 |
 |
| Billie Silvey |
| Three Christian Bosses |
| August 2006 |
| Helen Young--Helen was my first boss after we returned to Los Angeles from the Navy in 1971. Beautiful and kind, as well as a good writer, she was senior editor of 20th Century Christian when I was assistant editor. Together, we put out 288 issues of the magazine, or one a month for 24 years. We hosted planning sessions and fixed food and cleaned out file cabinets and garages. We also co-authored a book on time management. But it wasn’t all work. If it hadn’t been for Helen, we wouldn’t have had vacations most of those years. We tried to get back to Texas every couple of years to visit our families, but aside from that, we couldn’t afford trips. So Helen loaned us houses she had access to--their beach house or their house on campus as well as a house on Lake Arrowhead and an apartment in Palm Springs. It was great to have a weekend, sometimes even a week, outside the city. |
| I’ve been so fortunate in my working life in that all of my bosses have been Christians. I’d like to tell you about three of them who I think are exemplary, though in very different ways. |
 |
| Ron Lau--Ron and the other elders at the Culver Palms church hired me after I left the magazine in 1995 to work in involvement and outreach. After we started the Culver Palms Life Skills Lab, training mostly single moms to get jobs, those elders became my board of trustees. Ron was the one I worked closest with. Having grown up in Los Angeles, where his parents sold produce, Ron understood the problems of poverty. He felt, as I did, that the church had a role to play in helping the poor. But he was also the product of UCLA and had a work ethic which led him to success in several fields. An engineer, he studied astrophysics, mathematically determining the relationships of planets and stars. He sold commercial real estate and helped us locate the house near the church building where we live today. He was a wise money manager, and he spoke to many of our job training classes about making good use of their money after they began earning it. |
 |
 |
| Marvin Cooper--When Life Skills Lab ran out of money in the summer of 2003, Marvin Cooper, coordinator of Westchester Healthy Start on the campus of Westchester High School, hired me to work as a case manager and grant writer. We had known each other since we worked together at the Culver Palms church, and he had assisted the Life Skills Lab instructor after we started that program. |
| I am grateful to God, to my husband Frank who has taken up the financial slack created by my work in Christian journalism and helping professions, to family and friends who have pitched in with help and encouragement, and to these and other Christian bosses and co-workers who have enabled me to serve God by serving people. The greatest work in the world is to do good for others, working in concert with God. “For it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose” (Philippians 2:13). |
| I was frightened. I had just killed one nonprofit, and I didn’t want to destroy another. But so far, we continue to serve young people with counseling, tutoring, academic enrichment and other support services to help them succeed in a public school where over ninety percent of the students are African American and Hispanic, a demographic with low rates of college attendance. Marvin had been a successful salesman of wine and spirits when he became more completely converted to Christ and determined to devote himself to helping others. His major efforts are in prison ministry, where he serves as a role model, helping young men turn their lives around. A very caring person, he lifts the level of our office. |