Explore
We'll talk about you and what responding to Jesus in the context of your family looks like. We'll define the initial gist of your vision and begin to walk around with it.
Family Stories
Vision across generations.
Private memoirs and family expressions to heal, draw together, and translate family members to one another.
About Your Family
A general who thinks their job is to keep soldiers safe has lost sight of the Army's purpose. The job of the general, or the patriarch (or matriarch) is to prepare those who follow to engage in battles worth passion and sacrifice.
Until that vision is clear, expressed, and embraced in a way that fulfills its inherent promise, dads are just dads. That's a centurion's most profound call. We're here to help you respond.
Family and Personal Samples
We create private memoirs and other legacy expressions for prominent families. The names and work samples are highly confidential, but the objective is always to help people make better sense of their "first name experiences" within their "last name contexts."
This work requires a prayerful focus on identity beyond the trappings (and traps) of success.
Loving Something Enough to Sacrifice for it is Easy
What's hard is to name that love, and then invite the people you care about to see it the way you do. Especially if they're the ones who paid for the sacrifice.
Memoirs
Life stories. The first is usually for your parent(s), who will do the project not for themselves, but because you're asking for your kids.
Proverbs
A collection of family wisdom, statements followed by explanations, intended as a living and collaborative document updated over time.
Annual Report
Picture 20 issues on a shelf. Core family beliefs, plus updates and stories from the family, the business, charitable giving, and key friends and allies.
Life Plans
At graduation, after difficult life transitions, or when it's time to make sense of a "first name experience" in a strong "last name context."
Timely Wisdom
Targeted advice for choosing a career or a spouse, handling the loss of a child or a marriage, or other delicate content that has to be timed carefully.
Family Vision
This is so hard to do without outside help because family dynamics get in the way. But most families want to point and work in a direction together.
Family Meetings
Vision is a matter of appetite and timing, which means creating the right setting and going at the right pace to invite everyone in, not just get it done.
Crafted Events
Our other work exposes the gaps in your family. We'll help you name the critical conversations and create the events to close those gaps.
Gifts & Symbols
Defining the vision isn't the hard part: remembering it and living it out is. We create children's books, custom art, and other symbols to keep your vision clear.
How We See Your Work
We call family stories "apologia."
Apologia comes from the same root as apologetics and apology, but the meaning is different.
Apologetics focus on defense, like someone defending faith or facing charges in a court of law. An apology, in our world, is the confession of wrongdoing, and a request for forgiveness.
An apologia (apple-OH-gee-ah) is somewhere in between, and the focus isn’t on right or wrong, but on motivation.
Why did Mom choose a life of so many sacrifices for her art? What inspired Dad to pour so much of himself into his construction company? What makes faith so important to one set of parents, and education the preoccupation of another?
There are rational reasons behind every apologia. But beyond the rational and familiar we find all sorts of motivations built around passion, fear, desire, vows, and stories both sweet and heartbreaking that few people explore deeply, let alone share effectively with their families.
Timing is Everything
There are rules about offering and receiving sacred family stories.
An apologia is a subtle gift, a chosen vulnerability, and if it’s not offered in a very open-handed, easy-to-reject way, manipulation is sure to come as part of the package. None of us can expect our pasts to be trump cards we can play on others. It is a great gift when someone is willing to indulge our wounds or unmet needs, to find such parts of us charming, but there is no such thing as forceful charm, or a demanding apologia.
Your story will include many layers of apologia, because it will be offered with love and honesty. It will stand ready, as your love already does, until the time is right for any who read your words to receive whatever gift your apologia may hold for the their hearts.
Our Small Batch Process
Centurion Response serves 10 clients per year, and we structure the details of our engagements according to their visions.
You are the centurion, the one going humbly to Jesus on behalf of your family. Our job is to help you in your response. We build our timelines with you, and we generally spread payments for six to 12 months beyond project completion to maintain the sense of continuing collaboration. Our dream is to work with the same families for the next 30 years.
Capture
We speak with family members about their perspectives and stories. That input shapes the direction of whatever project we're doing, and often surfaces additional ideas.
Ratio
This is your response to God, so we never want to "steal" the experience from you. Who faces the blank screen, and who offers feedback? We'll determine this together here.
Deploy
This is the production phase, where we "do the stuff." In most instances, it ends with an event so your work and the vision you're pursuing don't just get handed over and ignored.
Host
You can't decide how and when an apologia effort will be received, but we can help your family engage and explore with it. We'll help you pursue your vision without burning them out.
Amplify
As we walk together with your ever-changing family, we ask, "who's turn is next?" If your parents share their story first, because you asked them to, when will it be your turn for your kids?
The DIY Option
Centurion Response projects are expensive, but the price we charge is not a reflection of the value of your story. We've created a free (no email address required or anything) PDF guide for writing your own legacy letter (also called an Ethical Will). We don't believe our overhead should limit your legacy.
What You Get
Will vary based on your vision.
We work from a deliverable-based rate sheet, with a minimum engagement fee. While we don't do ala carte projects, we recognize you may already have advisors, counselors, and various partner, and we have plenty of ways to integrate with them.
Timeline
We can go faster, but we see the best results on a 6-12 month start-to-launch schedule. Depending on how you want to manage ongoing support and tracking efforts, we think in terms of 18-24 month engagement periods with a down-tiering payment schedule associated with it.
Relationally
Unlimited access and time
Executive guidance, not agency menus
Prayerful pursuit of your best interests
Flexibility on timelines and workloads
Extended payment plans
Introductions to peers
Deliverables
We charge a flat fee and handle all aspects of producing, designing, printing, planning, hosting and any other elements related to the effort. The common exception to this rule is individual travel plans and expenses for your family to attend events.
Book the Conversation
You don't have to have any of this figured out yet.
Our calling is to help revitalize the rustiest weapon in the Kingdom: testimony. Testimony is not a person's before and after story or a one-time experience presented as a sales pitch for church. It's supposed to be you, God, and His will in your life combined as Presence. We focus on centurions because we see the price centurions already pay for their obedience, and that's where we believe we're called to serve. We don't know you yet, but we're already praying for you.
Call. Let's see what happens.