Exhibit D.

In 1996, when I was a Lieutenant in the Navy, I was stationed at the Pentagon. My job was to provide intelligence briefings to the Secretary of the Navy, Chief of Naval Operations, and other of the highest ranking officers in the Navy. I presented these briefings in a small theater that held about fifty. Sometimes the theater would be chockfull of senior officers, that is, all Admirals. As you might imagine, this job was a real pressure cooker.

I would normally work at preparing the briefings from about 10 p.m. the night before, until about 6 a.m. The morning intelligence briefing would go at about 8 a.m., or, the exact time when I was the most tired. But there was no room for error in this job. Lieutenants in my position were routinely reprimanded or fired if they messed up, sometimes for seemingly trivial mistakes. We were providing vital information to the top Navy brass on what the enemy was doing (the war in Bosnia was really big at the time), and we could not mess up. Some of these Admirals would take this information and use it while talking to the President.

When I say we were not supposed to make any mistakes, that means more than just no mistakes with regard to content. The delivery of the material was very important as well. The “briefing team” was continually trained in matters such as making eye contact, knowing when to pause for effect, when to look at notes, when not to look at them (a typical briefing required 2-3 pages of memorization), when to put the right inflection into your voice, and how to pronounce words, names, and places correctly. Believe me, if you pronounced General Umbobguandy’s name wrong (or any other military dictator in Africa), you were dead meat.

Of particular note, I often reflect upon the issue of proper voice projection. I can remember when I was first practicing my briefings in that theater. I consciously raised my voice because I knew everyone in the audience needed to hear me. However, I was surprised to be told that I was not projecting my voice well enough. Above my protests, my boss said, “If you think you are speaking loud enough, you probably aren’t. You have to concentrate and make yourself speak a bit louder. That’s the only way everyone in this theater will hear you.” Funny, I thought I was concentrating, and I was convinced that I was speaking loud enough. It was also funny to see my fellow briefers confront the same reality, vehemently objecting to our boss’s guidance because they thought they too were projecting well enough.

This matter has stuck with me for two reasons. First, and most obviously, I speak and teach in front of audiences and classrooms on a regular basis—Sunday School, the local community college, preaching on a few occasions, and occasional presentations in my day job or at seminary—and I try always to remember how important it is that an audience be able to hear the speaker.

Second, I often recall my experience with voice projection in the Pentagon theater because I think it has application not only to life, but to the Christian life. Let me say it like this: If a person thinks he is doing some activity in a certain way, and performs this activity at an acceptable level all of the time, he may not be doing it as well as he thinks. Maybe you can start to see the implications of this statement. If a person thinks that he has a lot of common sense, and always acts in accord with that common sense, and can clearly see how others do not, then that person may not have as much common sense as he thinks. If a person thinks that he is a good driver, and always drives safely and courteously, with care to keep all of the traffic laws, and that other people are the idiots on the road, then that person may not be quite as good a driver as he thinks. And what about serving in the church? I would suggest that if a Christian is serving in some capacity in his church, and serves regularly in that position, and sees himself as part of that 20 percent that does 80 percent of the work, then perhaps that person is not serving quite as much or as well as he thinks.

I would suggest that a way to serve the Lord better is to consciously, deliberately decide to serve Him better than we did yesterday, or last month, or a year ago. These thoughts spring from my Pentagon experience, but I would add a point made in the Bible by the apostle Paul that I think captures this as well. In Romans 12:3, he says, “For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.” Sober judgment. I think that means that we shouldn’t automatically assume that we are part of the common sense, good driver, Christian Superman club, but rather to assess each day how we are recipients of this grace of which Paul speaks, and how we should submit to the Holy Spirit that dwells inside of us. Who knows, maybe if all Christians did this, more people would be interested in becoming Christians in the first place.