In no particular order – just who came to me as I thought about this.
1. Loren Teig, director of Wapogasset Lutheran Bible Camp, Amery Wisconsin. Loren was the director of the camp I worked at for four summers, and was a part of Lutheran Youth Encounter, a youth ministry organization based in Minneapolis. Loren, my sister Becky, and four others went to East and South Africa, singing in churches and schools in the early 70′s. Loren had a passion for sharing the Gospel that impressed me, a servant’s heart in all he did, and he asked me to go to India one time, and I went. It changed my life.
2. Pastor Lloyd Swanz was pastor of the International Evangelical Church in Helsinki, where a couple of times I had the privilege of serving as Parish Assistant. He, too, had a servant’s heart, opening his home to many, leading his congregation in sharing their faith with those around us, and he was open to trying new ideas that his Parish Assistant came up with. I learned that God works through peoples’ wacky giftedness – even mine.
3. Pastor Leslie Lurvey, my father, always shared the Gospel, loved and served Jesus and His church, and even in his death and in his absence, teaches me to rely on God who fails us never. My father taught me that pastors are human. One time, it was after church and the sanctuary was empty save for him and me, and he wondered aloud, “How many somersaults can a person do done the aisle?” Then he did it, Sunday-go-to-meeting-suit and all. The answer was about 26 – it was a long aisle.
4. Helena Tenhunen, a friend from my home church since we were five. We grew up in the church together. She got me a job in the bank at which she worked. And she went as a single missionary to Murree Christian School, in northern Pakistan, near the Afghan border. Why did she go? She loves Jesus, and our youth group at church had always talked about the call to missionary service. “We’ve talked enough,” she said. “It’s time someone went.”
5. David Alan B., was the first child I baptized, while doing Clinical Pastoral Education at the Gillette Children’s Hospital in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was in neonatal intensive care – born early, a day old, with no kidney function. Helpless. Tiny. I was on call, so I went, gowned up head to toe, got some sterilized water and a cotton swab, reached into the incubator and baptized him in the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. His mother was “fiddeen”-years-old, her cousin was by her side, and the nurses, bless them, how they prayed and cried. He was as big as my hand, and loved? The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are still crazy in love with him. He fell asleep the next day and awoke in the arms of Jesus. I buried him the day after that, all elbows and knees and thick-tongued at my first funeral.