Donald Miller is a normal guy

When I was a freshman in high school our church did a youth weekend where each grade spent the weekend in a family’s home. I don’t know why the homeowners agreed to let 15 high school students abuse their home — but they did -- and it was a really meaningful weekend. The leader for the guys that weekend was a 22 year old from Houston named Don Miller. My friend Anthony and I loved Don. He was this cool guy who paid attention to us. I remember Don talking about how much he enjoyed U2’s With or Without You, he introduced us to some indie band called the Trashcan Sinatras and on the way home from the Rich Mullins concert the police pulled us over in Don’s little pick-up truck (they probably figured 3 guys crammed into the front seat of a pick-up were up to no good).

Then the weekend was over and Anthony and I soon forgot about Don and The Trashcan Sinatras.

Eight years later it’s 2001 and I am sitting in a missionary’s home one evening in India reading a book that I picked up called Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance. I really enjoyed the book and for some reason it was the only book I brought on my 10 day trip. I finished the last chapter and started reading any other printed page left just to pass time. I actually read all the acknowledgments and noticed my old youth pastor’s name is mentioned – David Gentiles. At that moment it clicked. I looked at the back cover and realized from the picture that the author is Don Miller — my leader from the freshman retreat. “Good for him,” I thought. “He’s a writer.” I emailed the address in the book and we exchange a few surface-level emails. A few days later I returned to Texas and forgot about Don.

Six years pass and we are launching our first LeadNow event in Orlando. Don is now a best-selling author (Blue Like Jazz) and it seems that everyone I talk to has heard of him or at least the book. Like millions of others, I enjoyed Blue Like Jazz and we invited Don to be one of our speakers at LeadNow. He walks into the church in Orlando and I greet him and guide him backstage. I start to bring up the youth retreat and emails exchanged over the Volkswagen book ... and he remembered! He asked about Anthony and we re-connected about mutual friends.

Over the past 18 months I have come to appreciate Don as a thinker, a gifted communicator, a faithful follower of Christ and a friend. He’s now been at four of our events and we’ve done several video projects together. I just returned from a few days in Portland, Oregon where I was hanging out with Don and the other board members of The Mentoring Project. I was honored to be invited to join the board and this was my first meeting. Don grew up without a dad and recently started The Mentoring Project (formerly Belmont Foundation) to recruit and equip churches to send out mentors into their local community to be a positive role model for 7-14 year old fatherless boys. It’s an incredible opportunity for the church to act on behalf of 10 million fatherless boys in our country.

Through research, The Mentoring Project found that mentoring has the ability to change the trajectory of a young man’s future. Kids who are mentored are:

* 46% less likely to use drugs or alcohol
* 53% less likely to skip school
* 33% less likely to resort to violence
* 59% more likely to get better grades

What I appreciate about Don is that he’s a normal guy. His most recent blog post is a video of some families who came over to his house to carve pumpkins and they decided to see what would happen if they threw them off the second-story balcony. But more significant than his normalcy — I am thrilled that the guy who traveled across the country in a Volkswagen bus and ended up in Portland is willing to let God use him and his voice to impact a generation.

I am amazed to see how God weaves relationships together and am thankful that this one is 15+ years in the making.

By the way -- we just found out that Don wants to come to our event in Dallas in 3 weeks. So we made a spot for him and he will be speaking on Friday, November 14 on the same evening as Erwin McManus. Tickets are still $20 if you go online now.