02/26/2025
A friend recently showed me a video of Mike Tyson being interviewed by a high school student. The student asked, “After such a successful career, what type of legacy would you like to leave behind when it’s all said and done?”
Iron Mike responded, “Well, I don’t know. I don’t believe in the word legacy. I think that’s another word for ego. Legacy means absolutely nothing to me. I’m just passing through. I’m going to die, and then it’s going to be over.” Needless to say, that high-school interviewer didn’t know how to respond.
Mike Tyson’s response couldn’t be any more different than what I feel about the legacy of my mentor, Alan Ahlgrim, who passed away a couple of weeks ago at the young age of 77. I imagine Alan would have agreed with one thing that Mike Tyson said. We are “just passing through.” But the way we pass through makes all the difference in what we leave behind.
I first met Alan in 1995 when he taught a doctoral class I was taking at Emmanuel Christian Seminary. I was so intrigued by his class that I became an ongoing student of Alan’s life and ministry. He was the founding pastor of Rocky Mountain Christian Church in Niwot, Colorado, and he led a national revitalization movement of church planting for the past thirty years.
What I’m most grateful for is Alan’s legacy with another ministry he started, Covenant Connections. When Alan retired from Rocky Mountain, he told me he was launching a new ministry of “soul care” for pastors, and he asked if I wanted to join his first group. My response was rather aloof and anemic, as I thought I was too busy to get into a covenant group with other pastors simply to talk about our feelings.
Three years and one heart attack later, I called Alan up and said, “Are you still leading pastors’ covenant groups? I think I’m ready.” That was ten years ago. Thanks to Alan’s coaching, mentoring, and modeling healthy ministry, I’m in a much better place of spiritual and emotional health.
As Mike Tyson said, we are going to die, and then it’s going to be over. But although “it’s” going to be over, life goes on, and our legacy lives on. Alan is leaving behind a legacy of hundreds of pastors who are better husbands, fathers, preachers, and leaders. His legacy includes dozens of churches planted through his influence, strategic planning, and prayers. Although his health failed him far too soon, his ministry has kept many pastors from failing, falling, and simply giving up … yours truly being one of them.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC-AD 65) once wrote, “Life, if well lived, is long enough.” I would argue that Alan’s life, though well lived, wasn’t long enough, but I know Alan would say, “I lived well enough, and God said it’s long enough.” Now the question is, Will we live well enough, however “long enough” our life may be?
