Vol. 30, No.
6 -- June 2010
CHRIST LUTHERAN CHURCH OF THE DEAF
9545 Georgia Avenue, Silver Spring, MD 20910
CHRIST LUTHERAN CHURCH OF THE DEAF
9545 Georgia Avenue, Silver Spring, MD 20910
A Father to Many
Dawson
Trotman was a bright,
athletic, and popular high school student.
He was the student body president, captain of the basketball team, and
he graduated valedictorian. But in the
years after high school, Trotman gambled, drank, and sharpened his
skills at
the pool table. What went wrong?
Late one night, a police officer found a drunk Dawson Trotman wandering around looking for his car. The officer challenged the young man to be less concerned about his lost car and more concerned about his lost life. Two days later, a young and pretty Lila Mae Clayton invited Daws to her church youth meeting. Motivated partly by the policeman's challenge and partly by Lila's attraction, Daws went to the meeting. The leader gave the young people ten Bible verses dealing with salvation, and he challenged them to memorize the verses in one week. When the group met again the next week, Trotman was the only one who had memorized all ten verses. The leader gave them ten more verses to memorize, dealing with spiritual growth. Trotman memorized them, also.
What started as a game for Trotman soon turned into serious business. While he was memorizing a new batch of Bible verses, one of those verses that he had learned the first week bothered him. He prayed, "O God, whatever it means to receive Jesus, I want to do it right now."
As with everything that Dawson Trotman did in his life, his conversion to Christ was a wholehearted commitment. Four things motivated his daily activities: (1) memorizing Scripture, (2) prayer, (3) self discipline, and (4) sharing Jesus with people who did not know Him. His life's goal was to teach these four motivations to other people. Every day for the rest of his life, Trotman would not go to bed until he found someone with whom he could share Christ.
In 1934 a woman asked Trotman to visit
her son, Les Spencer,
a Navy seaman stationed on the USS
West Virginia
near Long Beach, California. The two of
them -- the truck driver and the sailor -- met for prayer and Bible
study. While they were sitting in Trotman's car near
a school yard, a suspicious security guard approached them and asked
what they
were doing. Trotman answered,
"We're reading the Bible." And then he started sharing Christ with
the security guard.
Later, Spencer said, "I wish I could do what you just did." Trotman turned the sailor's wish into a challenge to encourage Spencer to share Christ with fellow sailors. When one of Spencer's shipmates responded positively, Spencer asked Trotman to disciple his friend. However, Trotman passed that responsibility back to Spencer. "No, YOU teach him."
That began the birth of a movement, and eventually a ministry, known today as The Navigators, which uses the tools of memorizing Scripture to lead people to Christ, helping them become His disciples and lead others to Christ. Beginning as a ministry to Navy men, The Navigators has spread to communities, schools, and universities all over the world (see www.navigators.org). During Dawson Trotman's life, there were many who knew him as their spiritual father.
On
June 18, 1956, fifty-year old
Trotman drowned in a boating accident on Schroon Lake, NY. He
and another passenger were thrown out of
the boat they were riding when it hit a wave.
Trotman was a good swimmer, but Allene Beck was not. Daws
quickly swam to Allene and held her head
above water until people in the boat could circle back and pull her out
of the
water. Then when they reached over to
help Daws, he was gone. He sank out of
sight into the arms of His Lord.
~~Pastor Ron