Sometimes we stare so long at a door that is closing that we see too late the one that is open.
                                                                - Alexander Graham Bell

One afternoon in the fall of 1986 I discusssed my idea of launching a newsletter with my wife. After about an hour and a half we agreed we should pray about it, so we did. When we finished praying, the phone rang. It was a friend who I had not spoken with in several years, and didn’t know how to find — he was the former news editor at Christianity Today, and the person I most wanted to be the editor for my newsletter.

The timing of his phone call seemed like a clear indication we were on the right track, so we launched the publication. However, within a year we found ourselves in deep debt, and the newsletter was such a drain on the rest of our business that we were forced to sell a lot of our possessions – our home, office building, boat, and one of our cars — to pay off our debt and keep our business going.

Shortly after making those hard decisions, the rest of our business turned around and was profitable again. But the newsletter continued to lose money for almost ten years. We invested far more into it than it would ever return, but we believed we should continue to do it.

By the mid 1990s, we faced a new financial crisis. Paper prices were climbing every month at an astronomical rate. If we continued as we were, without making a major change, our whole business would soon fold. I tried everything I could think of to increase income, reduce expenses and stop the loses. Finally, after agonizing over the decision, I prayed again, drove to my office, and told my staff we were folding the newsletter. I laid off several good people who had worked very hard and served me faithfully.

It was a hard decision. A door was closing. One we had loved doing. But in hind sight, it was the right thing to do.

The people we laid off found great jobs in other organizations. And because we had started publishing our news electronically on the Internet, our subscriber base grew from 8,000 to more than 100,000 — without the cost of printing and postage.

Our e-newsletter served as a launch pad for the rest of our Internet publishing venture, which grew dramatically in the last half of the 1990s — and was one of the few profitable dot-coms in those early days of the Internet.

The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it.     – Proverbs 27:12

“I will lead the blind by a way they do not know, in paths they do not know I will guide them. I will make darkness into light before them and rugged places into plains. These are the things I will do, And I will not leave them undone.”  – Isaiah 42:16

Life was going well after I followed the advice I had been given by my father and my friend to rejoin the buying division at the grocery-store chain I had left to open my head shop. It wasn’t long before I was given a promotion and raise. And then something totally unexpected happened.

My friend called to tell me that he was leaving the publication where he worked. And he thought I might be able to do the job. Like many people, I had never heard of Christianity Today magazine. But when I learned more about it — especially the fact that it had been started by Billy Graham and his father-in-law, L. Nelson Bell, I got excited. But there was one big problem. The opening was in management, and I didn’t have a college degree. And most of the CT staff had graduate degrees.

I was interviewed by Editor Harold Lindsell, Managing Editor Eugene Kucharksy, News Editor Edward E. Plowman and several others. I was offered a position in advertising sales. As a result, I had the opportunity to travel around the country and meet mid- and top-level managers at Christian organizations. I learned about hundreds of religious organizations, denominations, and educational institutions. And every morning when I was in the DC offices, I learned from the brilliant men at CT during staff devotions.

In the mid-1970s, CT was in a terrible financial crisis. Its circulation had grown dramatically in the early 70s, however, it was a “thought journal” with content targeted to pastors and theologians, so it had a very low renewal rate. When it was almost out-of-business, Eugene Kacharsky suggested I take over as business manager. And soon afterward the board hired the former head of Campus Life magazine, Harold Myra, as publisher.

We studied the publication’s production costs, overhead, and promotional efforts. We tested new subscription offers, evaluated every department, cut where necessary, and developed a plan for growth. When we presented our projections to the board of directors, they almost laughed at us. They couldn’t believe that we could be cash-flow positive in just a few short months, after almost two decades of losing hundreds of thousands of dollars each year.

It truly seemed like an insurmountable task. Few believed it would happen. But like the blind mentioned in the scripture passage above, the Lord lead us down paths we had never walked before. And just as He promised, He guided us through the darkness and got us through all the rugged places, and never left us alone.

In the late 1970s Christianity Today moved from Washington, DC, to the Chicago suburbs, where management launched or purchased several additional publications, newsletters and online services.

When my dad walked through the door of my head shop and offered his unsolicited advice, I paid close attention to what he said, and I can still remember his words:

“You should sell this shop… and get yourself a 9-to-5 job, and enjoy your family.”

Looking for Guidance 40 Years Ago

A short time later, in another conversation with my dad, he suggested I call my previous employer to see if I could get my old job back. However, if I followed this new advice I would have to admit to my former boss that I made a mistake when he gave me the “it’s us or your head shop” ultimatum. And now that I needed a job, I doubted he would give me one… I didn’t want to face him, or the possibility of being rejected, so I didn’t do it.

Instead I looked through the classified ads and found the Bible-selling job. It paid well — if you sold the product. But the sales manager consistently dropped us off in poor neighborhoods to sell these expensive Bibles to people who really couldn’t afford them. I had some conflicts with the tactics, and ended up talking more about what was in the Bible than about selling or buying a Bible. It wasn’t long before I knew I needed to make a change.

I went back to searching help-wanted ads in the classified section of the newspaper. I sent my resume to numerous places. But nothing seemed to work.

A short while later I had a conversation about my job-search struggles with the friend who had prayed for us and who visited me in my head shop one night. Just like my dad, he asked if I had talked to my former employer. I told him the same thing I told my dad: “He’d never take me back after the way I left…”

I continued to struggle for weeks and eventually called an employment agency. They sounded optimistic, but they needed a letter of recommendation. I was stuck. The only way I could get a letter of recommendation would be to call my old boss. So I finally did.

When I called and asked him if he would consider writing a letter of recommendation for me, he said, “You’re not asking to come back to work here?” I told him I didn’t think that was an option, and he asked, “Didn’t you like working here?” I told him I liked it very much, and then he asked me to meet with him that afternoon.

I was humbled a bit. He offered me a job a couple of notches down on the ladder. Basically I had to start all over again in the same position I had when I originally joined the company. But I was hungry, so I took the job. Within six months I was back to the position I had attained before I’d left, only with a higher salary.

I could have saved a lot of time, frustration, and trouble if I had just listened to my dad and my friend, and not thought I knew best.

Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding…     – Proverbs 3:5

Sometimes I don’t hear very well. My dad said, “Get a 9-to-5 job,” but I tried to turn it into some sort of missions work. The best I could do was find a job selling Bibles door-to-door. Seriously. I sold family Bibles door-to-door.

I was paid straight commission. No salary. And I wasn’t very good at it. I was so excited about what God was doing in our lives that I talked about it whenever I could… instead of sticking to the sales script.

One day, when I knocked on a door, an African American woman with a giant smile on her face opened the door and said, “What are you selling?” Then she invited me in, told me to sit on the couch, and asked me about my faith. I was completely off my sales script again.

It wasn’t long before she explained my need for a ”baptism of repentance” like John the Baptist performed in the wilderness. I explained that I had been baptized in a Lutheran church as a baby, and again in a Catholic church when I was ten years old.

All of a sudden she screamed, jumped up, and ran around the corner. I followed to see what was wrong. Water was flowing over the kitchen sink onto the floor like a waterfall. I immediately wondered if this was another “sign” that I should pay attention to… After she cleaned up the mess, we sat down again to discuss my need for a “full-immersion” baptism. She told me her husband was a deacon and he could baptize me.

About that time, guess who walked through the door. The deacon.

He took over the conversation and showed me some scriptures to convince me of the importance of being baptized (again) to publicly demonstrate my faith. He told me he could do it Sunday morning. And I agreed to meet him after his church service.

I was lying through my teeth. I had no intention of ever going to his African American church in one of the roughest parts of Washington, DC, to be baptized.

My conscience bothered me a little, but I soon forgot about that meeting.

A week later, when I was wrapping up a Bible sale miles away from the deacon’s home, there was a knock on the door. My customer opened the door. It was him. The deacon from the week before. Out of nowhere.

I reached out and shook his hand and apologized for not showing up on Sunday. He asked if I “still want to be baptized.” I told him I did, but I couldn’t do it this coming Sunday. I had plans. He asked about Saturday, and again I had a conflict. Friday wouldn’t work either. He kept asking, until we got to that night… I had nothing planned. No more excuses. I agreed to meet and follow him downtown to his church.

It was cold and raining that night in late February or early March. I walked through the wide-open front doors of the church into a small, very dark lobby. When I looked to my right, I was startled by a very tall black man standing right next to me in the stairway. He smiled, but it didn’t help much. I was scared.

Another guy took me upstairs to change into “baptismal clothes” and then back down to the sanctuary. A few women were singing gospel songs in the front of the church, and a few more were sitting in the pews. The “baptismal pool” was made out of cinderblocks about 4-ft. high. There was one metal folding chair outside the pool and another on the inside. They served as the stairs in and out of the baptismal pool.

I followed the deacon into the cold water. It seemed to be about the same temperature as the air outside — freezing! I wondered why they left the front doors open, and why the church didn’t have any heat. My teeth were chattering and my knees were shaking. Literally.

The deacon asked if I believed that Jesus Christ died for my sins, and then he dunked me all the way under that freezing water, as he proclaimed, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

I can’t explain what happened afterward. It sounds crazy, but I stood up in the water, cold and shaking, and then stepped up on the chair and then onto the cinderblock wall, and I was totally warm. It was as though I wasn’t wet and the room temperature was normal.

Don’t feel bad. When I got home and told my wife about it, she thought I was crazy, too.

But when they believed Philip as he preached the good news of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women.         – Acts 8:12