As I finished writing this book, I realized something that took me years to understand.
I thought my calling was to build successful teams. Then I thought it was to build schools. Then I thought it was to build organizations.
Today, I believe God has always been asking me to build people.
Not perfect people. People who know they are loved. People who tell the truth. People who carry hope. People who enter the lives of others with courage and compassion.
And I don’t want to leave you with the impression that these are just reflections from a man looking backward. So let me tell you what I’m building right now — because I would never ask you to build a trench I’m not building myself.
For fifteen years, I’ve kept a blog called BECOMING. Its banner reads: The Process is the Purpose. Everything in this book was written there first, in real time, before I understood what it meant — the collaboration essays in 2011, the grief in 2012, the graduations in 2014, the healing in the years since. I didn’t know I was writing a book. I was just becoming, out loud, over time.
That process has now become an organization. It’s called the Ascend Basketball Network. Its position is three words you’ve read all through this book: collaboration over competition. Programs connecting instead of competing. Every partner keeps its own identity, its own coaches, its own culture — what we share is a standard, for development, for character, and for the doors we open together. My own training organization sits inside it. It’s called REPS — and if you’ve read Chapter 7, you know that name isn’t branding. It’s biography.
And here’s the detail that means the most to me. One of the partner organizations is led by Seth — the man from Chapter 11, the twelve- year-old I once spoke life over, who found me in Atlantic City and spoke it back. He built something of his own, and now we’re building side by side.
The legacy didn’t just come back around.
It signed on.
Now, about the size of it. We’re not trying to gather hundreds of organizations. We want twelve.
Why twelve? Because Jesus chose twelve. Not because He couldn’t attract more — crowds followed Him everywhere. Because becoming happens in relationships, and relationships have a limit. You cannot know a hundred partners. You can know twelve. You can eat with twelve. You can enter the trenches of twelve.
And I go in knowing something else about that number, because Jesus knew it too.
Among any twelve, there will be a Judas. There will be a Peter — someone who denies you in the hard moment and needs restoring afterward. Jesus chose His twelve knowing exactly that, and He built His church on that roster anyway.
So will we.
You cannot let the fear of something going wrong prevent you from doing right. Betrayal, denial, disappointment — that’s not a flaw in the plan. That’s the human experience. It’s part of every trench there has ever been. The only way to avoid a Judas is to love no one, trust no one, and build nothing.
That’s not an option for people like us.
If this book has encouraged you to become one of those people — someone who builds anyway, loves anyway, enters anyway — then every lesson learned in my own trenches has been worth it.
Thank you for walking this journey with me.
Now…
Go help someone become.