Bigger Than Me ─ Just When I Thought I Had All the Answers, God Changed the Questions

Have you wondered, Is this all there is?

Somehow we’ve bought into the lie that the good life is a showy one. But the greatest adventures come when we stop living for self and what the world says is important—and start living for things that really matter. Nothing is duller, in the long run, than one more bag of money, one more business conquest, or one more round of earthly pleasure. The returns are depressingly diminishing.

Bigger Than Me is a collection of candid reflections from a successful businessman about money, ego, truth, busyness, solitude, legacy, dying, faith, gratitude, and much more. His early worldly accomplishments taught him first hand that there are deeper, more satisfying goals in life than those our culture celebrates.

If you’ve found yourself looking for deeper purpose and meaning, this book will inspire you to make a course correction that doesn’t involve sweeping the past aside. Rather, you can use all of life’s lessons to build something new and bigger than yourself.

Ward Brehm is a Twin Cities businessman, a leader in African humanitarian efforts, and a nationally-known public speaker and commentator on relief and development in Africa.

In 2004 President Bush appointed Brehm to be chairman of the United States African Development Foundation (USADF), following confirmation by the US Senate, where he served until 2009. In 2010 President Obama reappointed Brehm to the board of the USADF, where he continues to serve.

He also is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations, and he currently serves on the board of directors of the American Refugee Committee (ARC) based in Minneapolis. At ARC, he helped found the Asili initiative, which brings a network of proven social businesses together into an enterprise platform that delivers essential services—clean water, quality health care, and agricultural livelihoods—at affordable prices to Eastern Congo, using a locally owned for profit business platform.

In 2008, Brehm brought his message as an advocate for the poor in Africa to the National Prayer Breakfast, where he gave the keynote address before an audience including the US President, First Lady, foreign heads of state, most members of Congress, and the Washington diplomatic community. Brehm was the first person from the US business community to be asked by Congress to address this annual gathering in Washington, DC.

Brehm was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal—the country’s second-highest civilian honor—for his work in Africa at an Oval Office ceremony with President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush in December of 2008.

In addition to Bigger Than Me, Brehm is also the author of two books on his experiences in Africa, Life Through a Different Lens and White Man Walking.

Brehm recently sold the insurance consulting companies he founded, and now engages in full-time humanitarian work in Africa as an unofficial ambassador for Jesus. He and his wife, Kris, live and work in Minneapolis, MN.