A member of one Sunday school class I taught asked me to lunch. He started the conversation by saying, "I have a CPA to keep me liquid, a lawyer to keep me legal, and a doctor to keep me healthy. But I have no one to help assess my spiritual condition. Can you give me a 'spiritual audit'?"

I had never thought about such a thing. In the next two or three years, I accumulated several questions I regularly ask myself. Here are a few of them:

Am I content with who I am becoming?

Our son, Fred Jr., asked me about the important people in my life. After hearing each story, he unerringly asked, "Did he finish well?" Some did, some didn't, and a few were disasters.

We must be sure our profession does not consume our person. It's important that we be more than we do or have. Too often I have seen leaders leave their title and power and have nothing to fill the vacuum. They are shells, like the large beetles you find on pine trees in east Texas that look complete but their insides are gone. They are ...