Team Spirit News: Jamie and Jackie Buckingham in Romford, England

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Team Spirit News (1986) Jamie and Jackie Buckingham breezed into Romford (England), blessed us, and breezed out again! Their willingness to come and be with us was both a surprise and a privilege, although all too brief. We thoroughly enjoyed having them with us, for, apart from Jamie’s ‘laid-back story telling’ approach to ministry, they are just good fun to have around…

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Conducting The Small Meeting

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Conducting The Small Meeting (Ministries magazine – Fall 1983) – When you think of a group of Christian leaders seated around a conference table, your mind should conjure up the impression of a great reservoir of spiritual power. Unfortunately, instead of a reservoir what you often find is a swamp. Both contain water, but while the reservoir is pure water, waiting to be channeled, a swamp is stale, defies runoff (much less channeled use), and is a breeding place for unpleasant — even dangerous — things…

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The Buckingham Report was an in-depth critique with

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The Buckingham Report was an in-depth critique with insightful analysis and commentary by Jamie Buckingham, who was known as “America’s foremost Christian analyzer of the issues, people and events affecting the Spirit-led leaders of the day.”

Initially the Buckingham Report was only available by subscription (1985-1986) and mailed out bi-weekly. About a year and a half after its debut, it became a regular feature in Ministries Today magazine, which was published bi-monthly. Jamie Buckingham was the magazine’s managing editor. The Buckingham Report remained with Ministries Today until Jamie’s death in February 1992. Each six-page issue of the Buckingham Report was a unique resource for American pastors and church leaders. It provided useful insights into global church events of the day, timeless practical advice, and wise analysis from one of the world’s most beloved Christian writers and speakers.

Now, for the first time in 25 years, everyone can read the Buckingham Report. This exhaustive collection is a wonderful historical record that gives insider access and authoritative insight into the happenings of the American and global church over a seven year period (1985-1992).

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Harbor City Baptist Church Bulletin: Final Perspective (last words upon parting)

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Final Perspective — (March 19, 1967) Jamie’s parting words to the Harbor City Baptist Church, Melbourne, FL, that had recently fired him. More than half the congregation left the church to form the Tabernacle Baptist Church. The Tabernacle eventually dropped the name Baptist from it’s name and went on to become the largest congregation in East Central Florida.

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The Dilemma of ‘Weekend Missionaries’

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The Dilemma of ‘Weekend Missionaries’ (Do absolute rules become relative when you’re spreading the Gospel?) (February 1980) – On May 26, 1979, Melvin Bailey, a 32-year-old Christian pilot from Newport News, Virginia, left the USA in a rented Piper aircraft on a mission to Cuba. Accompanying him was a 31-year-old former schoolteacher, Tom White. They were carrying 750 pounds of Spanish-language, pro-Christian, anti-Communist leaflets sealed in plastic which they intended to scatter from the air over the island. Things went wrong…

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Moving from Pentecost to Gethsemane

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Moving from Pentecost to Gethsemane (Slow down enough to hear what God has to say.) (April 1980) – Even my wife (especially my wife) knew I was going to fast. Like a speeding train I whistled through grade crossings, roared over trestles just moments before then collapsed (thanking God I had made it just in time — never thinking it might have been my excess speed which caused the thing to fall down), and speed by passenger stations, too busy to even wave at the friendly folk gathered by the track, much less have time to stop and pick them up…

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Reconciliation (publication unknown, around 1983)

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Reconciliation (Publication unknown, around 1983) Jamie discusses the importance of reconciliation with former associates, relatives, and friends, and the difference between that and the restoration of relationships, which may never be possible. He uses his own life, and his church, as an example. “It has been 15 years since the Brevard Baptist Association refused to seat our church at the annual association meeting….”

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Solving The Ministry’s Toughest Problems (book): How Do You Take Over from a Previous Pastor?

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These four articles by Jamie Buckingham were published in a book called Solving The Ministry’s Toughest Problems, published by Strang Communications Company in 1984. How Do You Take Over From A Previous Pastor?; How Do You Conduct Committee Meetings?; What Books Are Necessary For Your Library?; and Straight Answers To Specific Questions.

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The Day it Stopped Raining in Melbourne

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The Day it Stopped Raining in Melbourne (God still intervenes in the affairs of men when we pray.) (June 1980) – Shortly after I had been baptized in the Holy Spirit, I received a call from the principal of the high school in the community where we lived, asking me to preach the sermon to the graduating class at baccalaureate. The high school had never had a baccalaureate service before, but since several of the graduating seniors attended our little church, they but pressure on the school administration who agreed. It was to be a big affair in the football stadium the first Sunday night in June…

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The Christian Outdoorsman: If You Shoot First, Don’t Answer Questions Later

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If You Shoot First, Don’t Answer Questions Later (The Christian Outdoorsman, July/August 1988) – It was 10 years ago when Mickey Evans, a tough-talking, tender-hearted cowboy-preacher who runs an alcohol rehab center near Indiantown, first invited me into the Big Cypress Swamp bordering the Florida Everglades. Mickey killed an eight-point buck and I shot two wild boar on that trip. Since then, every December, Mickey and I have spent five days hunting on 2,000 acres of leased land just north of the Big Cypress in a place called the Devil’s Garden, southwest of Lake Okeechobee…

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(24 editions) A fool uses his reserve and

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(24 editions) A fool uses his reserve and does not replace it…; Guidelines for relationships; Nobody likes to be around a doting grandparent who is always showing photos of grandchildren…; Religious pigeon holes; Something odd has been happening here in Florida…; “The Holy Spirit is not looking for a building, he is looking for a body…”; Where you invest you life is more important than where you invest your money…; and more…

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(23 editions) Any church that is Sunday oriented

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(23 editions) Any church that is Sunday oriented and building centered is a dying institution…; When I wrote Jesus World last year I did not realize just how close we are to “automated Christianity”; “The older our church grows and the larger it grows the more difficult it is to change…; I am an idealist when it comes to giving gifts at Christmas…; and more…

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Angels on Earth (Guideposts publication): Looking for an Angel

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Looking for an Angel (Guideposts – 1997 — Reprinted posthumously) – It was hot that July afternoon in 1970 and the air-conditioning in the bookstore felt good as I slipped in the back door. The store was operated by people from our church in Melbourne, Fla., and my 15-year-old son, Bruce, had a summer job there. He was just opening a shipment of books as I stood watching, enjoying the cool air. “What are people writing about today?” I asked Bruce. “Satan,” he said, grimacing. “Satan and demons. Look at these titles.” He was right…

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Freedom to Probe

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Freedom to Probe (Seeking the truth means looking beneath the surface of the story) (September 1981) – I sat in the meeting room of a large hotel with a number of men and women, all leaders in the charismatic renewal. It was one of those “Ask-me-anything-you-want” meetings…

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The Real Power Runs Deep

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The Real Power Runs Deep (Don’t confuse ‘spillway Christianity’ with the power of the Holy Spirit) (October 1981) – Not too long ago my family and I spent some time with our friends, Larry and Devi Titus, in Washington state. One afternoon Larry took me through one of those big dams on the Columbia River where so much of the electric power for the northwest is produced…

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A Christmas Gift for Daddy B

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A Christmas Gift for Daddy B (We wanted to give him something he couldn’t give away) (December 1981) – My father, whom we all call Daddy B, spent the first 61 years of his life accumulating things. He moved to Vero Beach, Florida, in early 1919 and entered the citrus fruit business. A frugal man, he never went into debt. To my knowledge, he never owed a mortgage all his life…

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The truth about dog days gospel (July/August 1982)

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The truth about dog days gospel (July/August 1982) – Hendersonville, NC: Here in the mountains of western North Carolina “dog days” officially begins July 28th. The local folks, many of whom I’ve known since I started spending my summers here in 1939, tell me the season lasts 40 days, beginning when the Dog Star makes its bright appearance over the eastern horizon…

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What mystical longing calls us home for Christmas?

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What mystical longing calls us home for Christmas? (December 1982) – I write this aboard a jet liner speeding south from one of the nation’s great northern cities. I am heading home for Christmas. How eager I am to see the face of my wife, embrace my now-grown children who are gathering at the old homestead, grab my little grandchildren and swing them high…

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The death penalty. Is it right? (April 1983)

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The death penalty. Is it right? (April 1983) – Last fall a young Spirit-filled couple who lived a few miles from us opened their hearts to a lonely Cuban refugee. One morning when the husband called his bride from work she didn’t answer. Worried, he hurried home. He found her naked body sprawled on the floor. There were 17 stab wounds and she had been sexually tortured before she died. An 11-inch butcher knife protruded from her neck…

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The greatest serenade (May 1983) – I’ve missed

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The greatest serenade (May 1983) – I’ve missed the song of the whippoorwills in the early morning hours this year. Each year, since we have moved out into the pine trees in the rural section of our little Florida community, the whippoorwills have returned in February. Nocturnal songsters, they have serenaded me with their plaintive calls coming through the tall trees in front of our house, wafting their echoing voices into our upstairs bedroom long before dawn…

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Bibles bound in shoe leather (June 1983) –

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Bibles bound in shoe leather (June 1983) – I thought the fighting had died down, but it seems the evangelicals are still shooting at each other over the question of whether the Bible is “inerrant” or merely “inspired.” It seems to me, though, that unless the Word of God is transferred from book to heart, the question of inerrancy is meaningless. It all came to mind this last week when I was cleaning out my bookcase and found an old Bible with the pages half-missing and the cover chewed away by roaches. The sensible thing was to throw it away, but somehow it didn’t seem right to drop a Bible in the trash can…

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Child rearing: a remembered art (August 1983) –

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Child rearing: a remembered art (August 1983) – One affliction common among grandparents is the urge to take over. I’ve watched my mother, who is 85, do this to our children. Now, as my own five children grow up, marry and start having children of their own I find myself doing the same thing. In fact, it’s hard to keep from taking over when you know you can do it better — and with my five grandchildren I am no exception…

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Their roads just stop (December 1983) – Irian

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Their roads just stop (December 1983) – Irian Jaya is — quite literally — earth’s uttermost part. Lying six degrees south of the equator in the South Pacific, it makes up the western half of the island of New Guinea. Even the Indonesian travel brochure stuck in the seat pocket of the Garuda Airlines described it as “primitive” with extreme heat in the snake-infested jungles…

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Flowers with Faces (February 1984) – Roy Disney

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Flowers with Faces (February 1984) – Roy Disney once told the story of an event that took place when his famous brother was in the fifth grade back in Ohio. The school teacher in that little classroom had given the children an art assignment. She waited as each child took out crayons and colored pencils and went to work with their drawings. After a while, she started down the aisle, looking over the children’s shoulders at their crude drawings…

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All Things Change (January 1985)

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All Things Change (January 1985) – Pasted on the mirror in the bathroom of our little vacation cabin in the mountains of western North Carolina is a Latin phrase: Omnia mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis. “All things are changing, and we are changing with them.” My dad, who built the cabin many years ago, had taught Latin and English before going into business. Words, he felt, were designed by God to reveal truth. This was one of the truths he wanted his children to grasp…

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Worshipping Man is Wrong (March 1985) – Russell

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Worshipping Man is Wrong (March 1985) – Russell Dilday, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, the world’s largest seminary with more than 1,600 full-time students, tells of a recent interview with Billy Graham. Graham was asked who would be the leaders of the world in the future. He answered: “The next leaders of the evangelical world will not be individuals, but institutions.” If that is true — it’s frightening…

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Facing the Sanhedrin (May 1985) – Despite all

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Facing the Sanhedrin (May 1985) – Despite all God has done to break them up, sanhedrins, those religious courts charged with defending the faith, continue among us. In New Testament times the Sanhedrin, a council of 70 scholars with the high priest as chairman, was the supreme Jewish court of justice. Its task: to preserve the purity of the law. The latest Sanhedrin report comes from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where the missions committee of the Salem Baptist Church voted to withdraw financial support from one the their missionaries because he believes the gift of tongues is for today…

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Another Man’s Servant (September 1985) – The letter

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Another Man’s Servant (September 1985) – The letter from my missionary friend in South America was sincere. On the last trip to the United States he had visited Heritage USA, the PTL Club’s luxurious recreational ground. He then wrote me saying he was “appalled” at the extravagance. “How,” he asked, “can Christians justify spending 90 percent of their accumulated riches on themselves and almost nothing on those under the grinding heel of Communism?”…

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A Visit in Exile (March 1986)

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A Visit in Exile (March 1986) – Nothing had changed — even though it was all different. We sat up late, talking, just as we had done 10 years ago. My wife, Jackie, Dan and Viola Malachuk, and myself. Outside winter winds whistled through the barren trees on the dark New Hampshire mountains. But inside it was just as it had been in those days when Dan and Viola lived in the big house in New Jersey and Dan’s publishing company, Logos International, was the hottest thing going…

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Against All Odds (April 1986) – Our other

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Against All Odds (April 1986) – Our other four children seemed normal. Their grades were above average; they had good health; they got along fine with their playmates. Tim was different, however. In many areas he excelled. He could run faster, stay under water longer and climb trees higher than all the others. He was remarkably coordinated with amazing reflexes and a deep instinct for doing the right thing. He made friends with every kid in the neighborhood — especially those who were handicapped or had problems. And animals. He could talk to them. When they talked back, he understood. But he couldn’t read…

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The Double Standard (May 1986) – It’s tough,

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The Double Standard (May 1986) – It’s tough, being a citizen of two worlds. When in Rome, some argue, you just do as the Romans do. But I’m not sure that’s what Jesus had in mind when he told us to “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s…and unto God that which is God’s.” I mean, what do you do when you live in Rome and Judea at the same time?…

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The Present Crisis (January 1987) – Last October

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The Present Crisis (January 1987) – Last October a dear friend had open-heart surgery at a major hospital in Boston. The doctors had forewarned him he could need as much as nine pints of blood for transfusion. He was also told there was no guarantee at least one of those might not be infected with the deadly AIDS virus. Fortunately, Christian friends at the Community of Jesus on Cape Cod donated whole blood to be used during surgery…

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Accusing the Brethren (May 1987) – Few things

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Accusing the Brethren (May 1987) – Few things bring more terror to a small child than listening to his parents verbally abuse each other. Wise parents settle their personal disagreements behind closed doors rather than attack each other in front of their small children. When sides are drawn the child is caught in an untenable situation. Especially is this true when one or both parents draw the child into the argument, forcing him to take sides…

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Free From the Press (April 1988) – The

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Free From the Press (April 1988) – The morning after the Swaggart scandal broke I woke to the inner words “Beware of the tumblebugs.” It’s been a long time since I thought of tumblebugs. Lying in bed, I remembered kneeling as a child in our barnyard watching those little beetles at work. A tumblebug finds a pile of manure. With his front claws he pulls out a small amount, mixes it liberally with beetle spit, works it onto a ball, then rolls it across the barnyard in front of him — pushing it with his nose…

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The Spirit of the World (May 1988) –

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The Spirit of the World (May 1988) – The head of a large missionary organization told me they are being sued by two of their members. These people had earlier dedicated their lives to missions. Now they have various ailments. One man has ulcers. A woman, who lived in the tropics, has skin cancer. A “Christian” lawyer, hearing of their problems, advised them to sue the missionary organization. Their afflictions, he says, are “job related….”

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Reagan and the Stars (August 1988) – Ronald

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Reagan and the Stars (August 1988) – Ronald Reagan’s involvement with Star Wars took a different twist recently when we discovered his interest in outer space was apparently not limited to SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative). It seems that the Reagans – and Nancy in particular – believe the stars possibly control their fate. According to the former White House Chief of Staff Donald Regan, the Reagans are followers of astrology…

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Blacks and Whites (November 1988) – From all

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Blacks and Whites (November 1988) – From all outward appearances, this is the most unlikely time in history for revival to break out among blacks. Never has the black church been in such disarray. Never has male leadership been so week. Never have blacks been so anti-church. Yet I believe the next move of the Holy Spirit will be among the blacks in America…

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The Risk Factor (January 1989) – During my

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The Risk Factor (January 1989) – During my senior year in high school a group of women somewhere in the nation started a movement to have all competitive team sports — especially football — removed from public schools. Team sports, they complained, were too traumatic. Children, they argued, should not be led to believe their team could win, then suffer the trauma of losing. They should only play games where everyone wins…

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A Scout’s Honor (October 1989) – No book

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A Scout’s Honor (October 1989) – No book influenced my young life more than the Boy Scouts handbook. In it I found a wonderful world of semaphore flags, sheepshanks, clove hitches, lean-tos and reflector ovens. It was my personal guidebook from the time I was 12 until I was 16. It took me from Tenderfoot, through the exciting world of merit badges, all the way to the coveted rank of Eagle Scout…

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Giving Thanks (November 1989) – I stood in

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Giving Thanks (November 1989) – I stood in my den last August, stunned, watching my TV. There was Jim Bakker being half-dragged, half-led from his lawyer’s office in Charlotte. His hair disheveled, his shirt pulled out at the waist. His face anguished in fear. His wrists in handcuffs. His ankles in leg irons. Federal marshals put him into the backseat of a car where he collapsed. He was later driven to a federal prison in Butner, North Carolina, and committed to the psychiatric wing for evaluation…

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Legacy (July 1990) – Shortly after my dad

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Legacy (July 1990) – Shortly after my dad became a Christian, at age 62, he began looking around for things he could give away. Although he had been successful in his Florida business and in citrus agriculture, and had accumulated many things, giving became more important than getting. He spent the last 26 years of his life giving things away. He once told me his goal was to be like Job, also a successful businessman, who left this world as he entered it — owning nothing…

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Healed! (October 1990) – The diagnosis of cancer

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Healed! (October 1990) – The diagnosis of cancer catapulted me into a new dimension of life. Suddenly I was helpless, face-to-face with a reality that was bigger than I. Some evil force was trying to direct — to take — my life. I seemed caught in its inescapable power, no longer able to plan my future, no longer master of my body nor captain of my soul. I was wrenched and torn by a force greater than anything I had ever experienced…

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Living on Borrowed Time (January 1991) – Jackie

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Living on Borrowed Time (January 1991) – Jackie and I spent a week in our little cabin in western North Carolina in October. One rainy morning we got up to drive across the mountains to meet friends for lunch. Coasting slowly down the steep wet driveway, I heard an inner voice. “This could be your last trip. you could be killed on that slick mountain highway.”…

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Quiet Time (April 1991) – Every year for

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Quiet Time (April 1991) – Every year for the past 15 years, a group of us — dressed in old clothes, carrying shotguns, rifles and sleeping bags — have gathered in a little hunting cabin deep in the swamps of South Florida. We come from different towns and states. Each year we add or subtract someone, but the core group had remained the same. The four days are spent in the woods southwest of Lake Okeechobee on the edge of the Florida Everglades — 30 miles from the nearest phone…

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Mother’s Prayer Book (May 1991)

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Mother’s Prayer Book (May 1991) – Several years after my father’s death, I had the heart-warming task of moving my mother into a Baptist retirement center in Florida. My father had donated the property to the center before he died. Dad never got to live there, but Mom stuck to the plan. She moved only a few things with her, urging us children to divide up the rest…

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Wrestling With God (July 1991) – One of

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Wrestling With God (July 1991) – One of the modern Greek playwrights wrote of the novice who went to stay on an island with an elderly priest. One afternoon the young cleric, eager to learn, walked with the venerable man along the craggy shore. As their robes swirled in the wind, he finally asked the big question. “Father, do you still wrestle with the devil?”…

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What is Masculinity? (October 1991) – The new

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What is Masculinity? (October 1991) – The new emphasis on men, while encouraging, is not all good. Poet Robert Bly’s book Iron John stayed on the best-seller list 30 weeks this year. Bly has been the one to inspire many men to head off into the woods on weekends, where they stand around campfires, pounding on their chests like gorillas and uttering primordial screams in an effort to regain their lost masculinity…

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