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Besides chutzpah, the one thing we all had in common at the Door was that we were mad about something we thought was wrong in Christendom, and we all liked to laugh. In other words, we were all a little like Mike, or wanted to be. To prepare each Door, we would meet for breakfast at the Hob Nob Hill restaurant in San Diego and blow off steam, complaining and pontificating, cracking jokes and cracking up at each other, while someone took notes. The notes became the magazine. Denny Rydberg, now the president of Young Life, was the editor and note-taker in those days. The 13 years I wrote Door editorials were among the most formative of my life. I wouldn't be a writer today if Mike hadn't pulled me into those brilliantly creative and farcical planning meetings. God, in his providence, knew they were the only way he could get me to write.

Mike's memorial service attracted people from all the decades of his life, young and old. Looking at all of us old folks, I thought of a line that Mike would have liked, I think: After attending his 40th high school reunion, a man told his wife, "Everyone there was so bald and fat they didn't recognize me." I hadn't had a significant conversation with Mike for nearly eight years, and before that, for maybe ten. Listening to some of the things that were said about Mike made me wonder if I would recognize him if he were still alive and we could sit down and have a serious conversation. Would he recognize me?

Clearly he had changed, and so had I. I'm not sure about exactly how and why he changed, but I wonder if it wasn't in some of the ways I have. Mainly, I have bumped up against the hard edge of my limitations and sin, again and again. I am less sure about what's wrong with Christendom, and more sure about what's wrong with me. Just writing that sentence makes me feel silly; who do I think I am, some humbler, older and wiser man, now? A Young Turk knocked down to size?

But when I listened to the way Mike's wife and children talked about him at the service, I heard about a man who had collided with a few of the same hard edges. I heard about a man who was gentle and tenderhearted in ways I hadn't known—even allowing for the way one's reputation can grow and glow in a memorial service. Just listening to his daughter Lisa list in mouth-watering detail all the wonderful foods he loved to eat convinced me that amid all the chutzpah and posturing of the Door years, I had missed something in Mike. His wife and kids loved and respected him, and will miss him dearly. I think that probably means more than all the influence and speaking and conventions and books he ever produced. It's dangerous to speculate about what the Righteous Judge will most commend Mike for, but I think it will be that. Take note, all you Young Turks.

Ben Patterson is campus pastor at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California.

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January 2004, Vol. 48, No. 1