{"id":3076,"date":"2016-01-13T11:17:30","date_gmt":"2016-01-13T16:17:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/?p=3076"},"modified":"2016-12-22T11:38:12","modified_gmt":"2016-12-22T16:38:12","slug":"invested-with-haverim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/2016\/01\/13\/invested-with-haverim\/","title":{"rendered":"Invested With Haverim"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Sam

Sam Thomas ’76, retired minister, derives satisfaction from his support of current Bible and religion students.<\/p><\/div>\n

When Sam Thomas <\/strong>was a teenager, he felt certain his future was up in the air\u2014literally.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got my pilot\u2019s license and really thought that was what I was created to do, to become an airline pilot. But what happens? I end up in low-paying pastoral work,\u201d Thomas says, laughing.<\/p>\n

After graduating from Eastern Mennonite College in 1976, Thomas went to work for Eastern Mennonite Missions and couldn\u2019t afford to keep up the pilot\u2019s license. He instead embarked on a career in Pennsylvania that included chair\u00ading the Bible department at Lancaster Mennonite School, serving as pastor of Landisville Mennonite Church for nearly two decades, and then becoming a bishop in Lancaster Mennonite Conference for eight years until retiring this past summer.<\/p>\n

So rather than sitting at the controls of an airplane, Thomas instead decided to help the careers of young Bible students at EMU take off. He is a regular supporter of Haverim, an alumni group for Bible and religion majors that awards one or more debt reduction scholarships each year to students with the same major.<\/p>\n

In the essays that students write about their faith jour\u00adneys, Thomas says he often hears echoes of his own experi\u00adence as a student, when he double-majored in religion and psychology.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was a really significant time for me, both in terms of good academic excellence but also having strong relation\u00adships with the faculty,” Thomas says. \u201cIn their essays I read now, the students frequently mention that the professors always relate to them as individuals and get to know them and care for them as a whole person.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thomas says his time at EMU was also valuable in helping integrate his faith heritage into his life, and connecting faith with social issues such as care for the environment and peacemaking as part of a broader mission focus. As a result, he decided to devote his professional life to church work in some form. He hopes today\u2019s students can have those catalytic experiences, too.<\/p>\n

Thomas has supported Haverim with his time\u2014serving on the Haverim committee, including two stints as chair\u2014and financially. Two years ago he and his wife, Marian, sold their family farm and \u201cended up with resources we never imagined having,\u201d he says. They both said they wanted to be good stewards of this gift from God, and they sat down with an Everence financial counselor for advice.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t \u2018How many trips can we take?\u2019 or \u2018Let\u2019s get a big boat,\u201d but \u2018What major things do we want to support, and how can we share the gifts that landed on us?\u2019\u201d Thomas says. \u201cThere has never been any question in our marriage that we would tithe to our local church and then give to other places we care about beyond that.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to Haverim, which also provides funds for guest speakers and special training events on campus, Thomas and his wife support Philhaven\u2019s Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities in Lancaster, a nearby Men\u00adnonite school where two granddaughters attend, a local health care clinic that serves the uninsured, several commu\u00adnity projects, and Mennonite Central Committee.<\/p>\n

Haverim, he says, will always have a special place. He\u2019s recently issued a matching challenge to Haverim members.<\/p>\n

\u201cI continue to really value EMU and the Bible and religion department,\u201d Thomas says. \u201cI value their commitment to our Anabaptist faith heritage and the values that go along with that. I hope many of our pastors will continue to come from our Mennonite colleges, and I want to do everything I can to support and encourage that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Sam Thomas was a teenager, he felt certain his future was up in the air\u2014literally. \u201cI got my pilot\u2019s license and really thought that was what I was created to do, to become an airline pilot. But what happens? I end up in low-paying pastoral work,\u201d Thomas says, laughing. After graduating from Eastern Mennonite […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":3169,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[674,6],"tags":[691,706,689,690],"class_list":["post-3076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fall-winter-2015-16","category-magazine","tag-bible-and-religion","tag-giving","tag-haverim","tag-sam-thomas","issues-fall-winter-2015-16"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3076"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3172,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3076\/revisions\/3172"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}