This week I’m sharing a post each day about five books I read this summer. Today’s book: “Eat Mor Chikin – Inspire More People,” Truett Cathy’s autobiography.

Truett Cathy’s father was an unsuccessful insurance salesman, who was often gone and left the family’s financial burdens on Truett’s mother. Even when his father was home, emotionally he wasn’t. In his own words, he did not have “a loving and caring father.”

At a young age, Cathy learned to work hard in an effort to help support the family. He had a paper route and writes that Sunday was a critical day for a newspaper delivery boy. It was also a hard day because the Sunday paper was too thick to fold and too heavy to carry more than a few at a time. He often felt cheated because his father never helped him, while the fathers of some of the other boys would help them on Sundays.

His Sunday School teacher, a man named Theo Abby, became the model Cathy chose to follow in his life. Abby did more than teach. He invested in the young boys in his class. He would often visit the project where young Truett Cathy and other boys in the class lived. He occasionally invited them to go with him to his cabin on Lake Jackson. Cathy says he learned about a loving relationship between a father and his son by watching Theo Abby and his son, Ted.

Cathy emulated Abby by spending much of his life helping children who were the victims of circumstances. He and his wife have been foster parents to over 150 children. His foundation is responsible for more than a dozen homes for children and provides scholarships to college students. For more than 50 years, he taught a Sunday School class of 13 year old boys.

We are all shaped by our past. The important thing is how we allow God to use our past in shaping our future and our ministry.

More children come from broken homes today than anytime in America’s history. At the same time, young people are leaving our churches in record numbers. Perhaps God is calling those of us over age 50 to reach out to them. Perhaps we need to remember that they are the kids…and we are the adults. As such, it is up to us help them, to love them, to make a place for them in our lives and in our churches. We can have a positive impact and be a positive influence on them…if we care enough to try.

Pastor Steve Hogg