The Man Behind the Book, and the Family Still Living It
He stopped dancing on a rooftop in Atlanta.
Rod Masteller was a pastor, a father of four daughters, and, as a boy, a kid dancing for quarters at family gatherings, learning far too young that applause could feel like proof of worth. He carried that lesson into ministry, where the crowds got bigger, the schedule got fuller, and the cost, quietly, came due at home.
On the roof of a hotel in Atlanta, after a hard, honest conversation with his wife, Rod stopped dancing. He came to understand, in a way that reordered the rest of his life, that his worth was never something he had to earn in the first place. From that night forward, he asked himself one question before almost every choice he made: am I dancing for approval right now, or am I resting in what’s already true?
He wasn’t perfect after that night. He was different after it. And the difference is what this whole book is about.
“Legacy: a mark that cannot be erased.”
When Rod passed away suddenly, his family walked out of the hospital in the early hours of the morning and saw a plaque on the wall bearing those words.
Less than a day later, gathered together in their grief, his wife and daughters knew what they wanted to do instead of flowers. They started a nonprofit and named it after that plaque: The Making of a Legacy, Inc.
What The Making of a Legacy, Inc. is.
The Making of a Legacy, Inc. is a Texas nonprofit, founded by Rod’s family in the days after his death, built to carry his message further than the people who already knew and loved him. This book is the nonprofit’s first and central project: Rod’s own words, preserved and shared, alongside the story of a family still choosing, every day, to live what he taught them.