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What seems to help the shy Lucado stay grounded is his sense of humor. You can't spend time with him without hearing one of the thousands of jokes in his repertoire—and he's not above being corny. Over lunch with Lucado and his family, the jokes fly thick and fast between him and his youngest daughter, Sara, 14, as his wife, Denalyn, and I laugh—or groan.

It's this sense of humor that repeatedly pops up when you ask his publishers, friends, and editors to describe Lucado; they always mention how much fun he is. They also use superlatives like authentic and, especially, humble. "I know he's like all of us, and there is an ego there somewhere," says Steve Green, his literary representative and former college roommate. "But I've never seen it."

Don Jacobson was marketing director at Multnomah Press for several of Lucado's early books and is now president and publisher. "I've watched him now for almost 20 years and have always appreciated his humble spirit," Jacobson says. "If anything, he's more humble now than when I first met him."

Lucado acknowledges compliments like these by—of course—making a joke. "Being a humble author—I take pride in that!" he says.

Lucado admits that he wrestles with pride, which he says manifests itself in his competitiveness. "I'm ashamed of the fact that I sometimes want to have the biggest church in town, or a book on the bestseller list," he says. "I take too much pride in that. I ideally want to be able to say that I can be content if 500 people read my books rather than 500,000. But I can't."

His desire to have the largest church in town was an issue for several years. "I confessed it to the church—I was sick of always wanting to know if our church was as big as the others," Lucado says. "A man gave me some great advice. He reminded me that when another church does well, we all do well. After he said that, I suddenly saw Oak Hills as one tiny corpuscle in the body of Christ."

He channels much of his competitiveness into fitness and sports: jogging, playing golf and basketball, and biking up to 100 miles a week. "Everything I do ... it's hard not to want to win," Lucado says. "When I'm in bike races, I want to be at the front of the pack. I know competitiveness can be healthy and good, unless it is pride-driven. It's a struggle for me."

Lucado is also forthcoming about his missteps as a youth. He grew up in Andrews, a west Texas town, which he describes as "summers skillet-hot and winters wind-tunnel cold, populated by friendly people, pump jacks, windmills, and cattle on treeless prairies." His father, Jack, was a hobo during the Great Depression who led "a rowdy life," Lucado recalls. Jack became an Exxon oil field mechanic and married Thelma, a nurse, who had grown up working the cotton fields. By the time Max, the youngest of four children, was born in San Angelo in 1955, the happily married Jack was 40 and no longer rowdy.

"He'd been in and out of the wild world, and was unimpressed by it—and he didn't feel as if he needed to impress those in it," Lucado says. "He was a good example to me: self-assured, confident, loyal, moral, responsible. Very quiet."

It was from Jack that Max learned his sense of humor and his enjoyment of a good time. "He laughed a lot—he loved to tell jokes," Lucado remembers. "Even when he was just starting to tell one, he'd begin laughing. His eyes would become half-moons."

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March 2004, Vol. 48, No. 3