Kevin Myers and John C. Maxwell. Home Run. Bookish, 2014. Audio CD.

Home Run is subtitled Learn God’s Game Plan for Life and Leadership. This is a very practical teaching series focused on how to develop your life calling God’s way. It teaches mostly by examples from the authors’ lives. Mr. Maxwell mentored Mr. Myers, and both men share in different chapters.

The book gets its title because it emphasizes that there are four steps to truly “scoring” in life. Just as a batter begins at home plate and tries to touch first, second, and third base on the way to home plate to score in Baseball, so the Christ follower needs to take certain steps in a specific order to succeed in God’s Kingdom.

Very simply, home plate is the beginning, that is, faith in God through Jesus. To begin God’s game plan, we must have a faith relationship with him.

First base is personal character. Unless we develop a Spirit-led, Bible-based character, we will not have particular success doing things God’s way.

Second base is our relationship with others. We really cannot go forward in life without good relationships with other people. And, of course, our relationships with others will not develop well without that character that engenders trust in other people. Something I learned in the military and most leaders learn through experience is that we need other people—and, hopefully, they can depend on us.

Third base is our profession, or our calling in life. The problem with many people, Myers and Maxwell note, is that they often try to run from home plate to third base. In baseball, a person who does this is called out. Confusing this priority causes messes in the long run. We note that too many people try to succeed in whatever business they are in without first developing their character or without developing relationships properly. The hard working man who falls out of touch with his wife and children has become a stereotype.

When our character and relationships are reasonably settled, then God will help us develop our faith in whatever calling we are in.

Hopefully, towards the end of our lives, we can look back and be relatively satisfied with our progress if we consider these things in their proper places.

Like Pilgrim’s Progress, there are many Scripture references and examples, and this book in whatever form it takes can be a real life-changer. As with Pilgrim’s Progress, too, we understand that nobody is perfect. Myers and Maxwell learn much from their mistakes. But isn’t that how we often learn? Don’t we all want to focus on what is most important?

In the past, I have given Bob Buess’s book Favor: The Road to Success as a high school graduation gift. That is still a great book. But for some people, especially those who are hard-driven, Home Run may be just the kind of teaching needed to get a sense of God’s direction in life.

P.S. Both authors are preachers, so they have an alliterative device to remember the four steps in their order:
(H) Connect, (1) Character, (2) Community, and (3) Competence, back to (H) Connect. With a Home Run, we are able to get others to connect with us and with God.

P.P.S. One well-known teaching with Myers used is the concept of the triangle with God at the apex and husband and wife at the other two angles. As each spouse (or for that matter, friend or partner or parent or child in other relationships) gets closer to God, they also move closer to one another. It works an improvement even if only one of the two is moving closer to God. The attached illustration from the book is shown with Mr. Myers (Kevin) and his wife Marcia.

I learned this about 25 years ago from a man who mentored my wife and me. It did give me hope and a goal. It made a difference in the way I looked at my marriage, but also how I did my job. Note that if the apex of the triangle is a right triangle, the distance between the two people becomes shorter even if only one of them is trying to get closer to God. Not that I always get things right, but that Jesus’ promise of “Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33) really does work.