A Synopsis of Bob Buford's book "HALFTIME"

I wrote this synopsis about one year ago which I circulated only to some of my church-going friends. I think the article is interesting enough for a wider audience. So I am posting it here for your reading pleasure as well as for my personal record. Read on and hope you enjoy this piece.

I was introduced to the book “HALFTIME” by Pastor Lim Soon Hock at a recent Men’s Breakfast Meeting at PJEFC and I thank him. I am aged 62 but still find this book fascinating and relevant, though I wish I had read it years earlier.

My thanks also go to CY Choo for lending me the book, without which I would not have had the pleasure of writing this synopsis.

I think the book is addressed mainly to people who have made it in life, people who have attained a good measure of success but after that didn’t quite know what to do with the rest of their lives. It’s about living a fulfilling life and leaving a valued legacy, one that one can truly take satisfaction in.

“Halftime” is not a book about where or how to attain wealth and fame (“success” in the secular sense), but rather that after having arrived at success, how to apply it and ourselves to worthy causes and to the good of humanity. It’s about “giving” back.

To those who have it (it could be your time or money, or both), I encourage you to take a good look at this book.

Written with layman eloquence, Bob Buford’s book is indeed a very readable book. It is not heavy reading even for the not so serious reader. However, for anyone to write a synopsis of it, that’s a different story!

Indeed, I find the challenge of writing this synopsis quite a daunting task because the book is not exactly an autobiography nor a novel. Nonetheless, I think the ensuing “stress” is probably worth it. Anyway, it’s a good way to burn off all those unwanted “calories”!

To me, Bob Buford’s book is a little instruction book, a kind of wisdom book, bore out from lessons and insights gleaned from his personal life encounters or experiences, the kind, a synopsis will never be able to do justice to. Therefore, my apologies if I have missed out some important elements, it’s inadvertent and not deliberate.

Let me start by giving you a little biography of the author, gleaned from what Buford had actually said of himself.

Bob Buford is very much an ordinary American who rose to riches from a middle-working-class family in the mid-west in the sixties. He considers himself a fortunate kid, meaning when young, he was given “far more opportunity for growth, personal development, and financial rewards than most Americans”. However, his father had died when he was young (in fifth grade) and his mother had to raise him up and 2 other siblings almost single-handedly.

After the death of his father, thru’ true grit and sheer determination his mother had founded a private radio and TV company, which was to be turned over to him years later when his mother retires. However, at the young age of 31, fate had him take over as President and Chairman of the company after the sudden and untimely death of his mother in a hotel fire.

Under his capable leadership, the company grew by leaps and bounds. By the time he was 44, he has hit the “success panic” syndrome, meaning that he had success and everything that money could buy but yet he finds himself “so frustratingly unfulfilled.”

Tragedy struck a second time, when his 24 year old son, an only child and apparent heir, died in a drowning accident, which left him severely devastated at heart and to rethink about his own life. Sadly, all his successes in business and family life could not save his son.

The book, “HALFTIME” is one of the results of his reinventing his life and which spawned the founding of “Leadership Network” in the USA, of which he now heads full-time. The “network” has become a very popular and valuable support service and resource centre to leaders of many large churches.

Now, if your life could be conveniently divided into 2 halves, which half would you think you’d have better control and how would you think you would like to have lived it?

Buford feels that the first half of one’s life is usually obsessed with acquiring success as the secular world knows it. You are probably caught up in the “rat race” of acquiring fame and fortune that left you with very little time to think much of anything else. The trappings, the joys and the pains of chasing dreams, let me ask you, has it been worth it?

Buford in his book tells us how to find meaning and fulfillment of our lives when our first half is about to be done.

He believes the second half of your life can be better than the first. In fact, much better but first you need time to figure out what you want to do with the rest of your life.

Has it not crossed your mind, what you might lose with all this gaining, (i.e. wealth and fame)? And when you have reached the top, what then?

Without doubt, getting to the apex is far more exciting and rewarding than arriving. When you have arrived, you will probably ask, is that all to life?

Clearly there is more. But after success, what then? Why is it that one can be so successful, so fortunate and yet can be so frustratingly unfulfilled? This is not a “Buford disease” but can happen to anyone up on the ladder of success.

That’s why you need time off at “halftime” to take stock of your life and truly reflect on where you are going from there.

Half time is a good time for soul searching and to find one’s self once more. The author suggests you listen to your inner self, the still, small voice within. You must first know who you are and know what’s in your “box”. The secret to fulfillment is to know the one thing that you truly want to give your life for. Yes, the one thing that you want to chase after with great passion, what is it?

Ask yourself, if your life were absolutely perfect, what would its elements be? Can fame and fortune perpetually buy happiness and fulfillment in your life?

Sometimes, it takes a calamity, such as a loss of a son as in Bob Buford’s case, to come to grips with the larger questions of life. We turn to God for a way out; we listen to our inner, still small voice. He calls us and then we have to make a choice. Life certainly is not any easier even to those who have made it in life so to speak.

Buford feels that if you have achieved a measure of success in your first half, the second half should be about giving back if one’s life is to be truly fulfilled. You actually move from a path of success to a new path, i.e. to a pursuit of significance.

As Buford explains, “My passion is to multiply all that God has given me, and in the process, give it back.” He would have loved his epitaph to read just simply “100X”. This is likening himself to the seed which fell on good soil and that yielded a crop “100 times” more than was sown. (see the Parable of the Sower, Luke 8:8). What a legacy, indeed that would be!

If our first half is about following dreams, chasing and acquiring success then our second half should be about investing our gifts in service to others. However, to know how to serve and to give it back, you must first know yourself and not just your gifts.

For that, ask yourself 2 questions: (1) on competency, what is it that you are really good at? And (2) on passion, what are you most passionate about? Blend the two, and then ask, is this what God really wishes me to do? Is this my legacy? If the answer is yes, the advice is, go and do it wholeheartedly. You will be so glad you did!

When success is attained early in one’s life, indeed there will be an unquenchable desire to move from success to significance. One may ask, what is this significance and how does one acquire it?

The answer is, unless we give more of ourselves in service to others, we probably will never know what true significance really is. And the truth is there is just no other way.

Buford explains it this way, that in life there are 2 kinds of capital that each of us has to spend. “Economic capital” is the money and time for leisure that you earn by working. For the most part, it is spent on living requirements and luxuries. “Social capital” is the time, money and knowledge that is available to reinvest or spend in the community that nurtures you.

Jesus Christ teaches that “it is more blessed to give than to receive.” The payoff for investment of social capital is “blessedness” which is more than happiness. Isn’t this what we all want? Therefore, you need to transform more of your “economic capital” into “social capital”.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi said, “People who control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy”. Controlling the “inner being” in order to having a fulfilling life, that’s what St Paul try to tell us in Romans 8:5-6. Buford tells us that in your second half, you ought to control your own life, and not let others control you.

Something that’s not uncommon these days is that many missed the joy of serving others in Christ’s name because much of what they do for the church is done out of a spirit of obligation. We shouldn’t let others talk us into doing something we don’t want to do or don’t have the time to do; if we did, it will become a chore. Always remember, you want to pursue your mission, not someone else’s.

The advice is, work with people you like, better still find some beneficial work that both sides like and can do together. This way, you add energy and meaning to life not take them away.

I hope that all these are not too heavy on you. Changing your game plan from success to significance requires “leadership” as in business and not “followship”. You and you alone must decide the risks you may want to take. In all of these, why not seek God in prayer?

Bob Buford in his book urges “healthy individualism”. He says, “the image of a weak, wimpy follower is not supported at all in Scripture, Paul urges Timothy to be strong. He counsels him to “fan into flames the gift of God, which is in you… for God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self discipline.” (2 Tim 1:6-7)

Let’s just go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pride-fully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren’t.

In analogy, in the first-half of life, the “self” is seen like a spring which winds inward, wrapping tighter and tighter around itself. In the second half, the “self” winds outwards, unraveling itself from the paralysis of a tight-wound spring. Do you see your life like so?

Sacrificing your immediate self, the small self, for a larger gain is what Jesus meant when he talked about the cost of following him: giving up your tightly wound selfishness to gain something bigger, better. We are told that people are at their largest, their most noble and virtuous when they are given over to a cause, something larger than themselves.

Be possessed with what is known as “altruistic egoism”. What follows explains what it is.

People are stunned by the rarity and vulnerability of the question, “is there anything I can do to be useful to you?” Helping others actually helps you. If you practice this often enough, it will become a reflex action.

Scientists are finding that helping others is indeed good for your health. It heightens one’s overall zest for living and increases one’s life expectancy. Giving of ourselves is offering love, and love remains the only gift that multiplies when you give it away. Did you know that people who are loveless, selfish and mean are not likely to live long?

Going out of your way to help someone can make you feel better! Principle of “altruistic egoism” is that doing good to others in fact does just as much good for you. In retrospective, we should ask ourselves: the apathy versus the empathy “self”, now which are you?

Success in the first half of your life is lonely because it is directed inward. It gains significance in the second half from the “pouring out” of ourselves, our gifts, our talents, our resources. Does this already sound familiar?

We can rejoice in life for its own sake. Remember, it is not how long but how good we have lived, that’s what matters. The start is important but it is the finish which counts. You can make a difference, but only if you dare to take a lead with whatever you’ve got before it’s too late.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
in A Psalm of Life has this to say:

“Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time..."

In his final chapters, Buford challenges the readers to go after “Kingdom work” with their talents, money and time during the second half of their life.

He says that second-half people are a lot like “bassoonists”. Bassoonists (those who play the bass tones) cannot go solo, but when combined in an orchestra for instance, they provide listeners with countless hours of wonderful music complemented by their distinctive bass tones.

He recognizes that when in the 1st half for the most part, we are solo players, in the 2nd half, we are secure enough to be team players.

There is no such thing as a life without authority. You can choose the game, but you can’t choose the rules. What you cannot change, you must learn not only to accept but to respect them, for it is thru’ respect that you begin to creatively find ways to turn those unchangeable conditions into opportunities.

Follow the rules, and your chances of winning are greater. Break the rules enough times and you won’t even get a chance to finish the game. To most first-halfers, “rules were made to be broken”. In the second half, you are generally more flexible in your approach to authority.

The irony of the gospel, of course, is that the more you submit to the authority of Christ, the more radically free you become. A paradox but one that’s not quite true, in that it is really true that when you submit to God’s authority, you are truly free! Hope you catch it.

However, when you turn to God, your life problems will not disappear. But you will definitely be in a better shape to deal with them, to learn from them, and even turn them into opportunities for your life mission.

Do you know your life mission? Can’t say that many of us do, and to those who don’t, why not take a serious attempt to find out?

Surely, there is more to life than just taking life one step at a time. But then fulfillment is so elusive and we know it’s true, money, fame, material possessions and experiences will never fill us; if they ever did, it’s only temporary and short-lived.

Thomas Merton wrote that you do not need to chase after things outside of you to find fulfillment. What you need is in your life already.

God has equipped each one of us just the way he wants us to be, and his desire is for us to serve him just being who we are, by using what he gave us to work with, that’s all.

In his final chapter, Bob Buford throws a challenge, a 50/50 proposition (especially to churches in America). The challenge is to allocate 50 percent of the churches’ resources to themselves and 50 percent to serving the community and world. Find out, is your local church a 50/50 church in this context? If so okay and if not, why not?

Buford expounds that the church will never have credibility in the community at large without “expressed” individual responsibility. People need to see our faith, not merely hear about it. When our beliefs are personal and privatized, practiced only inside a building one day a week, we Christians miss out that glorious opportunity to be salt and light. Worse, I believe that when faith continues to be directed inward, we become one-dimensional, uninteresting, and wholly self centered persons.

He goes on to say that inside the church, there is a powerful reservoir of energy just waiting to be unleashed. There is enough talent, creativity, compassion, money, and strength to transform our culture. True believers in every sector of society genuinely concerned about the condition of their communities, but feeling powerless to do something significant to change it. The challenge is how can we harness this energy?

Can we or can we not transform this latent energy into active energy for kingdom work? Individually, we are urged to answer this call, but how many will rise to this call? Individual rather than collective responsibility is the key to transforming your church, is it not? Think about it.

In the final analysis, Buford tells us that you alone must choose how you want to live. You have the freedom to decide whether or not you want the rest of your years to be the best of your years. The call is don’t waste it.

A simple but powerful message, don’t you think?

End of synopsis.

Thank you for lending me your ears or rather your eyes!

Email me if have any comments to make at davidchaykc@gmail.com

Have you heard Beethoven's classical "Fur Elise" on acoustic guitar? If you haven't, turn up the volume and hear this beautiful number. Thanks to Fredrik Larsson for sharing.