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Describe your Lancaster Theological Seminary connection and a meaningful moment you experienced.

LTS was my first home as a married person. We lived in a married students' apartment on campus. The campus community offered a social network. We gathered on Friday nights at a campus student union (the hub, the basement of old library building) for fellowship. I worked grounds and maintenance for business manager Myron Wolf (mowed the grass, collected fall leaves, and ran the snow blower to clear sidewalks). In hindsight, that "grounds" work fits the "meaningful" category. While LTS prepared me for parish ministry, a stated goal of the seminary at the time, my ministry evolved to include a small urban parish in Charlotte, North Carolina, a youth-staff role in a Burlington, North Carolina church, and then a 31-year role in Outdoor Ministry at a UCC-affiliated camp in North Carolina where my roles included being a steward of the environment. The senior seminar abroad was also meaningful. My class visited Germany and Switzerland, connecting with some of the roots of the German Reformed Church.

Why is LTS important to you?

It prepared me as its mission statement expressed—for parish ministry—offered a nurturing community of students, faculty and staff; with experiential learning opportunities, connected students to an emerging world of planned cities (Columbia, Maryland), Catholicism in the wake of Pope John XXIII, and Vatican II; plus opened an avenue to racial-justice encounters of the early 1970s in the South (Charlotte, North Carolina). My roots are in Quakertown, PA with an undergraduate degree from Catawba College (Salisbury, North Carolina).

What type of legacy do you hope to leave at LTS? How would you like to be remembered?

I'm pondering that question—with myself and my wife.

What motivates you to stay involved at LTS?

I'm interested in monitoring LTS's merger with Moravian with the hope that its history and identity will not be totally lost, moving forward.

What is the most important work that LTS does?

The United Church of Christ has always embraced an educated clergy. Equipping persons for leadership in the church stands out as equally important in the present day.

Why do you volunteer/donate?

The easiest answer is that it is probably part of my DNA.

When you give back to LTS, where do you choose to direct your support and why?

I generally do not designate, allowing the Seminary to apply funds where most needed.

Please share an inspiring message with the LTS community.

I was honored in 2018 with LTS's Moss Award for specialized ministry. Perhaps the easiest way to respond to this question is with the words I shared in my acceptance remarks on that day: 

Thank you! It is an incredible honor to accept this award. This occasion reconnects me with a solid foundation for ministry I received on this campus.

Margaret and I arrived in Lancaster yesterday, We drove into town on the Fruitville Pike, in part to view the intersection where Lancaster Maleable Castings Co. stood during my student days and were not totally surprised to find the foundry gone. I worked there in my student days, during their two-hour afternoon shift when they poured molds. "The scene was Dantesque," quoting Alvin Toffler—smoke, soot, dirt, sand, and molten iron. More about Toffler in my final words. We also poked around campus a bit, and I glanced into the lower level of the Lark Building. When I was a student here, the hallway served as a hall of fame for photos of former faculty and presidents, mostly old men with beards.

One image that was not on the wall yet was that of Robert Moss. He left his post as LTS president to begin his tenure as president of the UCC in the same year Margaret and I were moving onto campus to initiate my studies in the M.Div. program. 

Bob Moss was a son of Southern Conference, Corinth Reformed Church, Hickory. I am reminded of him every time I am in a worship service—however, where the UCC Doxology version of the statement of faith is being used. I suspect it was mostly the old men that must have written the original Statement of Faith. "He calls the worlds, creates man, sets before him, He seeks in holy love, He judges men and nations." Robert Moss worked personally to transition that paradigm shift.

The world was bursting at its seams during our days on campus at LTS. Alan Kroehler was marching against the Vietnam War in DC. I found myself in a coffee house ministry in Ephrata, The Berrigan brothers had burned the Catonsville, Maryland draft board records. Jesus Christ Superstar was on Broadway, and I found myself in Leola, exegeting those lyrics with UM youth. Those were the times, and as [Bob] Dylan said, they were definitely a-changing.

Meeting here in the lawn, under this tent, is somewhat nostalgic for me. I was also the groundskeeper during my student days—mowing the grass, collecting leaves from these trees, and clearing snow from the sidewalks around this city block. Myron Wolf, business manager, replaced me upon my graduation with the hire of a full-time person who had worked grounds and maintenance at Silver Lake Camp in Penn West. That too became significant, given how my ministry gravitated toward outdoor ministry.

In a senior year course, Senior Colloquay, one of the writings we explored was Alvin Toffler's Future Shock. That book was available with a cover in seven colors. Have any of you had to make color choices when buying an Apple product? It would be fifteen years before we bought our first Apple product—an Apple 11 with all of 128k of memory.

After 31 years as camp director at Johns River Valley Camp, prefaced by ten years in the parish and five years in a staff youth minister role, I can now tell you that being in classrooms on this campus, stewarding the grounds under these trees, working in the steel mill in this town, worshipping in Santee Chapel, sharing time with students in Catholic seminaries, living in community on campus, traveling abroad on the senior seminar to Germany, and engaging in ministry with two congregations all aligned as building blocks for a remarkable vocation in ministry. Thanks for the recognition and honor of this Robert V. Moss Award, highlighting my specialized ministry in a very special Valley defined by the Johns River.