I suppose most people today would describe me as “religious”. If people would call me religious today, they would not have when I was younger. Since this is my web page and I tell you the most important thing in my life is my relationship with God, I want to take some space to tell you why this is so and how my faith came to be. I warn you, this is long. I did not know what to cut out. But this is my story.

As a young boy growing up in Southgate, I was not “religious”. My family would go to church a few times a year. But I did my best to avoid church and if I heard a parent talk about going to church, I would hope they would forget. To me church was boring, confusing and even somehow frightening. It was something you did for God but I didn’t want to. Yet, when I would sit in church those times I did go, I would look at the cross at the front of the Church with the figure of Christ nailed to it, or I would look at the pictures on the wall, and I would wonder about it all. What happened? What was the story here? I wanted to know but I was afraid.

I knew a little. My mother would put a little cardboard Nativity Scene under the Christmas tree at Christmas time and explained that this baby was God’s Son, Jesus. I knew who Joseph and Mary were. And the wise men and the shepherds. I also remember one Easter looking at a calendar that had a painting of Jesus nailed to a cross and I can remember my mother explaining to me that Jesus died on the cross but on the third day He arose from the tomb. As about a five year old I stood in our backyard and I was thinking about God, imagining Him to be like a giant. “God is so big, I’ll bet his big toe is bigger than our chimney. No, I’ll bet His big toe is bigger than our whole house”. That was my concept of God.

I had heard about Heaven and Hell. I remember it was my dad who said that when it thundered, God was bowling up in heaven. I think at that point I assumed good people went to Heaven and bad people went to Hell. I also knew the Bible was God’s special book. I had heard a few Bible stories. I saw the Bible used on television when someone had to testify in court: they had to put their hand on the Bible and swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I can remember as a young boy, not knowing much else but when I wanted to really prove that I was telling the truth, I would run into my grandmother’s room, put my hand on her Bible and say those words. I also remember that grandmother saying that God would talk to her. That fascinated me and I asked her how that happened. How could God talk to anybody? That is about all I knew or thought I knew about God from the first ten years or so of my life.

I mentioned that I was afraid. One of my fears was of religious people like preachers, priests, nuns or even people who went to church a lot. A pastor came to our door one day and I opened the door but when I saw it was a pastor, I shut the door and hid. Yet, I was curious and I can remember feeling left out on Sundays when everyone went to church. I was also disgusted because my friends could not come out to play on Sundays like they could on other days. Sunday’s were observed differently in the Detroit area in the 1950s. It made one long, boring day. In those times, nearly all businesses were closed on Sundays.

There had been a few times when my mother said we were going to try to new church. While I was fearful of such a thing, I was also kind of curious. It was like the fears were still there but maybe it was time to check it out. Finally, the Sunday after Easter when I was eleven years old we did attend a church in our neighborhood that referred to itself as “the friendly little church around the corner”. I was actually impressed. The lights were on, we sang quite a bit, we did not do a lot of standing and I thought I kind of understood what was going on. I wanted to go back. In coming weeks I would attend Sunday School. In Sunday School I am sure that I must have had fun because pretty soon I wanted to come to Sunday School.

I remember my mother buying me my first Bible around that time. A blue, hardcover Revised Standard Version. I was actually excited to begin learning some things about God and to get to read some things in “His book”. I pretty much did not know what they were talking about in Sunday School. I didn’t know the Apostle Paul from Moses. Even through my high school years I would refer to myself as being “Bible dumb” and I didn’t want to be that way.

I was also pretty shy at that time in my life. Perhaps that tied in with my fear of religious people. It was not easy to walk into a Sunday School class and not know anybody. Sunday School would end at the end of the school year and it was difficult for me to go back to Sunday School in the fall. I just felt odd. Later in seventh grade when a few friends invited me to youth group, I didn’t think I wanted to try that. Friends kept inviting me but I wouldn’t show up. Finally a friend asked me if I would help him with something he was doing in youth group. I agreed and that opened the door to one of the most important activities of my teenage years.

I want to say a word about friends. Two friends in particular had a very great influence on me: Paul Metzger and Roger Lakatos. They invited me to do things with the youth group and they were my friends while I was at youth group. Soon I didn’t want to miss a youth group meeting because I wanted to see my friends. As a seventh grader I was convinced that Billy Graham was “cool” because Roger thought he was cool and invited me to his house to watch Billy Graham Crusades on television. Other friends would come along and they were all a great influence on me to stick with church, Sunday school and youth group.

In seventh grade I had a new Sunday school teacher, Mr. James Hebert. He was a friendly but gentle man that showed a real interest in me and the others in his class. I do not remember any specific lessons from his class. But I do remember the times when we would get together at the church to clean out a closet or the times we would go on a picnic. It was fun being with Mr. Hebert.

Now I am not sure if it was Mr. Hebert, Roger, Paul or our youth group leaders who first told me about how you get to go to heaven. But it was in seventh grade that I learned that you didn’t go to Heaven because you were good or because you believed in God. You went to Heaven because you believed that Jesus died on the cross for your sins. I do not recall hearing about a special prayer you had to pray. That year I decided that I believed that Jesus died for my sins and that was why I was going to Heaven. I did not know then that this decision was the one real turning point in my life.

Soon I became a regular in youth group. I didn’t want to miss it. As I said, I wanted to see my friends. I also wanted to take part in good discussions and learn about God. And I also wanted to see this one girl who went to our group. I remember hurrying my parent’s home from weekend trips so I could make it to youth group. You see, I do know what motivates some of the kids who get involved in our youth ministry today. It worked out okay for me so I can’t knock it. In eighth grade I was very surprised to be elected president of our youth group. Then I was elected again in ninth grade and I believe some more times in high school. I do not want to turn this into an autobiography so I will cut this off by saying that getting involved in a junior high youth group was one of the most significant things that happened to me in my teenage years because it led to greater and greater involvement in church.

As the years went on, I was always confident that God was in my life. At times He was very important to me, at other times I would ignore His place in certain parts of my life. But He was there.

An important part of my growth came from developing the habit of reading the Bible every day. The decision to do that came about in kind of an odd way. I knew it was something I was being encouraged to do in seventh grade. But I had not made a commitment to do it. As I said, my family lived in the city. My country friends need to understand that. We got a cat, our second cat. We named him Sam. From time to time my mother would raise the question “Are you sure Sam is a boy?”. Honestly, I didn’t know. I couldn’t tell. City boy. But while I was a city boy, I had made an observation on our weekend trips to visit family and friends who lived on farms. I observed that male cats all had gray toe pads. Any time I saw a female cat, she had pink toe pads. I applied this learning to our situation with Sam. He was a male. One day I noticed that Sam was “sick”. He wanted to lay in the empty bathtub or go lay on the cool basement floor. And he made horrendous moaning sounds. I was sure that Sam was sick and would die if God didn’t do something. So I prayed to God and I made a deal with Him. If He would “heal” Sam, I would read my Bible every day. I started doing it and sure enough, Sam got “better”. That Bible habit was started and it has pretty much lasted through my life. Sam, however, began to get fat. I didn’t know why. My mother raised the question again. “Are you sure Sam is a boy.” Yes, I was sure, he had gray toe pads. But one day I came home from school to discover that Sam had made a bed for “himself” in a clothes basket and Sam had kittens. So much for my scientific observations. But I did get to know God better because of my experience with Sam and the promise I made to God.

In 1970 as my third year of college was drawing to a close, I was anticipating returning to my summer job in Wyandotte Chemical’s cement factory. However, first I was going to take a little trip. I was going to take my little canvas pup tent and a new Coleman camp stove and go visit some college friends at their homes. Then I was going to go to a place I had wanted to see for probably ten years. I was around ten or eleven years old when I was reading through a campground book. I was very interested in camping but had never really gone on a camping trip. I really wanted to. Sitting in the parking lot of the Southgate Shopping Center, outside a Woolworth dime store that my mother was shopping in, I discovered this place called Wilderness State Park. It was this huge park near the Mackinaw Bridge with deer, bear and other kinds of wild life. One day I would go there, I promised myself. My day was coming in May 1970.

After visiting one friend in Watervliet, I spent a rainy night camped at Silver Lake. Then I visited another friend in Manistee and was on my way north. I made a stop at Sleeping Bear Dunes and then drove on. As I drove from there on toward Mackinaw, I remember looking up at the clouds through my car window. “How do you know there is a God? Where did He come from? If there is a God, you sure haven’t been acting like it.” Those questions and the excitement of going to this place I so wanted to see filled my mind that day.

As I drove out the winding road to Wilderness State Park I saw deer a couple of times. Now I was really exited. This place was going to be all I imagined it would be. Finally, I got to the campground, read directions on how to set up a camp site and set up my tent. I had a supper of beans and hot dogs. Then it began to turn dark. There was only one other campsite occupied. People at the other end of the campground in a silver travel trailer. Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea. I was really alone. Once my tent was ready for me to go to bed, I took my flashlight and went down to the beach. Now the animals that intrigued me made me nervous. I sat on the beach and looked across the waters. The water was very still. It was a clear sky and there were more stars out than I probably every remembered seeing before. As I sat there taking it all in, my mind turned to my questions again. “How do you know there is a God?” As I sat there, I began to feel like I was sitting on a cliff on the edge of the world and I was looking into the face of God. I didn’t have a “vision” of God, I just saw His creation. At some point I got up and on my knees and told Him that night that I really do believe. That proved to be the turning point. It was settled. I knew I believed. I was going to take God seriously from that point on. (The picture of “the beach” was taken in July 2001 on our high school camping trip.)

When I returned home I started a summer youth program at my church that I called “teen night”. I had taught my first Sunday school class, a group of fifth graders, the summer of 1967 when I graduated from high school. The next summer I taught seventh grade and the third summer the entire junior high department. I also lead vacation Bible school activities for teens in my church but teen night was different. Somewhere between 1967 and 1970 I was getting started in youth ministry, whether I knew it or not.

The following winter I had moved home to Southgate to do my student teaching. During those months I did a lot of worrying and thinking. Would I be able to get a teaching job? Would I be drafted? The draft board was pretty sure that they would get to my lottery number that summer. And I was already 22 and still single. I never expected that to happen.

In April I graduated from Western Michigan University. Before going back to work, I was going to take another trip up north. This time during my few days in Wilderness State Park, there was not a moment when something happened. But I was thinking about all the things that I was worried about and I was praying a lot. Somehow in that time I became convinced that I was going to trust God with my life. If He wanted me drafted, in Vietnam, whatever, that was up to Him. If He had a teaching job for me, so be it. If He wanted me single, that was okay. I was going to trust Him.

This time I came home and I wanted to tell people what I had decided. The day after I got home the National Guard called. I had thought about enlisting in the National Guard. I reasoned that if my country needed me, they would take me and if not, I would get a teaching job. However, the National Guard had a long waiting list. But when they unexpectedly called, I told them I was not interested. If God wanted me drafted into the Army, that was up to Him. I did the teen night program again that summer. I also took my first group of teens camping in Wilderness State Park. As the Lord worked things out, I was not drafted and Western Michigan University’s admission office offered me a graduate assistantship. I could earn my master’s degree in counseling. From that point on things happened quickly and dramatically. I got involved in Intervarsity Christian Fellowship and another campus ministry. I started working with a youth group: the United Methodist Youth Fellowship of Northwest United Methodist Church near Kalamazoo. After a long inner struggle, I acknowledged that God was leading me to seminary and I went. That was the most thrilling year of my life. But as that year drew to a close, I sensed God leading me to leave for three to five years to work with teenagers somewhere. In an unusual way that let me know it was God, He led me to Bloomingdale. I believe this was partly because of a women’s prayer group that was praying for a Christian counselor to come to their school. Soon after I began working in Bloomingdale, we started a school club that eventually became Bloomingdale Christian Fellowship.

That is most of my story. I never expected these years to go as they have. I never thought I would be at Bloomingdale High School as a counselor all these years. I never thought I would be single all these years. I never thought I would see God do all the things He has done and continues to do in the lives of young people.

Somewhere along the way I became convinced that it is my role in life to reach up to God with one hand and to reach out to kids with the other, and try to bring the two together. It is the most meaningful, exciting life anyone could ever have. Today as a youthworker in my fifties, I pray that God would make me daily the person He could use to minister to kids. Things that used to come naturally or easily are not so natural or easy. I am convinced that I can only do what He has given me to do as He makes me able. Daily I need to call upon Him. But as long as He makes me able, I plan to continue.

Thanks for reading this. I hope you see that God has been very real to me. This has not been because of something more special about me than someone else. Back when I was afraid of religious people and didn’t want to go to church, I believe He was pursuing me. He sent friends like Roger and Paul, adults like Mr. Hebert, just the right people to let me see Him.

Perhaps He is using this story you have just read to help you realize He is pursuing you. He loves you, as He loves me. He comes into our lives not because of anything we do but because of what He has done. I pray that you will ask Jesus Christ to come into your life as Your Savior and Lord. Let Him take over your life and do for you in His own unique way what He has done for me.

If you will hit the “back arrow”, it will take you back to my home page. On that page is a link called “Steps to Peace”. It will take you to a web page that will tell you more about how you can have a relationship with God. I hope you will check it out.