From Dish Crew to Mission Field
Ken Anderson is one of the thousands of men and women whose career path went from InterVarsity’s Urbana Student Missions Convention to fulltime Christian service. Ken didn’t sign up to go to Urbana 64, though. He was a student at the University of Illinois and he had a work-study job in a dorm cafeteria. It was not an easy job.
“I was a diver,” he says. “I took the trays as they came through the window. It seemed to me that most students usually did everything they could to make my job as miserable as possible. They would mix food together to create a big mess or cram napkins into the bottom of glasses, things like that.”
But when the Urbana convention started, the trays coming through the window looked completely different. There were no messes, the plates were a lot cleaner. And the silverware was usually grouped together. “It’s hard to explain, but that just blew my mind,” he says. “It really got my attention.”
Especially since he had been mocking the convention in the weeks before it began. He had been telling his dorm mates, “Lock up your stuff. The Christians are coming, they’ll rip off your books and steal your clothes.” Yet, he had also begun reading the Bible that previous Easter. When friends would tease him, he would fire back, “Well, a page a day keeps the devil away.” Under his breath, he’d say “I hope so anyway.”
He had started on page one of Genesis, and though he was not understanding much of what he read, he was up to Deuteronomy chapter six by the time of the convention. He had been listening to one of the other students on the dish crew, Dave Koetje, talking about Jesus with just about everyone else and inviting them to attend the convention. Ken was hoping Dave would share with him, and eventually he did. Dave invited him to hear Billy Graham speak on New Year’s Eve. So he went, and as Billy Graham spoke Ken found himself attracted to the kind of Christian commitment the evangelist described. Yet he found it difficult to respond.
“I remember two things that he said like it was yesterday: ‘If the Holy Spirit is convicting you of your sin, then you need to stand up right now and give your life to Jesus.’ I was the original gutless wonder, I just sat there. And then he said, ‘If the Holy Spirit is convicting you of your sin, you need to stand up right now and give your life to Jesus; because if you don’t, you probably never will.’ Still I just sat there.”
After he left the Assembly Hall Ken returned to his dorm room to read for himself the Bible verses that Dave Koetje had shared with him from the evangelistic bridge illustration. “I had to read the verses in the context of the chapter just to make sure he was not trying to pull the wool over my eyes,” he says. Late that night he yielded to the conviction of the Holy Spirit, confessed his sin and gave his life to Jesus.
He met often with Dave Koetje, as Dave discipled him in the faith. He got involved with Navigators and InterVarsity activities on the University of Illinois campus. After he graduated he served in the Navy for three years and then joined the staff of the Navigators.
Ken and his wife Judie were missionaries with Navigators in Canada for 27 years. Three years ago they moved back to the United States. They are now a part of Emmaus Journey, a Navigators ministry within the Roman Catholic Church, in the Boston area.
He had been on the verge of flunking out of the University of Illinois when he answered God’s call at Urbana 64. He is so thankful that God got his attention through some cleaner than normal dirty dishes, cleaned up his life, and called him to a life of service on behalf of the Great Commission.