Joel Korver went home to be with the Lord earlier this week. If someone ever asked me the question, “Who is Joel Korver and what is his significance in your life?” this is what I would say:
Joel Korver is a humble, simple man who has lived most of his life constructing buildings for ministries. But while he built those buildings, he was ministering to men like me. The buildings he built will slowly fade away, but his ministry in my life will remain for eternity. Joel Korver stepped into my life when I was a hard-hearted, rebellious, fifteen-year-old teenager. Love for others and a love for the gospel are the only possible explanations I can think of for his involvement in my life. He could have easily used his busy construction business or the vast span between our ages as an excuse to ignore me, but he didn’t. Instead, he initiated a relationship with me and was relentless in pursuing me with the gospel. He was not with me the cold November night I received Christ, but the seed he had sown in my life was present. I am eternally grateful for his investment!
Over the years, Mr. Korver has been an example to me in four specific ways that I want to be sure to emulate in my own life. First, he initiated a gospel-driven relationship with me, despite my lack of interest. I had no heart for the things of the Lord and communicated my disdain for Christianity in my words, actions, and demeanor. There was nothing on the surface of my life that would have indicated that I was a reachable soul, but that didn’t stop Mr. Korver. For some reason he zeroed in on my life and relentlessly pursued a relationship with me. My rebellious hijinks and coarse bitter words did not detour him. Instead they seemed to fuel his intensity to reach me.
Second, he creatively looked for platforms in my life to show me love and give me the gospel. Joel Korver gave me the gospel in his pickup, on a job site, and in his office. He was the master of inviting me to tag along with him simply for the purpose of trying to reach my heart. Those “tag along” activities took me to construction sites, his home, and his office where I found myself typically loading his truck with supplies or moving furniture. During those “tag alongs,” he sought to share with me his concern for the direction of my life and the condition of my heart. I heard his words in each of those conversations, but I also saw love displayed in the way he patiently listened and answered my antagonistic responses. One night, while he and I were moving filing cabinets in his office, the first cabinet I moved cut a slice across all five fingers on my right hand. I remember sitting in an office chair that night while he bandaged me up and took the opportunity to plead for me to get right with God. He told me that night that I was a sad young man and I would remain sad until Christ had full control of my life. He told me he was praying for me and that when I got right with God, I should consider going and working at a camp in California called Ironwood. Little did he know that in the months after my getting saved, his words to consider Ironwood would echo in my mind and eventually cause me to apply and then be accepted as an eighteen-year-old counselor right out of highschool. I continued working at Ironwood in the summers through college. While I was there I met my wife Beneth, fell in love with California, and developed a consuming burden to reach it with the gospel. I have served and will continue to serve within this state largely due to a simple word of advice given to me as an unsaved teenager with bleeding fingers. Little did he know that his advice would lead me and Beneth to serve full time at Ironwood for several years, to start a small church in Southern California, and to now pastor full-time a church in Folsom, California.
The third example Mr. Korver has set for me is that he has never taken any credit for my salvation. I have tried to personally share my thanks with him several times, but each time he has responded with humility by just saying that God was good to let him watch God work in my life. I am well aware that God is the One Who saves us, but the Word does say that God uses average men and women as messengers of the Gospel; and Joel Korver was one of those messengers in my life.
Finally, Joel Korver has been a constant encourager to me in my walk with God since my salvation. A few years ago, Mr. Korver showed up in the back of our church service unannounced to me. He stayed through the service and then joined our family for lunch. When I asked him why he was here, he said, “I just wanted to make sure you are staying faithful. So, are you?” His ministry was not just to give me the gospel. His ministry included encouraging me to walk with God and stay faithful. I can count at least three times over the years when he called me just to check on me. One time I even received a book, attached to a short letter which read, “I’m praying for you to remain faithful. This book might help.” Every believer needs someone who will just encourage and keep an eye on him. Mr. Korver has kept his eye on me and has illustrated to me that Gospel relationships don’t end when a person gets saved. Gospel relationships continue long after a person is saved.
God desires us to be reproductive Christians! We are designed and equipped to be giving the gospel and discipling others to walk with God. Anyone who has watched Mr. Korver, knows that he is a productive man. He is one of the hardest-working men I know. But in the midst of his productivity on the job site, Mr. Korver believed in spiritual reproduction and ministered to people like me. Only eternity will tell how many more lives were affected by his efforts and testimony. I’m confident that I was not the only needy soul that rode in Mr. Korver’s beat-up pickup truck getting counseled. His “tag along-with-me” style of ministry is a part of my ministry today. Countless people have ridden with me to do projects just because of my desire to talk to them about their heart. Each time I do that, I’m reminded of a man who did that in my life.
My life and ministry has been unquestionably touched by Mr. Korver’s life, and I am eternally grateful.
Thank you, Mr. Korver!
A retired pastor recently told me that he used to call Mondays “autopsy day.” It was the day that he processed his sermon, his motives, and his conversations from the previous day. Another pastor recently posted on his Facebook page, “The plight of preaching–Monday morning, you seem to only remember the dumb things you said.” The words of these men resonate with me! I am like a medical examiner on Mondays. In addition to my mental autopsy, I also leave Sundays in an administrative mindset, wanting to fix and adjust things I observed on Sunday. What a combination: I’m a medical examiner and an administrative junky all wrapped into one package on Mondays. If I looked like I felt, you would see a man in a clinical gown feverishly typing on his laptop, while talking on his blue tooth.
