Pastor Ken, as he is known by his members, is a pastor, best-selling author, business executive, husband, father, and community leader, whose entire life has been dedicated to the service of others. That sounds like just a line from a bio, but as you will hear in this conversation it is quite real for him--dedicating himself to the service of others. Here is the cool part though, he fully acknowledges that being "helpful" and serving others is not natural for him, it is a struggle, and the only reason he is able to do it is because he's been working at it his entire life. There is something so fascinating about that to me; the idea that helping others or being a "good" person can take so much work. 

Ken is the author of 4 books and a children book series mainly focused on divorce and fatherhood, so we spent a good bit of time talking about those topics. It was really interesting to hear Ken talk about his value of "helpfulness" and how it played out in the context of his own divorce. It illustrated that tension of trying to be good and do the right thing by your family while managing your own ego and pain. I often say the math doesn't seem to check out. When we run the calculation in our minds of what it takes to be a good person, it seems to spit out an answer that says you are better off being more selfish than you are being helpful to others. So we tried to explore that and understand what made someone like Ken able to go against the "math."

Obviously faith plays a role in this, but what I found really impactful was Ken's openness to acknowledge he is not entirely sure why he does it. There are some lived experiences and influence from his family, but if he's really honest he's not sure why he decided to focus on it so much. And if you think about it that is a really profound idea, because it suggests everyone has the potential to focus their lives on helping others. It is a choice we all get to make every day, not an easy choice, but a choice none the less. The question then becomes how can we know that helping others is actually the "right" choice--but that is a conversation for another day.