Q2: Knutson
Q3: Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil
Q4: Wife and ministry partner, teacher of English as a Foreign Language
Q5: David Hatcher
Q6:
Q7: If you’re gonna set up a chair in a gym for a kid, set it up right.
The Holy Spirit is just as present in a Wednesday planning meeting as He is with you shooting from the hip on Sunday. If you didn’t prepare, don’t expect the Holy Spirit to bail you out!
Q8: He taught me EXCELLENCE and VISION.
It was always about the individual, the kid who would come to know Christ and have his life transformed. We had to set that chair up right because a kid who needed Jesus would sit in it. Gordon required and inspired EXCELLENCE, not for his own image or reputation, but for the Lord Jesus Christ and the sake of that kid.
He taught us that VISION is to see through Spirit eyes what that kid can be. Love him. Invest in him. Teach to his needs. Reach out to him. Go get him. Pray for him. Grab him in a holy grip and don’t let go. Work by faith. Believe in what you can’t see now. Sow in tears, reap in joy.
When I was a Junior in high school, I WAS THAT KID. It was in Hawaii, at a tent meeting where the LBC Chorale and All God’s Children were singing. I had never seen anything like it – their joy, their passion, the impact on the listeners. When it was over, Gordon came over to me, snatched me up out of that folding metal chair and growled – “Why don’t you do something with your life?” He saw me through Spirit eyes. He grabbed me in that holy grip and didn’t let go. He let me work that summer at Treasure Island camp – no pay, just a bed and food. I was bitten, smitten, and in love with youth ministries and what was going on at LBC and TRBC. But my first year of college I went to another school because they offered a scholarship, and I didn’t have the money to go to LBC. When “I Love America” came to that city, I went back stage to say hi to my old friends, and ran into Gordon (this is a full two years later.) He says, “I thought I told you to do something with your life! Why aren’t you at Liberty?” (and in the same breath) “Can you sing?” I stood there dumbstruck, and a few months later found myself on a bus with Youth Aflame singers.
Youth Ministries became short term cross cultural youth ministries (summers in Korea with the “Moke”), which begat a willingness, and then a desire, and then a calling to minister abroad.
Q9: Ministering in a language and culture not your own has a soul-stripping and cleansing effect.
Culture shock has caused me to distill my Christianity to its essence. I have been forced to consider every large and small aspect of my belief system, and determine if I hold to some idea or method or truth because it is Biblical, or because it is American, or how I was reared, or simply because it’s my way. Whatever is not Biblical has to go.
The “squeeze” has brought out character defects in me that I didn’t even know I had.
Linguistic incompetence and cultural ineptness are powerful humbling agents. When you’re working and ministering in another language and culture, if you don’t have love, you really are nothing but a gong. I get “gonged” a lot! Lord, change me!
Q10: Gordon, Dennis Henderson, Larry Colclasure, Doug Randlett, Doug Turner, Dave Adams and all the rest - you guys were career guys. You were about the mission God had for your lives. And you let us in on it. You invested in us as individuals. You let us share the vision. You let us plan and run the program. You believed we were the men and women for the hour. You granted us privileges, and entrusted us with incredible responsibility. I can’t help but ask myself sometimes - what were you thinking? Your humility, your faith, your trust in God – I hope all of you know that it has been well placed, and that you reap in joy what you sowed in the fields of our hearts. I, for one, am grateful.
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