This year marks for me a total of 25 years of staff ministry with InterVarsity. Tomorrow morning Cheryl and I travel to Austin, Texas at the invitation of Tom Lin, President of InterVarsity USA. Each year, staff who reach 25 years of service are invited to a celebration with Tom and InterVarsity’s national board of directors. The board rotates the location of their annual meeting – this year it’s in Austin! A total of 19 of us will be recognized this weekend.

In this post I wanted to share a few snapshots of my earliest of days with InterVarsity (1986-87). Most of you know that I didn’t serve my 25 years consecutively. As I was finishing my M-Div, I left staff in 2006 to work in church ministry as an associate pastor of outreach at Christ Community Church here in Omaha. When I returned in 2017, InterVarsity just “restarted my clock” – and here we are. 25 years on InterVarsity staff! If you want the back-story on the transition back to IV, check out this post.

I’m sure this weekend will conjure a lot of memories about what it has meant to me to be an InterVarsity staff member for most of my working career. I can’t begin to narrow it down much less remember it all! InterVarsity’s gifts to me are too numerous. IV was the first place I found Christian community as a freshman engineering student in 1982. I found what I would call true spiritual friendship with a small handful of students – first at Eastern Illinois, then at University of Illinois where I graduated. Eastern was where I first met an InterVarsity staff member who befriended and invested in me. I learned leadership. I learned how to share my faith and lead friends to Christ. I read books – difficult and important ones. I learned how to sing more and better hymns in IV than the few I grew up with. I met vastly more diverse Christians. I read and studied my bible inductively for the first time. I caught a vision for theological studies. I was blessed to go to grad school while I was working in ministry. I was given lots of opportunities to lead staff. And the whole time I’ve been a student of the culture shaping institution of the secular university, longing for the influence of Jesus in that context. Thank you InterVarsity for helping all that happen!

When I think of the even longer list of people I am grateful to, it seems daunting to even start the list. This photo mosaic is a good place to begin! My deepest, most enduring bond of ministry partnership has to be with Cheryl St. Pierre Perry! Cheryl was a swell friend on the very last student exec team I served my senior year at University of Illinois (1987). I had to wait year after joining IV staff to get to serve with her. We served every minute of the first ten years of staff-work together. I couldn’t and wouldn’t be in ministry for over 35 years now without a teammate like her. A lot of terrific ministry, in a lot of different places, while all the time growing a fabulous family. Cheryl, thank you!

Staff team-mates too many to count in Downstate Illinois, in the Great Lakes West and recently in GFM. Student leadership teams (like my first exec team at Eastern Illinois, Fall 1987). InterVarsity students, faculty and alumni scattered over 35 years of time! I can’t begin to unpack what it meant to be on countless program staff teams at Cedar Campus during those first 19 years! Those of you reading this who are current ministry partners of mine belong to a group of people who have given to InterVarsity faithfully and generously for decades. Can you imagine a spreadsheet (that probably exists somewhere) having 25 years worth of monthly columns from left to right? And then runs down the page with a row for everyone who has ever given to Tim Perry’s account! That mega-spreadsheet-in-the-clouds with all those donations in all those boxes… is just a proxy for the cumulative provision that Cheryl and I have been blessed to rely on.

Thank you, friends. Thank you, family. Thank you, team-mates. Thank you InterVarsity alumni. I’ll try to snap a few pictures and give you an update from the weekend coming up.