Lessons on the Way to Heaven: What My Father Taught Me

by Zondervan

Overview

Mike Fechner had cofounded an urban renewal ministry called H.I.S. BridgeBuilders and sold all he owned to fund it. But at this stage of serving the poor full time, when Mike believed he was doing precisely what God wanted him to do, the unthinkable happened. Mike was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given a year to live.

 

With his life’s clock now quickly ticking away, in a time of incredible pain and bewilderment, Mike discovered what it meant to truly lose his life for the sake of finding it. Through faith he kept going forward, and encountered a wilder, more adventurous life than he had ever imagined, a life truly given away and truly found.

 

Lessons on the Way to Heaven is brimming with hope and faith, vision and wisdom. It’s a “last lecture” (Randy Pausch) for anyone who wonders what life is all about, who’s hurting and needs encouragement, or who wants to discover the secret of living a life that is so good it is beyond belief.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780310343691
Publisher:	Zondervan
Publication date:	01/26/2016
Sold by:	Zondervan Publishing
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	377,169
File size:	874 KB

Read an Excerpt

Lessons on the Way to Heaven

What My Father Taught Me

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By Michael Fechner Jr., Bob Welch

ZONDERVAN

Copyright © 2016 Michael Fechner Jr.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-310-34369-1

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CHAPTER 1

All Showroom, No Warehouse

Plano, Texas, and my father went together like brisket and ribs. In 1989, when our story begins, not only did our family live in Plano — I was a year old — but both the city and my father were on the rise. During the 1980s alone, the population of the once-sleepy Dallas suburb doubled, as big companies such as JCPenney and Frito-Lay plunked down their corporate headquarters there.

People dressed for success, my father among them. This, after all, was North Dallas. If cops were patrolling neighborhoods, it wasn't to quell drug deals, but to issue warnings to rogue sprinkler users during droughts. Blink, and you'd miss a couple of new housing developments pop up. Long an opportunist, Dad had bagged his job as an insurance underwriter to sell something he realized every one of these new houses needed — security systems.

His father, Ruben, had started the business in San Antonio. Though Dad was only in his mid-twenties, his Dallas branch of the business went crazy. Soon he was on his way to becoming a millionaire — and becoming a workaholic in the process.

Dad and my mother, Laura, drove a BMW. For her birthday, he bought her a diamond and gold watch, later surprising her with a mink coat. Having a baby son, me, didn't slow Mom and Dad down a bit; I'd been to Europe before I was potty-trained. Mom and Dad were a great-looking couple. My dad was lanky, six foot one, and deeply tanned; Mom had strawberry red hair and shy southern charm. "We looked like we walked straight out of a magazine," my father wrote.

They attended a large evangelical church — membership was climbing toward ten thousand — whose pastor leaned toward preaching a "prosperity gospel": if you're faithful, God will bless you. If many who attended Prestonwood Baptist were sincere and committed in their faith, my father was not among them. He was attracted to the church because it was a "Who's Who of North Dallas Business" — wealthy bankers, big-time developers, oil people, and the like.

He began to climb the ranks of the lay leaders. He sang solos during Sunday worship services. Got on the deacon board; at age twenty-six, he was one of the youngest ever. He even taught a Bible class, his lack of spiritual depth masked by his abundance of charisma.

You've heard of people who can "own the room"? Dad owned every room he stepped foot in. He was part salesman, part baby-kissing politician, and part verbose pastor. All of this at a church that, given my father's go-go-go lifestyle at the time, was the perfect fit. It was among the fastest-growing churches in America.

"Prestonwood was a larger-than-life place," he said of the four-thousand-seat church, "and I deftly positioned myself in its center."

Looking back, my father had emerged as an individual micro-cosm of Plano — full of unabashed pride, unchecked growth, and unlimited potential. But he was so miserable he would stay up nights in anguish. Deep in his soul, he knew he was living a lie.

"It was a facade," he wrote. "I worked long hours, day and night. Friendships were all about comparing what we had with others and affirming each other's material possessions. On the outside, we were beautiful people living in a beautiful place doing beautiful things, but inside, the pit opened wide, and it was asking more and more of my soul."

At age twenty-eight — just a year older than I am now — he looked in the mirror and didn't see Mike Fechner; he saw the rich young ruler Jesus had admonished to sell all he had, give to the poor, and "follow me." Or the prodigal son, who had turned his back on God's ways. Or the one he identified with most — Jacob, who was known for his deception.

"I was a deceiver," he wrote. "All showroom. No warehouse."

For a two-week period, unable to sleep, he stayed up long after my mom had gone to bed, weeping in misery. "God," he prayed, "I don't really know you. I'm so far away. I can't overcome these lies. Help me. Please help me."

That's the first lesson my father learned: That God listens. That God cares about us. That God answers our prayers, though not necessarily how we might envision him doing so.

My dad was about to undergo a radical life change whose catalyst was a woman who couldn't be more different from him. Not that digging out of this dark hole of deceit would be easy. After all, he had been digging that hole since roughly the day he was born.

CHAPTER 2

Cooking The Books

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At age five, my dad and his twin brother, Mel, were sifting through a garbage dumpster on the military post in Virginia where their father — my grandfather — was a colonel. They found a bag of individually wrapped candy. Uncle Mel wanted to eat it. Dad wanted to sell it.

"My brother and I are selling candy," he told the person at the first house they went to. "All proceeds will go toward planting f lowers in the neighborhood."

Ka-ching. An easy fifty cents. The person behind the next doorbell went down just as easy. And on and on.

Mel didn't like the duplicity — what flowers? — but went along with the ploy. When Ruben, their older brother, heard of the plan, he demanded a third of the take or he'd talk. (Extortion at an early age.) My dad refused. Ruben squealed. Mel and Dad were forced to retrace their steps and apologize to all they had duped.

But here's how hardened my dad's heart was at that tender age: "There was no contriteness in my heart, no sorrow for my lies," he wrote. "Only a strengthened resolve not to get caught next time."

His thirst for getting rich was triggered by a desire to be like his granddad, a confident, successful doctor who always carried around rolls of bills. It was never about what the money could buy; all he ever wanted was a rolltop desk. A strange desire for a little boy, yes, but as you'll come to find out, Dad was anything but conventional. You see, the money was about how it would make him look and feel. Important. Cool. Successful. From the beginning, image was everything.

A year before my dad's father shipped out to Vietnam in 1968, the family was stationed in Virginia and went to a church where the pastor genuinely cared about the spiritual lives of the kids in the congregation.

One night, after hearing the pastor speak on John 3:16, my father came home with a heavy heart. "I already knew I was a manipulator," he wrote. "Lying came easy. If Jesus came back that night, I knew I wasn't saved, and that thought scared the life out of me."

He raced into the family room where his parents were watching TV. "I need to know Jesus," he said in a small voice.

They explained how that was possible. The next day, he and his brother Mel prayed to be forgiven and to welcome Christ into their lives. But not surprisingly, his faith didn't grow much deeper. In Sunday school, kids were given an array of pins as rewards for attendance, memorizing verses, and the like. My dad's shirts soon were as well decorated as a five-star general, but he was just like the young man he would grow up to be. "I was," he said, "a pretender."

As he got older, what continued to sink his integrity was greed. He and his brothers were to keep track of the money they made from doing chores and tithe 10 percent at church. "But I hated the idea of tithing," he wrote. "It was my money, not God's."

At ten, he was "cooking the books" like a tax cheater, under-reporting his income so he could justify paying less of a tithe. With his dad away in Vietnam and the family having moved to Texas, he was allowed to play bingo at Fort Worth's Colonial Country Club, where his granddad was a member. As his blotted numbers started to line up in his favor, his heart pounded with anticipation.

"Bingo!" he yelled. He had won a $200 jackpot, but when his mother made him split it with brothers Mel and Ruben, he fumed.

His grandparents — not churchgoers at the time — would host huge poker games, and my dad was allowed to play. When a great-uncle offered him pointers, he listened with the intensity of an attendee at a get-rich-quick seminar in a Hilton ballroom. And it paid off. He walked off with a handful of cash one evening.

This is it, he remembered thinking. This is what I want in life — and more.

CHAPTER 3

Empathy For
Others

* * *

I'm only twenty-seven, but I've lived long enough to know that, like some Starbucks coffee orders, people tend to be complicated blends of flavors, temperatures, and consistencies. Not all good. Not all bad. My dad, as a kid, was the same way. If he had a greedy side that became a part of who he was as an adult, he also had a heart that did the same.

In Virginia, one of his classmates was a special-needs boy named Harold. He was big, angry, and didn't shower too often. He liked to purposely run into other kids with his wheelchair. Not surprisingly, nobody was quick to help get Harold around in that chair. Instead, they returned evil for evil. They teased him or shunned him but did nothing to try to connect with him.

Except for my dad. He was new at the school and didn't have friends to play with at recess, so he figured he might as well help Harold out. He genuinely liked the boy. It was as if he could see through Harold's anger to the kid inside. Harold wanted to swing on the swings and climb on the monkey bars like everyone else, but would never get that chance.

As a boy, Dad heard a story about his mother when she was a teenager in Texas. She had been asked to go grocery shopping with the family's black maid. When they were finished shopping, my grandmother invited the woman into a drugstore to get a Coke. The store's owner was furious.

"Get out of my store, never come back, and never bring this type of person into my place!" he said. "You are not welcome here! Ever!"

My grandmother was aghast. She didn't understand what was happening. She paid for the Cokes, and she and the maid returned home, where the other shoe dropped.

Her father, the doctor, pointed an angry finger at her. "You were wrong in what you did," he said. "You could ruin the druggist's business!"

"How can you say what he did was right, and what did I do wrong?" my grandmother asked.

"It may not be right," he said, "but it is the way things are." And he forbade her from doing anything like that again.

My father never forgot that story; it would bear fruit decades later in helping him empathize with those who were discriminated against. As would another anecdote about a black friend who lived next door to my dad in Virginia. The boy's father was a high-ranking officer in the Navy — in fact the first African American to be promoted to the rank of admiral. My father respected him for that. The two families had become friends.

But when a white kid called a black kid "a nigger," my father, for the first time, came face-to-face with prejudice. In time to come, he would experience it not as an observer but as a victim.

Before my dad's junior year of high school, his father was transferred to Hawaii, specifically to Oahu. Dad envisioned the typical tropical-island images — sand, surf, and palm trees. But his first impression was something different — a Filipino student holding a broken bottle was chasing a white student down the hallway. School administrators routinely brought in dogs to check lockers for pot; the dogs went crazy. Marijuana was everywhere. So was racial tension.

"For the first time in my life, I experienced what it was like to be a minority," my father later wrote. Any person of non-Polynesian descent was called a f — Haole (pronounced Howlie and meaning foreigner). And, yes, the swearword was always included. It was a term of contempt for foreigners. Now he knew how his friends in Virginia had felt when they'd been the target of racism.

The one place he felt safe in Hawaii was church. "We were loved beyond words by the people and pastor of Wahiawa Baptist Church," he wrote.

The congregation was ethnically diverse — Filipino, Caucasian, Samoan, Hawaiian, and Japanese. To my dad, it felt like one big family. He had a decent voice and sang in the church choir. When auditions for a production of Jesus Christ Superstar were held, a friend suggested my dad try out. He won the lead part, which was wonderful until he learned that during the finale, where Jesus walked down the auditorium aisle, he needed to carry a cross.

It was heavy and rough-hewn. Dad was agreeable to wearing the loincloth, but, no, this was too much. It was humiliating. At the scene's end, he'd be dressed in a gold robe and climbing a ladder for the ascension scene. "I liked that part just fine," wrote my father, "but carrying a cross? Nope. Not me."

So he did what he often did in tight situations — he manipulated. He told the director it just wasn't logical to sing and carry a cross at the same time; better if he were to just sing and leave the heavy lifting, literally, to someone else.

A kid named Steve volunteered for the job. In fact, he was pumped for the opportunity. "You mean I'll actually get to carry Jesus' cross?" he said. "Mike, thanks so much."

"Hey, don't mention it," my dad answered. My father took credit for the idea, like he was doing the kid a favor. But inside he was thinking, Are you kidding me? Who wants to carry a cross?

Night after night, as the play ran, my father performed as the Jesus without a cross. "I loved the applause, the acclaim, the praise of the crowds," he wrote. Thousands of people showed up, and my dad belted out the grand finale and took his bows with glee.

"That," he later said, "was the picture of my Christian life. There was no taking up the cross for me. No denying myself. No true identification with Christ. No suffering or shame. Just hand me the robe, thank you, and let me take my bows."

CHAPTER 4

Getting His Way

* * *

In 1979, my dad was living what he thought was the dream — tooling around Fort Worth, Texas, in his grandparents' spare Cadillac, trying on the thought that this was what he wanted in life. He had won a voice scholarship to Texas Christian University. The campus was just down the street from where his grandparents lived in Fort Worth, so he stayed in a spare room.

He had entertained thoughts of becoming a professional singer but soon realized that was a reach, so he changed his major to something in which he knew he could succeed — business.

He hooked up with a multilevel marketing company that sold household products. Naturally, he was good at it. People were drawn to my dad because he promised he could make them lots of money and because he had boundless enthusiasm for the job. Soon he had a hundred distributors working beneath him.

Wherever he went, whomever he met, he looked at the person, first, with this in mind: Could they be a distributor for me? To him, people were tools to help him get what he wanted.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Lessons on the Way to Heaven by Michael Fechner Jr., Bob Welch. Copyright © 2016 Michael Fechner Jr.. Excerpted by permission of ZONDERVAN.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Preface, 11,
Chapter 1: All Showroom, No Warehouse, 13,
Chapter 2: Cooking the Books, 17,
Chapter 3: Empathy for Others, 20,
Chapter 4: Getting His Way, 24,
Chapter 5: Meeting Miss Velma, 28,
Chapter 6: A Partnership Born, 33,
Chapter 7: Reaching Out, 37,
Chapter 8: Trading Perspectives, 40,
Chapter 9: Looking at Life from Both Sides Now, 44,
Chapter 10: The Phone Call, 48,
Chapter 11: A Stirring of the Soul, 52,
Chapter 12: Small Miracles, 56,
Chapter 13: The Decision, 59,
Chapter 14: The Great Giveaway, 65,
Chapter 15: The Other Side of the Story, 70,
Chapter 16: Great Expectations, 75,
Chapter 17: Straddling the Cultural Line, 79,
Chapter 18: Walking the Talk, 83,
Chapter 19: Brother to Brother, 87,
Chapter 20: Making Disciples, 92,
Chapter 21: Daring to Enlighten, 96,
Chapter 22: The First Good-bye, 100,
Chapter 23: Culturally Ambidextrous, 105,
Chapter 24: Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way, 109,
Chapter 25: The First to Step Forward, 115,
Chapter 26: The Abundant Life, 120,
Chapter 27: Two-Way Street, 125,
Chapter 28: The Great Adventure, 129,
Chapter 29: The Silence of God, 134,
Chapter 30: A Twinge of Pain, 139,
Chapter 31: The Bomb, 143,
Chapter 32: Questions for God, 147,
Chapter 33: The Resurgence, 151,
Chapter 34: Searching for Zacchaeus, 155,
Chapter 35: The Gift of Breath, 159,
Chapter 36: Fruit of the Labor, 162,
Chapter 37: Compassion in Kenya, 166,
Chapter 38: The Holy Roller, 170,
Chapter 39: Chemo Church, 174,
Chapter 40: Dark Night of the Soul, 178,
Chapter 41: Bliss, 184,
Chapter 42: The Final Season, 188,
Chapter 43: Taking Leave, 193,
Chapter 44:Good-bye, 198,
Chapter 45: The Legacy, 202,
Epilogue, 207,
Acknowledgments, 211,
Appendix: Quotes from My Father, 213,
Study or Book Club Questions, 217,