If you want to make money as an author, you write a good book and then you need to push it. You need to push, push, push, push, push. You need to be one part writer and nine parts used car salesman.

Unfortunately…

I’m not a salesman. I don’t like tooting my own horn, pushing myself forward. Like many other authors, I’m perfectly happy to be invisible in a room.

As a result…

I made almost no money.

Nearly nothing.

I would spend hundreds of hours writing a book, maybe hundreds more trying to promote it, and in the end, I was lucky to break even.

That’s zero dollars for hundreds—maybe thousands of hours of work.

And it really didn’t matter that much whether I self published or landed a contract with an established publisher. Most of the time, the result was the same.

You need to be called to this work because if you aren’t, you will not survive.

Choices

Since writing wasn’t putting food on the table, I needed something else.

Options:

1. Double down on writing and hope it pays off.

2. Repackage my books into courses, seminars, coaching, clients, whatever.

3. Get a side job or run some kind of side business and hope it pays the bills.

4. Write books for other people and get them to pay me.

5. Put writing on the back burner and give my life to some career that will make good money so we can live comfortably.

Actually, I tried all of those except #5.

I cleaned houses and businesses. I drove school bus, transit bus, executive shuttle. I worked for an employment recruiting business. I wrote resumes for people. I did post-hurricane home inspections. I did a no-money-down real estate development project—that’s a wild story. And I helped people—mostly Christian leaders—with their books and other writing projects as a ghostwriter, coauthor, editor, and publishing consultant. And the list goes on.

Sometimes those side jobs made money—enough money. Sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes we had no idea how we would pay the bills.

But I always tried to do my best to stick with what I thought God was telling me to do.

I told myself I was living by faith.

But, in a world where your worth is measured by the size of your paycheck, other people thought I was a fool.

Am I a fool?

I was in a small group for a while where it was a sin not to be middle class. Rich people were sinning because they had too much money. Poor people were sinning because they were too lazy to get a decent job.

And I was poor.

They tried to correct me—politely of course, by pointing out how lazy and irresponsible I must be.

I listened politely and then went home and got down on my knees.

God, am I lazy? Am I a fool?

In another Christian small group I was in, one of the men said to me: “Give up your writing and get a real job. You can write after you retire.”

I’m sure he was just trying to help. Dwight isn’t making enough money. Why isn’t he making money? Because he’s chasing this dream of being a writer instead of getting a real job.

But the underlying message was also clear: There’s no real value in what you’re doing.

I shut myself into my prayer closet and asked a question I almost didn’t dare ask:

God is there any value in what I’m doing?

Another dear friend said to me, “My dad worked a job he hated for 40 years.” The unspoken message: Dwight, are you being a fool? Are you chasing your dream at the expense of your family?

Ouch, that hurt.

And I thought about it again and again and again and again for many years.

And the problem is: It’s not as though I hadn’t had this internal dialogue, this struggle with God a thousand times in my own mind.

God, am I a fool? Am I going to stand before You someday and hear You say, “Dwight, what were you thinking? Why didn’t you get a good job and make more money?”?

Success, significance, fame, and obscurity

I wasn’t making much money. I hoped someday I would, but I wasn’t. Could I be okay with that? What if I lived and died… poor?

Does that make me less than?

Does that mean that I’ve missed God’s best for my life?

More worryingly, what if my wife and my children live and die poor? And what if that happens as a direct result of me chasing some dream—some idea of calling?

How could I stand before God if I allowed that to happen?

After all, the Bible says that the man who doesn’t provide for his family has denied the faith and is worse than an infidel.

Am I a fool?

Jim Eberline’s words echoed in my mind: “Dwight, someday God is going to use you for something great.”

What does that word “great” mean?

What if I live and die as an obscure author that almost no one ever reads, no one knows about, no one cares about? What if I die and all my books die with me? What if no one ever reads them after I’m gone?

Am I okay with obscurity?

Can I accept that?

Since I didn’t really have anybody to help me wrestle with these questions, I wrestled with them alone in the presence of God.

And along the way, I learned to say, “It’s okay.”

It’s okay, God, if You want to take this calling away from me.

If You want me to live a life of obscurity, it’s okay.

If no one ever reads my books, it’s okay.

While I love the life God has given me, and I love my calling—I love being an author, my life and my calling do not belong to me.

They belong to God.

In the end, I just want to hear Him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

Something happened that helped me with all of this.

We had a visiting speaker at our church. He was the pastor of a mega church, and he had a Christian rock star resume. But once, while he was having surgery on his heart, his spirit left his body, and he came face to face with Jesus.

There he understood.

None of it mattered. All his great Christian achievements—none of that mattered at all.

Not one little bit.

Only one thing matters.

Did he do what Jesus asked him to do?

And that’s what I want to do with my life; I just want to do what Jesus asks me to do.

I hope I have the courage to do that.

I hope I get it right.

Meeting with God

My most important job is to meet with God. I need to listen to Him. I need to allow God to change what I believe, how I think, what I feel, how I experience life.

I need this as a human being.

And if I’m going to write anything worth reading, I need this as an author.

That’s job #1.

I tried to explain this to someone in another small group I was in.

He was horrified.

No, no, no, no, no! Work—making money—takes priority, he tried to explain to me.

Does the church care?

I always hoped that the church would be there for me.

In the churches I was in, my ministry as a Christian author didn’t count for much.

Here’s what I experienced: If your calling furthers the mission of your local church, great. They’re interested.

If it doesn’t, they’re not.

The church expects you to serve its mission. For the most part, it feels no obligation to serve yours.

I think that’s tragic.

Example:

When I suggested that some of the ministry initiatives of the members should be highlighted in the announcements, the interim pastor said to me, “What is this? A church? Or a cooperative?”

I wasn’t quick enough on the draw, but I wish I would have said, “A church is a cooperative. A church is the combined Kingdom outreach of every member of its congregation. And each Kingdom outreach deserves to be recognized, celebrated, nurtured, and supported.”

A missed opportunity

Why has Christianity lost its influence in our culture?

Here’s one reason: The church has retreated to the safety of its own programs and ignored the magnitude of the Great Commission. It has become insular, withdrawn, self absorbed. The church has made the mistake of thinking the Sunday service and the various programs of the church are its mission.

Sorry.

No.

Kingdom math

The impact of the church is actually measured in the Kingdom footprint of every member of its congregation.

Here’s the math:

Your calling + my calling + every other Christian’s calling = the Kingdom footprint of the church

Once the church figures this out, it will have a much bigger impact on the world.

$500

For a few months I was part time on staff at a church trying to encourage and support those who had ministry outreach beyond the four walls of the church. But just before the new pastor came, my position was eliminated. That $500 a month was needed to help make sure the new pastor earned a middle class salary.

I didn’t say anything to anyone, but when you’re trying to support a family of six on $15,000 a year, losing $500 a month is a big loss.

But we wanted the new pastor to make a good living.

Sometime later, one of my books was an exact fit for one of the ministry needs of the church. I brought it up to the new pastor, but no.

Selling my book in the church was wrong. It was money changing in the temple. It would be evil if I made a $5 profit on each one of those books sold. Why if we sold a hundred books, I would walk away with $500!

Yeah.

Not only was my calling of no concern to the church; it was actually evil.

Yes, people helped…

I don’t want to give the misimpression that nobody cared, nobody helped. Because that isn’t true.

I won’t name names because I’ll invariably unintentionally leave out someone who should be recognized. But many people helped. Some prayed with me. Some volunteered hours and hours of time trying to help me promote my books or think through business and income options. Some pastors talked about my books in front of the congregation. Some helped me connect with God on a much deeper level. Other people helped our family with gifts of clothing, groceries, cash, and more. You know who you are, and I am deeply grateful.

I’m also grateful for my wife. God gave me a wife who never once complained about our hardships, never nagged, never second guessed my decisions, never doubted me—even when I doubted myself.

She would read best selling Christian books and say to me, “You write a lot better than this.”

“You’re a good provider.”

“I never thought of us as poor.”

And: “I bet other women are jealous of me because I get to be married to you.”

What could have been

So yes, I am grateful for every person who helped along the way. I wouldn’t be where I am today without them.

Having said that, imagine what could have been possible if the body of Christ was more tuned into supporting each person’s calling.

Maybe people could have helped me think through how to connect the ideas God put in my head with the right group of readers. Instead of taking a shot in the dark, I could have found and built an audience sooner.

Maybe people could have helped me look at my life realistically and helped me find income options that kept my calling alive and better provided for my family.

Maybe more people would have read my books and received the benefit God intended when He put them on my heart.

Maybe people could have taken the time to understand the inner turmoil that I lived with for many years and helped me find a resolution sooner.

As it was, I was alone with those struggles. So I took them to God.

What God said to me

Again and again I stood before God and asked that same question:

God, am I a fool? Am I going to stand before You someday and hear You say, “Dwight, what were you thinking? Why didn’t you get a good job and make more money?”?

But every time I brought this up to the Lord, He said the same thing to me.

Just stay in the game until you win.

So I stayed.

Your calling and mine

I stayed in the game.

And somewhere along the way–maybe it was after getting kicked out of yet another church–I stopped waiting for the church to give me what I needed and I started giving what I wanted to receive.

I started helping other people like me–people with the call of God on their lives.

I created and taught a course on discerning and developing your calling. One of the students in the course went through a process of clarifying his calling and set up a series of sober living homes helping people move from addiction to a full, rich, and meaningful life. I connected two ministry leaders in a way that brought thousands to Jesus and helped bring an end to a 50-year-old regional conflict. I helped with mentorship ministries, food pantries, a campus ministry, inner healing-transformation prayer ministry and more. In short, I’ve had a small role in touching tens of thousands of lives with the healing, transforming, life-giving presence of Jesus Christ.

Not in my lifetime…

A couple years ago, I met with my current pastor, and we discussed some of the ideas, dreams, and goals God has given me, and during the conversation we looked at my age: over 65.

He said something that helped me refocus. He said, “Dwight, your dreams are much bigger than you, and they probably won’t be accomplished in your lifetime.”

Hmm.

That makes sense.

That’s when I realized it was time to step up my efforts to invite you in.

Not into my mission.

But into yours.

What is God asking you to do with your life?

That’s why I started Empower Good.