Tribute

Well, it has been many months since I've updated this blog, so I don't know if anybody will actually read this post. Most of you have long since given up checking it, figuring that I had abandoned it. I do hope to begin blogging again soon, and thought today was a good opportunity to start. I might be writing this for myself as much as for anybody else.

At every church where college ministry is a priority, there is usually a person or persons largely responsible for championing it. College students are not a priority to many churches, because they do not contribute great sums of money. They tend to be a financial drain and the immediate benefit or attracting them is not always obvious. For a church to target them intentionally, there has to be at least one influential individual willing to convince the church body that college students are a strategic investment; we may not reap financial rewards now, but we can literally change the course of history and expand the kingdom of God by training and serving them.

At the church where I minister, that person was Dick Davison, a long-time elder and servant at the church. Dick went to be with Jesus this morning after battling illness for the past few years. He was in his early 80s.

A veteran of WWII, Dick tended to use battle imagery frequently when discussing church ministry. He applied a principle from his military days to college students, often referring to them as the "fat target." This was his way of saying that, in our community, they are numerous and energetic and eager to learn, so why not focus our energy and resources on the biggest and most receptive target.

He frequently came by my office, when he was healthy, and was fond of asking me, "If you had one million dollars tax-free to spend on this ministry, how would you use it to expand the college ministry at this church?" (A few years ago, he changed the number to ten million, saying that one million did not go as far as it used to!) He was constantly pressing me to come up with such a plan, and to do what I could even if I never received large sums of money. To be frank, I have never met a layperson so intensely strategic and focused on the ministry of God's kingdom as he was.

I have also never met another man of his age who LOVED college students the way he did. Every week he and his lovely wife Joy stood in the back of our college auditorium and served donuts and coffee to the students who attended the college class. Students were constantly blessed by their joy and enthusiasm for ministry, as well as their close and loving marriage. He continued to attend until he was literally too weak to stand in the back of the room, often sitting on a chair while he and Joy did their job.

One of the last times I visited him in the hospital, he could not stand and was incredibly weak. Nonetheless, when I entered the room, he immediately began to ask me how I was going to implement a program to strategically recruit more interns for the college ministry. "I want a dozen interns, even more if possible. What are you doing to make that happen?" Dick was a man who finished well; when I returned home, I told my wife that I can only pray that when I am in my final days I will have as much commitment and dedication to the Great Commission as Dick.

A few months ago, at Dick's request, I asked my assistant to create a book filled with pictures of all of our former interns, including updates on where they are now and how they are serving the Lord. Dick received it in the hospital, on his birthday, and called me to say thank you. He went on and on about how glad he was to see so many of them serving the Lord, married to other former interns (Dick was a big champion of marriage and wanted everybody to married as soon as possible). He showed the book to everybody who visited him, and expounded upon the strategic value of investing in the lives of young men and women headed into a life of service to Christ.

I hope it was an encouragement to him in his final days to see that his life's labor and dedication in the service of Jesus had an incredible impact. He certainly had an impact on me, and I am one of literally thousands, some of whom will never even know his name.

I miss him already, and pray that God will give me the strength to live with his same kind of intentionality and dedication to the things of God's kingdom.