Sharing My Story

My first year on Campus Crusade staff was an exciting one—
perhaps the most exciting of my CCC tenure. However,
the next year was also filled with many events and exciting activities.

I was given some more responsibilities in the convalescent hospital
ministry and worked for a time with another staff member named
Keith Yates. Dick Berg had married Becky (James) and they
eventually became less involved in the ministry. I also was
involved in the 24 hour prayer chain ministry on the
Arrowhead Springs campus. There was a special room
of the prayer chapel that was dedicated to prayer for many
requests of ministry activities as well as more personal
requests. One of my early prayer prayers was Ron Walburg
who worked in the accounting department. We arrived at
the Prayer chapel at 6 AM Sunday mornings for an hour of
prayer for the various requests. I was involved in this ministry
aspect for most of my time at Arrowhead at various times and
with other partners. Early on we started an Action group system
at Arrowhead that I was a part of. While this was a good idea
Action groups didn't work as well at Arrowhead
as they did on campus.

My work in the Audiovisual Department continued to grow.
I was pretty much out of the tape area and doing transparencies
for the various ministries full time. In January 1973 I went
with two other AV Dept men to explain the merits of using
overhead transparencies to a meeting of CCC Campus staff
at Talbott Seminary. In late June through August I had my
first assistant in the transparency area. She was Molly Houck
from Boyertown, Pennsylvania. "She proved to be a real help
in the very busy time immediately before our All Staff training
at Purdue University in Indiana during July and August."
(from my August 1973 newsletter). Molly left Campus Crusade
a short time later to return home to pay off some debt. The
increase in demand by the teaching staff for overhead
transparencies showed the need for more help in that area.

In late March 1973 I had an operation for which I was
hospitalized for the removal of a pitolanoetal cyst. Some
weeks before I rode in a van that apparently stimulated
and infected the cyst (above the tail bone) so that I had
trouble sitting down without a lot of pain. I was in the
hospital for 5 days and was out of work for a week or so.
As of this writing this has been my only hospital stay
(except for tonsil removal as a small child).

In June 1973 the first annual headquarters staff training
was provided and Dr. Bill Bright, Howard Ball (director
of the Lay Ministry) and other CCC leaders teaching.
Dr. J. Vernon McGee, former pastor of the Church of
the Open Door (in Los Angeles) and popular radio Bible
teacher also taught during that time.

Variety and the wearing of different hats seemed the order
of the day during that time. This is from my August 1973
newsletter, "Also in June I had the opportunity to be present
for the video-taping (then transferred to film) of a new
Andre Kole movie. This film is called "World of the Seance"
and is even better than "World of Illusion", Andre Kole's
first evangelistic film. Andre Kole is a world famous illusionist
who is on the staff of Campus Crusade and speaks to thousands
of people around the world each year about the claims of Christ.
I was able to take slides during and after the taping which
were used at All Staff training in Purdue in July and August."

In early July another staff man, Bob Wanner (from the Marketing Dept)
and I attended a Summer Institute for Scientific Creationism
conducted at El Cajon (just east of San Diego). This was conducted
by the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) and the instructors
were Dr. Duane Gish (Associate director of ICR), Harold Slusher
(Geophysics), Stuart Nevins (Steve Austin-Geology) and Dr. Robert
Franks. I had been interested at least since in the Creation/evolution
debate and this was a real stimulus to that interest. "One day we a
had the film "footprints in Stone" that documents the discovery of
dinosaur tracks and human foot prints found together in the same
strata of rock. Man was supposed to have evolved about 60,000,000
years after the last dinosaur became extinct. These tracks were found
in the Paluxy River in Texas (near Glen Rose). They prove that man
and dinosaur lived at the same time and demolishes the
uniformitarian-evolutionary hypothesis." (from my July 1973
newsletter). Little did I know that years later I would have an
involvement in those very fossil digs. Bob and I returned and
started a short lived creation study group with several other CCC staff.