There are several things which are part of the background of the message that I want to share with you this morning. The first piece of the background is that Joyce and I have lost several very good friends to the disease of AIDS in the past few years. The first friend of ours who died of AIDS was the clerk of our meeting back in Boston, a wonderful and deeply spiritual man named Howard Segars. Howard shared some of the most powerful messages that I have ever heard arise out of unprogrammed worship. The second friend who died of AIDS was a person who lived in the same fraternity with me for two years in college.
Most people tend to equate fraternities with beer drinking and wild parties.
The fraternity that I belonged to had a very different basis. Membership in the fraternity required weekly service hours. All of the people who lived there were deeply involved in community service. My fraternity brother who died of AIDS was one of those. The third friend who died of AIDS was a high school class mate, someone who went to school with Joyce and me.