The following is an excerpt from the book’s “Foreword” written by Dr. Bill Withers, a member of the faculty at Wartburg College.
“...I quickly learned that Irving Burling has approached the disease of Parkinson’s in the latter part of his life with the same passion, persistence, and conviction that he employed as the CEO of Century Life of America, later Cuna Mutual Life Insurance Company. Today he has entered into his own permanent affiliation with the disease, but he has not allowed it to detract him from serving and coaching others, even in these sometimes turbulent times of his own final years. In the words of Fuller Seminary‘s Dr. J. Robert Clinton, Irving Burling is ‘finishing well’.
Many of us upon reaching retirement age, even those of us who claim to be Christian leaders, will succumb to our own leadership diseases. Instead of continuing to serve others we will parachute our lives into bouts with lethargy, atrophy, or temptations and vices that are either active or latent from our more vital and productive years. Ironically, many leaders have historically not finished well. Dr. Clinton, in his own scholarly research of biblical leaders, found that only one-third of all leaders during biblical times actually finished well. I doubt we have to look much beyond our 21st Century churches or corporations to realize that this number isn’t much better today.
Irving Burling is finishing well, and I am a better leader, teacher, husband, father, and friend for having known him...”
