New Preacher

This account will be of special interest to my LeTourneau friends. And it will probably be doubly  interesting those who were counselors at Word of Life camp. The particulars of this story are a little fuzzy, with respect to accuracy, but the overall account is accurate. How is that for a teaser?

A veteran preacher was scheduled to preach at a Youth For Christ rally and was unable to fulfill his commitment. So he asked a “rookie” to replace him. (The details of how experienced this new preacher was are unclear, but this was an early sermon in his career.)

After completing the speaking engagement, he met with his mentor. “How did it go?” the older pastor inquired.

“Not too well. Only one young man got saved,” was the reply.

“Did you get his name?” the older man asked.

“Yes,” came the reply, “it was Warren Wiersbe.”

And the young pastor went on to become the world famous preacher we all know as Billy Graham. This ties into LeTourneau College in a couple of senses. First, Billy Graham’s son was a student at LeTourneau. Second, some of us students were counselors at Word of Life Camp during the summer of 1968, and the featured Bible teacher for the counseling corps was Warren Wiersbe. As I recall, after an intensive first week of orientation, he had daily Bible studies for the remainder of the summer. I still have some notes of those Bible lessons–if I can find them.

The application for us is that there is no “small service” or accomplishment for the Lord. I had not known of Dr. Wiersbe before camp, but have learned a lot from his radio, printed sermons, and books. In fact, he is still on the radio every Sunday morning in our area. We should never discount small victories. The Lord will multiply our labors like He did the five loaves and two fishes. He used those to feed between 15 and 20 thousand hungry visitors. Dr. Wiersbe “feeds” more than that every week.

To borrow a phrase from Dr. Wiersbe, “Be Faithful.”