Jim May | living at His place

IN HONOR OF MY MENTORS

None of us make it through life alone. We need help. I have not made it this far without mentors, friends, and a loving wife and daughters who have helped me mature along the way.

Kenny got me started on my journey with Christ in the fraternity house at the University of Kansas. He patiently endured my skepticism over many weeks and got me reading the Bible.

Jim, who was with Campus Crusade for Christ, used to meet me out in front of the fraternity house early in the morning, walk me to French class, and share Scriptures that had impressed him. Also, he introduced me to the ministry of Campus Crusade, which I joined after graduation.

I have great respect for Bill Bright, the founder of Campus Crusade, who took the risk of ruining his reputation by sending out greenhorns like me to sink or swim each year. Bill provided gifted teachers who got me excited about the depth and relevance of God’s Word, which has continued all my life.

One of those teachers was Hal Lindsey, who wrote many books including the best seller The Late Great Planet Earth. Hal was my trainer at UCLA, my first year on staff. It is truly amazing how one offhand comment from a respected person can set the course of our lives. Hal and I were walking together to the car after we both spoke at a fraternity meeting. He turned to me and simply said, “Jim, you are a good teacher.” He saw something in me that I didn’t know and told me. He gave me confidence that I had something significant to give to others and encouraged me to pursue it.

I have been mentored by many great writers whom I have never met, but who have influenced my life: Pascal, Francis Schaeffer, Malcolm Muggeridge, Paul Johnson, Paul Tournier, C. S. Lewis, J. Sidlow Baxter, Os Guinness, Jacque Ellul, Samuel Johnson, Watchman Nee, E. Stanley Jones, Phillip Yancy, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and the writers of Scriptures, especially Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, and Solomon, and many more. Many times I have looked up to heaven and thanked the recorders of truth who have gone on before me for their endurance and discipline in writing down their thoughts. I don’t know if they can hear me, but I sense that they probably can since they are called a “great cloud of witnesses.” I assume they are witnessing all of us and God.

Then came Chuck. I had no idea what was coming when I met him for the first time. I was on the staff of Campus Crusade for Christ and trying to raise money for our student ministry on the San Jose State campus. A student had set up the appointment, and the three of us met in a small café for breakfast. After cordialities were exchanged, I launched into Crusade’s strategy to reach the college campuses of northern California. The “sales pitch” took forty minutes!

Chuck listened to a proud young man who thought he had all the answers, but he was only spouting words he had been told to say. Even though my head was filled with others’ visions, strategies, and doctrines, I was hoping the presentation would inspire Chuck to give a big donation to the ministry. I concluded with the punch line, “What do you think? Can I count on you for support?”

Chuck looked at me for what seemed like “times, time and half a time” to quote the Book of Revelation. Looking back on that moment, I know Chuck saw a young man (me) who needed a dose of reality. He saw my compass lacked direction, and I was just mouthing words I had been taught to say by the “home office.” There was little personal conviction, and Chuck saw right through me. I waited nervously for his response and finally it came. “Are you through?” he asked with a slight note of boredom.

“Yes,” I said expectantly. “What do you think?” I asked again, not able to think of anything profound to say.

“Good,” he said with a sigh of relief. The he hit me with the punch line. “You need to learn how to listen.” I sat there speechless, wondering what he meant. Then he showed me two words he had written on the back of the bill for breakfast: “Be kind.” It seemed I had made a disparaging remark about people who lived in “little box houses” in San Francisco.

Breakfast was over and we walked out into the light of a sunny California day, shook hands, and climbed into our cars and left.

I thought the meeting was a failure. He said nothing about money, and it seemed like he had missed the whole vision of my ministry! I was disappointed, confused, and a little angry.

That month I was reading a chapter of Proverbs every morning, and I kept running into verses that exhorted me to listen.

“The mind of the righteous ponders before answering” [Prov. 15:28]. I wrote in my journal, “I can’t be righteous without pondering before I speak!”

“A wise man will hear and increase learning” [Prov. 1:5]. I thought that wisdom comes from listening. Maybe Chuck has a point.

“He who listens faithfully will be at liberty to speak” [Prov. 21:28]. Listening is earning the right to be heard.

It dawned on me that Chuck was right. I really did need to learn to listen. I realized he loved me enough to endure my anger and misunderstanding to speak the truth. So with a measure of humility, I called him back and asked if we could have breakfast again, and this time I would listen. He accepted my invitation and we met for many weeks. Sometimes we strolled to the post office together as Chuck taught me lessons he had learned walking with the Lord. Weeks stretched into months and months into years. It was the old man’s wisdom paired with the young man’s zeal.

It is interesting to me that Chuck did not run after me to make me a disciple. He simply spoke the truth, but did not force it down my throat. He let truth soak into my heart, and waited for me to call him when I was ready. So often, I pursued students who were not ready, because I was under pressure to produce disciples for Campus Crusade. This tactic was not fruitful. 

My focus was on numbers to pad my reports to headquarters. Success was measured by “how many.” Chuck wanted to teach me to get my focus off numbers and onto the value of one life. As we sat in his office one day, he asked me if I wanted his help to reach campus leaders in northern California. Of course I wanted his help, and he put together a student leadership prayer breakfast. Two hundred and forty of the top college leaders showed up, and I was very excited about the numbers.

Later, I met Chuck in his office and he asked me, “Jim, why did we have that meeting?”

I responded with my usual numbers mentality, “So 240 people could hear the Gospel!”

He shook has head in frustration and said, “When are you going to get it? We didn’t have that meeting for 240 people. We had if for Scott.”

“Who is Scott?”  I asked.

“When those guys were going into the meeting, I was asking the Lord who we were doing this for, and He pointed out Scott, the Student Body President at Stanford. I think he is ready to listen.”

Chuck encouraged me to contact Scott, and I met with him for short periods over the next six weeks. Then Chuck arranged for Scott and me to go skiing up in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. He told me to keep my mouth shut, have fun, and listen. Then in the evening in front of the fire, I read a chapter from the Phillip’s New Testament. Chuck told me it didn’t matter what part I read, just that the Word was spoken. That evening Scott didn’t say much, but a few weeks later, he told me he had decided to commit his life to Jesus Christ. I lost contact over the years, but found out Scott was still walking with the Lord thirty-nine years later. All this happened because Chuck taught me the value of one life rather than counting the “many.”

Chuck and I went many places together, including one sobering trip to Stanford University Hospital. The mother of a Mr. Franks had requested that I visit her son at the hospital. I had let her letter sit on my desk for a few days and finally shared it with Chuck. He responded quickly. He told me to get my suit on and he would pick me up in ten minutes. I wondered why Chuck was in such a hurry.

When we arrived, the receptionist could not find Mr. Frank’s name on her list. She asked if we had the right hospital and we assured her we did. Then she checked another list. She found Mr. Frank’s name with a red line through it. She looked up with a sad countenance and said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Franks expired at 4:00 AM this morning.” I will never forget the sinking feeling of the finality of those words. Maybe it was the word “expired” that hit me. Here I was trying to have a ministry and missed the opportunity right in front of me. I realized in that moment why Chuck was in such a hurry. He knew we should not sit on a request like that. He was right. We were six hours too late. He died of cancer. Chuck didn’t have to say much on the way home. I realized how important it was to obey God’s promptings quickly. He just reminded me not to pass over a God-ordained opportunity looking for a “ministry” for God! I think this was the time he hit me with the question, “Jim, do you want to be a minister or do you want to minister?” In other words, did I want to carry around a title and make a salary, or did I really want to help people? I did not learn this lesson for many years, until I burned out in ministry and began to minister without a title and salary.

One day, Chuck arranged for me to speak briefly to his church. I spent much of my allotted time quoting Oswald Chambers. Chuck told me afterwards to speak from my own heart and don’t use long quotes from others. He encouraged me to be myself, not a copy.

Chuck taught me to keep it short and don’t use clichés. One time we drove sixty miles to spend a few minutes with a district judge in San Francisco. Chuck said we were only going to spend four minutes with the judge, and I had only two minutes to share my story. He made me rehearse what I was going to say. Somewhere in the middle of my ramblings, I used the term “thrills my heart.” I thought Chuck was going to throw up. He asked me what I’d meant by that, and I said it meant I was excited. Chuck told me to say what I meant and not to use Christian clichés the judge would not understand. We visited the judge and walked out after four minutes, and that is when Chuck first told me, “Our job is to make men thirsty, not drown then.”

Along the same lines, Chuck taught me to keep my letters short, because busy men will not read long letters.

Eventually, I went off to England with Campus Crusade and Chuck remained in San Jose. We talked often. In 1968 my dad died in Kansas City while I was in Germany. I still remember the first line of Chuck’s short note to me. “Jim, nothing I can say will change the situation.” The implication was that I had to face things as they were and walk through it. This was another lesson from my wise old friend.

When it came time to leave Europe, I wanted to go back to San Jose and live close to Chuck, but the Lord made it clear that it was time for me to grow up. I had to launch out on my own. Chuck had become a second dad to me, and it was time to leave the nest of his spiritual care. So my wife and I settled in Denver, CO, and we kept in touch from a distance.

Several years later we met in Washington D.C. to attend the Presidential Prayer Breakfast together. We roomed together, which was hard on both of us because of our snoring. As we were dressing the morning of the breakfast, he asked me to help him with his tie. I got behind him, looked into the mirror, and tied a Windsor knot for him. At that moment, I realized we had changed places. I was now helping him. It was a poignant moment, realizing we had passed by each other in our journey through life.

Chuck’s health deteriorated steadily. When I heard he was failing, Reenie and I drove to his home in San Jose, California, to thank him for his positive and powerful influence on my life. As we drove away, he was leaning on his walker waving from the porch, but it seemed he was looking beyond us. We cried all the way out of town.

He had a heart attack about a month before his passing on August 15, 2005. I still remember his piercing blue eyes, his firm words, and his chunky hands gesturing as he spoke words of truth.

“Jim, you have to learn to give away the credit if anything is going to count for God’s kingdom.”

“Jim, stay a learner and continue to listen.”

“Jim, never underestimate the value of one life.”

Looking back, he never made a pledge of money to my ministry, because he wanted to be my friend first. He knew being a “donor” would change our relationship. Of course, he gave much over the years, but it always came under the name “anonymous.” Getting the credit was never his style.

So I drove alone to attend his funeral in San Jose and honor a man who took the time to help a lost young man. I told my wife I wanted to go alone so I could pull off to the side of the road and write thoughts of him in my journal. I wanted to remember a man who, unlike other teachers of mine, stayed faithful to his wife, Elizabeth, for over fifty years. I honor a man who raised three girls with the inner character to lovingly care for their dad over the last difficult years. I honor a man who carried shrapnel in his leg from World War II.

It is sad for me to see how many of the old saints of the church have lost the vision for mentoring the young who are looking for fathers in the faith.

The cry of the human heart is intimacy with our Father. The goal is not to get to heaven. That is just a pretty place, but without our Father, it is empty. The goal is to live with Someone—or “Abba” (Daddy), “Father.” Where are the fathers today? As Paul said, “Even though you have many teachers in Christ, you do not have many fathers” [I Cor. 4:5]. I am grateful to Chuck for filling the void in my heart for a father in the faith.

The greatest mentor of all, of course, is the Lord Jesus Christ. The way Jesus built men is best captured in the classic book Master Plan of Evangelism by Robert Coleman, who writes, “It all started by Jesus calling a few men… His concern was not with programs that would reach the multitudes, but with men the multitudes would follow.” Because Jesus is alive from the dead, he is still building men and women, creating the character of God in their hearts. While I can’t begin to measure up to His standard, God “predestined me to be conformed to the image of His Son” [Rom 8:29], and this sometimes painful process continues.