About Alfred

Hello and welcome to alfredlam.ca! For those who do not know me, here’s a little something about myself:

For almost twenty years, I enjoyed a successful career as a church minister. I had the respect of my community and my peers. I was a sought after public speaker. I was sure being a minister of a church was what I was made to do. Everything was looking good.

All of that began to change in 2003.

During a 6 month sabbatical, I spent some time teaching in Singapore. I had the opportunity to teach students who had come from some of the poorest countries in Asia. Hearing their stories of poverty affected me deeply. Then on a trip to Thailand, I witnessed first hand the injustice of poverty. On the way back to my hotel after a shopping trip, I encountered a beggar who had no arms. He held a tin cup between his teeth and looked to me for money. My arms were so full with shopping bags that I could barely free my hand to dig through my pocket for change. That picture was forever seared onto my memory.

Two men, supposedly created equal before God.

One had no arms, and held a tin cup with his teeth to beg for a living.

One had arms so full from a shopping trip that he could barely free a hand to drop change into that tin cup.

I started thinking, “What’s wrong with this picture?”

I started asking, “What if….?”

“What if we really don’t have God figured out like we claim in the church?”

“What if we really don’t have a monopoly on God as we think we do?”

“What if we have been asking the wrong questions and caring about the wrong things all along?”

“What if my faith is more than just about building beautiful and comfortable churches in beautiful and comfortable sub-urban North America and trying to get beautiful and comfortable people into these churches so that eventually we have to build bigger, more beautiful and comfortable churches so that we can get more people in them and…”

About the same time, my personal life fell apart. I suffered a major case of burnout and was diagnosed with clinical depression.  I eventually lost my career as a minister. I lost my friends, my community, and was in danger of losing my marriage and my family. I had hit rock bottom.

And that’s where I learned one of the most important lessons in life: Being at rock bottom is not a bad place to be.

When you are at rock bottom, you have no where to look but up. It was at rock bottom that I found faith in God after losing my “religion”.

When you are at rock bottom, you have no where to go but up. It was at rock bottom that I, together with my wife, threw out everything we thought we knew about marriage, about faith, about life and started over. We overhauled our marriage, our ways of parenting, our priorities in life and just about everything you can think of. In the process, we discovered our daily mission in life: To strive to be better people than we were yesterday.

This blog is an ongoing chronicle of that journey. I write with a singular hope: that somehow my life, my experience can be used to inspire and encourage you, the reader to become a better person.

May be for some of you reading this, you are at your own point of “rock bottom” in life. I am so honoured that you are here. In a very real way, everything I have written in this blog is for you, to encourage you.

Don’t quit. Don’t give up.

You can, you will make it through this.

You can, you will become a better person through this.

Remember, being at rock bottom is not a bad place to be.

Because when you are there, there is nowhere to look, there is no where to go, but up.

I would love to connect with you. Please fill in the following information should you wish to dialogue with me further: