Keith Drury & family

My readers sometimes are interested in personal matters—who I am and what my family is like. In case you are, here goes

I write the Tuesday Column as “practice.” Like a concert pianist I have to practice for the real concert—my books. When your read a Tuesday Column you are peeking into my practice room which is why you sometimes see me hit a wrong note. My father was a pastor but I intended on becoming a forest ranger until I was called into the ministry as a college freshman. I graduated from United Wesleyan College, a now-defunct Bible school in Allentown, Pennsylvania where I met my wife and proposed to her on our first date (she said yes). By some crazy stoke of luck(the Presbyterians at PTS would say “destiny”) I got into Princeton Seminary and by even crazier luck or destiny I did well. I worked for the Salvation Army running camps then took a year off with my wife to wander around the nation in a VW (as hippies of sorts) before settling down in Indiana in 1972 serving The Wesleyan Church denomination in various Christian Education roles including children, youth, Executive Editor of curriculum and the CE department responsible for discipleship. Having taught as an adjunct professor for Indiana Wesleyan University since 1974 I joined the faculty in 1988 and for several years teaching youth and CE. After returning for six years to my denominational headquarters to lead Christian education I returned to IWU for my “final job in life” --teaching CE, leadership and other practical courses to 475 religion students who will become the next generation of pastors. I love the outdoors and have backpacked about 10,000 miles including the Appalachian Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail, the Colorado Trail some European trails and parts of the Continental Divide Trail. I’m on my second pass at the Colorado Trail and the Appalachian Trail now. I tried canoeing and once canoed the entire Missouri river (wrote a canoeing guide for this river) but returned to backpacking after that lonely trek. I hike in the summer, and teach and write in the winter. I started “Blogging” online in 1995 before there was such a thing and have stuck with it ever since. On the www.DruryWriting.com pages we get about a thousand visitors a day so we’re happy to have you as a reader—a writer cannot be a writer without readers. I consider myself an “old man” so I say anything I want and don’t expect to be always taken seriously all the time—though people often don’t get that and take me too seriously. I expect to be taken seriously in my books, but here online I treat writing more like a practice room than a concert. I try to prepare and present something each week that is enjoyable to read and provokes thinking… or at least provokes if you’d rather not think.

My wife, Sharon teaches Organizational Leadership in the doctoral program here at IWU. She is about 20 years younger than I am ;-). She was a college dropout (when I proposed to her she dropped out—women did that then) but went back to school after she had small children and finished her Bachelor’s degree. Later when those kids were in college she did her Master’s degree and once the kids flew the coop she got her PhD in leadership. She backpacked three months with me and did a 1000 hike on the Appalachian Trail in 1972 but then laid down the law—“three week’s maximum trekking from now on.”(later revised to one week ;-). Before entering higher education she founded Yokemates. She is one of the rare authors who has taken technical leadership theory and applied it to pastors in her book on Leadership Theory for Pastors. Sharon is now the eighth edition of herself… to see these earlier editions of my wife read my article “My Eight Wives.”

My son, David felt a call into the ministry when he was 3 years old, and had significant confirmations of the call at the ages of 19 and 23. Prior to planting two new churches in Indiana & Illinois he served as the “Connections pastor” for Spring Lake Wesleyan Church before becoming the executive pastor of College Wesleyan Church in Marion, Indiana. He graduated from IWU and studied theology at several schools in Boston, completing a thesis and a master’s degree at Gordon Conwell Theological seminary. He has worked on three book manuscripts over the years, one of which is The Fruitful Life and another is Being Dad—Thoughts on fatherhood learned being a son. David and Kathy were married in 1996 and have three children, Maxim (2000), Karina (2003) and Lauren (2005). David is a prolific writer and almost as good as I am. Kathy has a page of helpful home hints. (Max is not publishing his writing yet.)

My son, John is a PhD student in Systematic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary who is married to Amanda, who served several years as a youth pastor at Doylestown United Methodist Church (while John pastored in the neighboring state—but they still lived together). They are both graduates of Indiana Wesleyan University. John combines a passion for historical theology and practical ecclesiology and has presented papers to the Wesleyan Theological Society. He has been published in Theology Today and Wesleyan Theological Journal. In addition to his studies, John is also an Adjunct Professor of Bible and Theology at Somerset Christian College. John’s BLOG site focuses on practical questions from a theological perspective. He also has his writing collected (including over-my-head academic type stuff. His wife Amanda is also a PhD student now at Princeton Seminary and has her own interesting blog. John and Amanda had their first kid, Sam during Christmas break 2007.

I have several grandchildren, but I am not a grandmother so I don’t have their pictures.