Blast From the Past

I am not sure what I was going to write about today but it was not going to be this…  Then at about 3:30 I got an email from one of the men in the Tuesday morning study and it jerked me sideways and brought a smile to my face.  The quality of the photo is horrible but that is apropos based on the subjects…

Back (l - r) Jim Cunneen, Ron Shimkus, John Hamilton, Larry Whitehouse, me
Front (l - r) Dave Hawes, Mike Garrett, Dave Bowman, Jim Falk

These are the men who were at Michigan State University, as best we can tell, in the spring of 1979.  Six of us were in training to be Navigator representatives.  The guy second from the left in the back, Ron Shimkus, was being trained by the guy second from the right in the back, Larry Whitehouse to be a staff trainer.

I have lost contact with Jim Cunneen the guy on the far left in the back.  I do not know what he did after MSU.  The others I know about and they have had incredible impact on the kingdom of God.

In the front from the left:

• Dave Hawes – has trained multiple staff for the Navs.  He was the US collegiate director for a while.  He has worked at training, trainers for the Navigator military ministry, and has consulted the Texas collegiate ministry on staff training as well as the Nav work in Singapore.
• Mike Garrett – has acquired a PhD, a DMin, and is a licensed counselor.  He is one of the pastors at Crossroads fellowship in Raleigh, North Carolina.
• Dave Bowman – led the campus ministry at Penn State for many years.  He has raised up many staff and missionaries while there.  He and his wife are now in Georgia heading up staff training for the collegiate ministry of the Navs.
• Jim Falk – moved to Knoxville with Larry and me and helped start the staff training center in the Southeast region of the Nav collegiate ministry.  He subsequently led the work at Georgia.  He left the Navs shortly after we did and help start a church in Indianapolis.  Grace started with around 200 people and quickly grew to over 1000.  Jim served as a pastor to the staff until he left to join a ministry focused on the third world.
• The guy in the middle in the back is John Hamilton.  John led the work at Western Kentucky and then Duke.  While at Duke he was involved in the Comission traveling multiple times behind the former Iron Curtain to train pastors and lay leaders in the Bible.

This was a high powered group.  Bible study with them was interesting to say the very least.  Two of these men are in the study in which I participate on Tuesday mornings, John and Dave.

It was a privilege to be with these men in 1979, and it is a wonder to be able to still be encouraged by them 35 years later.

Yesterday I shared men who had built into my core ministry.  All of these men were on the original list of 61+, one was on yesterday’s list.  Dave and John are pushing me in this season.

The point is, we have to have people like this around us if we are going to grow in our effectiveness.  Pray for that.  Cultivate it.  Do whatever it takes to maintain it.