Ken’s Mulligan

Ken Blanchard Testimony

The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly,

along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

1 Timothy 1:14

 

            Have you ever asked yourself, “What is life all about? Is there a purpose to what we are doing on this planet? Is there really a God that is personally concerned about me? And can I get to know Him?”

            I asked myself those questions for many years before I discovered the answers. I’m one of those individuals who came to know Jesus later in life. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me take a moment and give you a little background on my journey.

            I grew up in New Rochelle, New York. My parents attended church regularly and enjoyed their minister so much that they gave me his last name as my middle name, Kenneth ‘Hartley’ Blanchard.

   I can’t remember a time during my youth that we didn’t go to church. It was there and in my home that the name of Jesus Christ was talked about. His name was very familiar and yet I did not really know him. You see, it’s possible to know a lot about a person and still not know them. I know a great deal about President Abraham Lincoln but I never knew him on a personal basis.

   In fact, I often heard the name of Jesus Christ outside of church activities. His was the most popular name on our school campus. And when I went into business I heard a good number of people talk about Jesus Christ. Of course, these individuals were using his name as a swear word.

After elementary school my parents moved the family to a new church that I attended throughout my junior high school years. The minister was a good speaker and very personable. It was there that I became very active in the Youth Fellowship. I especially enjoyed the new church because it had a great basketball team.

Although I enjoyed the sports activities, the church outings, and the relationships with other youth my age, I was still not a follower of Jesus. Church just seemed to be the normal way of life for our family. I really didn’t give much thought to having a personal relationship with Jesus. It was more of a comfortable and casual acceptance that He was the Son of God. Sort of like believing in a historical event but having no emotions tied to it.

I then went off to college at Cornell University in Ithaca, in upstate New York. Under the university’s hands-off policy with regard to student religious observances, I started to drift away. With studies and an increasingly busy campus life, I never really found a church to attend in Ithaca.

The summer after I graduated I started to date Margie McKee, who was a fourth generation Cornellian. We were both working in the Ithaca area. I was working as a dorm counselor for the National Science Foundation and playing a lot of golf. Margie was a speech therapy major. She worked at a special camp for handicapped kids. We were married a year later, after Margie’s graduation from Cornell.

During our first year of marriage we lived in Hamilton, New York. I was finishing my master’s degree and Margie was working as a speech therapist for the Madison County schools. When we returned to Cornell the next year for my doctorate and Margie for her master’s degree, we met a fabulous young minister. He got us excited about church again. We even volunteered to help run the junior high program.

In 1966, we headed out to Ohio University in Athens for my first job as administrative assistant to the dean of the College of Business Administration. Our son, Scott, was just a baby, and Margie was pregnant with Debbie. In Athens, we met a wonderful minister and began to be active in that church.

This was the late sixties, a time of much student unrest. The Kent State incident occurred right down the road. We had our own little incident of disillusionment that fit right in with the times. Our minister friend sympathized with students; he was right up front at all the protests and marches. That didn’t go over well with his congregation. They fired him in what seemed to us a most un-Christian manner.

Anger and disillusionment came crashing in on us. We thought, If that’s what Christianity is all about, forget it. We dropped out. Like so many people, if we went to church at all, it was only on Christmas and Easter. That went on for fifteen years.

In 1970, we moved to Amherst, Massachusetts where I taught at the University of Massachusetts and Margie worked on her doctorate in Communication Studies. After six years there, we went to San Diego for a one-year sabbatical leave. Living for a few months in California where sunshine is cheap, we realized that summer in Massachusetts, by comparison, was two weeks of bad skating. As a result, we decided to stay on the West Coast and start our own company, Blanchard Training and Development, Inc.

Then an unbelievably exciting event occurred: The One Minute Manager®. Spencer Johnson, my coauthor, and I met at a party in November of 1980. He was the co-author of a wonderful children’s series called Valuetales. Margie met Spencer first. She hand-carried him over to me and said, “Why don’t you two work on a children’s book for managers? They won’t read anything else.”

Spencer was working on a one minute parenting book with a psychiatrist. When he explained his approach to parenting, I told him I had been teaching those kinds of things to managers for years. So I invited him to a seminar I was giving the following Monday in San Diego. He came and sat in the back of the room and laughed throughout the day. At the end of the seminar, he ran up to me and said, “Forget parenting! Let’s go for managers.” That was the birth of The One Minute Manager®.

In 1982, William Morrow Publishers picked up our book and within two weeks it was on the New York Times bestseller list. It stayed on the list for the next three years

Several months after the book came out, I got a call from Phil Hodges, a longtime friend from Cornell. He wanted to know if we could get together for a walk on the beach. He had turned his life over to Jesus Christ several years before and had been praying for me ever since. When we took our walk, Phil asked, “Ken, why do you think The One Minute Manager® is such a runaway bestseller? Do you think it’s because you’re a better writer than anyone else or that you’re smarter than most people?”

I said, “I don’t think that at all. I’ve thought a lot about it. The success of The One Minute Manager® is too unbelievable for me to take any credit. I think God is involved.”

He grinned. “Thank God,” he said, “I hoped you would have that attitude.”

That meeting with Phil marked the renewal of my spiritual journey, which had begun when I was a little guy being taken to church by my parents. Afterward, he kept calling me, sending me things to read, and pushing me to think about my relationship with Jesus.

Next, Margie and I met Bob and Linda Buford. Bob was a member of the Young Presidents Organization (YPO) the group that had convinced Margie and me to stay in California and start our own company.

On the way to a YPO conference in Mexico City, we saw Bob and Linda between flights at the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. When we got on the plane I discovered that Bob’s seat was across the aisle from mine. During our chatting, I went to get something from my wallet and found, tucked away among the bills, a little booklet about Christianity called The Four Spiritual Laws, written by Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ. My friend Phil had given it to me to read. I didn’t recall putting it in my wallet, but there it was.

I said, “Bob, this booklet is in my wallet for some reason. Maybe it means we should talk about Christianity. I have a few questions I’d like to ask you.”

“I’ll do my best, Ken,” said Bob. “But remember, I’m only a layman.”

So there in the sky we started going over the booklet together. The first spiritual law stated: “God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life.”

I could buy that one all right, but the second law was where my questions started. It contended that we are all sinners. That had always bothered me for two reasons. First, I don’t like labels. If you call somebody a “sinner” they really get their back up. Second, from my standpoint as a humanist, the concept of original sin was too negative. I’d always thought that people should be considered to have “original potentiality.” That is, as human beings we have the potential to be either good or bad.

When I asked Bob about original sin he said, “Let me ask you a question, Ken. Do you think you’re as good as God?”

“Of course not,” I answered. “The concept of God has to do with perfection.”

“Okay. On a scale of 1 to 100, let’s give God 100. We’ll give Mother Teresa 90, and an ax murderer 5. Ken, you’re a decent sort of guy and are trying to help others, so I’ll give you 75. Now the special thing about Christianity is that God sent Jesus to earth to make up the difference between you and 100.”

That appealed to me. I’d never heard grace explained that way. Ask anybody “on a scale of 1 to 100, with 100 being perfection, where would you rate yourself?” Nobody would say 100. We all know that we fall short of perfection. This was a much better way to explain grace than calling people sinners.

“Before you get too excited,” Bob continued, “Let me give you the whole story. A lot of people don’t like the fact that the ax murderer gets the same shot at heaven as Mother Teresa, but that’s what grace is all about. It’s not about deeds; it’s about faith. If you accept Jesus Christ as your Savior, no matter what your past has been, He rids you of your sins and this makes up the difference between you and 100.”

For the rest of the flight I peppered Bob with questions. As we deplaned in Mexico City, Bob said, “I’ve got a friend I want you to meet who can answer your questions much better than I can. His name is Bill Hybels, and he’s minister of one of the fastest-growing churches in the country. And another thing—he’s speaking at this conference. If it’s okay, I’m going to see to it that you guys have lunch together.”

Bill and I did have lunch. I led off with the same question I’d asked Bob: “Why original sin? It’s too negative.”

Bill said, “Ken, let me explain the difference between Christianity and religion. The main difference is in how they’re spelled. Religion is spelled ‘do.’ That means there are all kinds of things you must do to receive God’s grace. The problem with religion and the ‘do’ philosophy is that most people quit because they never know when enough is enough. Suppose you do 2,500 good things in your life, and then you get to Judgment Day and the Lord says, ‘That’s not bad but you needed to do 3,000.’”

Bill went on to say, “Christianity is spelled ‘done.’ The Lord sent Jesus to earth to take care of it. You can’t perform well enough or do enough good things to get into heaven. The only entry is by admitting you are a sinner (that is, falling short of a 100 in Bob’s terms) and accepting Jesus as your Savior. He is the only one who can cleanse your past. You cannot do it yourself.” Bill talked about a personal relationship with Jesus, something I had not experienced even in the days when I was active in church. “Not only can He save you, but He can become your guide and your friend. He can energize your life and transform it.”

The simplicity of Bill’s explanation hit me. I had attended church for years, but I had never heard the message of grace with such clarity and power. All my misgivings about original sin were stripped away. I wasn’t a bad person; I just fell short of God’s perfection and by accepting Jesus as my Savior I could be given grace. Then I could reach 100 and be right with the Lord through God’s forgiveness of my imperfections.

When I asked Bill how I could accept grace, he said, “It’s easy for a One Minute Manager®! All you have to do is bow your head and say, ‘Lord, I can’t save myself; I am a sinner. I fall short of 100. I accept Jesus Christ as my Savior and bridge between me and You. From this day forward I turn my life over to Him.’”

While I was excited and could feel the adrenaline pumping, I was reluctant to jump in with both feet. And Bill could sense it. I told him I was worried about a commitment to Jesus because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to follow through. “I’ll fail,” I said.

Bill took out a pen and wrote the words “commit” and “follow through” on a paper napkin. Then he said, “Please don’t ever use those two words. Becoming a Christian is not about committing and following through. God knows you can’t keep your commitment. God knows you can’t follow through. Christianity is a matter of two different words: receive and trust. Romans 6:23 says, ‘For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord.’

“What is a gift?” Bill asked.

I said, “Something you receive.”

“That’s right,” said Bill. “Salvation, regeneration, newness of life, and forgiveness of sin are things that can only be received. And once you receive grace, once you receive forgiveness, you’ve got them. Your next step is to trust God and say, ‘I don’t know what all of this means, and I don’t know where I am going, but I am going to trust You each step of the way and see what happens.’”

My lunch with Bill really made me think about Jesus. But I still wasn’t ready to suit up yet. I just wasn’t ready to let go of my life and hand it over to God.

It’s hard for human beings to let go completely. We think we can figure everything out for ourselves. I kept on thinking about what Bob and Bill had said, but it wasn’t until almost a year later that I acknowledged I was seriously ready to suit up.

It occurred after Margie and I turned over the presidency of Blanchard Training and Development to an individual who had more business experience than we did and who felt he could move our company forward. As it turned out, we didn’t always agree on some basic values. Margie and I tried everything to resolve this conflict, but no matter what we tried, it didn’t help. It became clear that things were just not working out. What was worse, I felt powerless to do anything about it.

One evening, Margie and I decided to meet at a local restaurant for dinner and talk about our options.

   Earlier that day, I recalled a conversation I’d had with Bill. We’d once talked about my work as a consultant, helping executives solve sticky problems that came up in their organizations. Bill had said, “Ken, I can’t understand why you won’t receive the gift of God’s grace, because if you do, you get three top consultants for the price of one—the Father, who created it all; the Son, who taught us all we should know; and the Holy Spirit, who is our day-to-day operational manager. When you suit up for the Lord and accept Jesus as your Savior, the Holy Spirit jumps in and offers sure guidance whenever you’re stuck. That’s a good deal, Blanchard.”

As my dinner meeting with Margie approached, I thought, Man, why am I trying to solve this all by myself? Suddenly, I knew what I was going to do. A wave of tremendous relief flowed through me. I bowed my head and said, “Lord, I can’t make it to 100 by myself. I can’t solve problems like this without Your help. I admit that I need You and recognize my vulnerability. I accept Jesus as my Savior as the bridge between You and me.” The moment I said these words, a great peace came over me.

That feeling was still with me when I walked into the restaurant to meet Margie. She took one look at me and said, “What happened to you? You look so relaxed and calm.” Then I told her what I had done and how I was going to trust God to give me the wisdom and strength to deal with the problem presented by our president. Later, I phoned Bill and left a message on his answering machine that I had received Christ and was ready to trust my life to Him.

My friend Phil told me one time that to appreciate Jesus and the gift God has given us, you have to recognize the differences between justice, mercy, and grace. With justice, if you commit a crime, you get the penalty you deserve. With mercy, if you commit a crime, you are given less punishment than you deserve. With grace, someone else has already taken the sentence—taken the punishment for you. The Lord loves us so much that He sacrificed His only son, Jesus, to wipe our slate clean and give us the gift of salvation.

You might be wondering what happened to Margie. Well she suited up a year later after reading Robert A. Laidlaw’s The Reason Why during a ski trip to Aspen with a group of old Cornell friends.

The day before, she had hurt her leg skiing, so she decided to take it easy the rest of this trip. Phil gave Laidlaw’s little booklet to Margie to read while the rest of us headed off to the slopes.

When I got back to the room at the end of our ski day, Margie said, “Well, I did it!”

I said, “Did what?”

“I suited up,” she smiled. “Robert Laidlaw asked for a decision at the end of The Reason Why, so I bowed my head and did it.”

Several years ago Charlie “Tremendous” Jones, author of Life is Tremendous, republished The Reason Why through Executive Books. Unbeknownst to me he asked Margie to write the foreword. I was touched when I read her comments:

Nearly ten years ago I spent a snowy afternoon reading THE REASON WHY while Ken and friends were skiing. Perhaps like you, I had both noticed and envied the deep joy I saw in people (like Ken) who had taken the promise of forgiveness of sins and eternal salvation into their hearts by accepting Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. It was a mystery to me. How did a person like me come to this decision and take what sounded like a simple but huge step?

THE REASON WHY is 37 pages long. It very patiently goes through the intellectual questions you and I have about the existence of God, the Bible and the Word of God and, ultimately, God’s offer and plan for our salvation and eternal life with Him.

My beliefs, my faith, and my ego were all challenged in this little book as the case for God’s wondrous and loving offer was built and rebuilt. At the end I was asked to leave my doubts behind, to rejoice in the invitation by God to take Jesus Christ into my heart as my personal savior, and to accept that offer period.

As I signed and dated this little book, I realized that faith is simply a choice – yes or no. Yes for me has made all the difference.

When Margie told me she had suited up after reading The Reason Why, I began to cry for two reasons. First, it reminded me of the impact Norman Vincent Peale had on our lives while I was writing The Power of Ethical Management with him in the late 1980’s. Margie and I had not yet made a personal commitment to the Lord and Norman encouraged us by saying “The Lord has always had the two of you on his team, you just had not ‘suited up’ yet.” So “suiting up” became our faith mantra. Secondly, the fact that Margie suited up that day was special for her and for me. You suit up one at a time. Margie is not an emotional decision maker like I am. She is much more thoughtful. She had to suit up on her own time table. Now we are really on the same team—forever!