Top 10 Memories of FCS in 1984:
10. Orange and Brown were the school colors.
9. We dominated the league in sports.
8.  No uniforms, but strict hair cut codes.  Never any jeans.
7. The sound of swats echoing in the halls.
6. We were forced to take showers after PE and had to snap our jock straps 
5. Signing covenants not to see “R” rated movies
4. Some of the best teachers I have ever had, and some who appeared to fill in the job at the last moment.
3. Greasy “Poor boy” sandwiches in student store
2. Rug burns from playing sports in the gym.
1. Bus Races at the all night party

In high school physics with Mr. Withee, I was introduced to a man by the name of Sir Isaac Newton.  Newton was English physicist, mathematician, and astronomer who lived in the later part of the 17th century. In this book, Philosophy and Principles of Mathematics, which many consider the hallmark event that led to scientific revolution, Newton describes his three laws of motion.  His first law states:
 “A body in motion will remain in motion, UNLESS ACTED UPON BY AN OUTSIDE FORCE.”

Here, Newton explained the movement of celestial bodies and set the ground work for space travel nearly two centuries later.  I find what is true of planetary and space travel is also true of traits in families. I call this “Newton’s Law of Generational Traits.” “A body in motion will remain in motion” or to say it another way:
“A family full of damaging traits typically passes down those traits to their children and the chain continues from one generation to the next UNLESS ACTED UPON BY AN OUTSIDE FORCE.”

For me that OUTSIDE FORCE occurred in 1977 when the hand of God scooped my brother, sister and I and placed us in the “life boat” of Fremont Christian School. You have to know the struggles of our family to comprehend the magnitude of this event.

One side of my family was the curse of abuse, specifically sexual abuse.  This poison entered my family and crippled everyone it touched. On the other side is abandonment. Children raised by institutions and other family members never knowing the nurturing hand of a loving father and mother.  As far back as I can tell, on both sides these vices plagued my family.

Two lines, two families with abuse and abandonment, combine.  Statistically, the children of this marriage have no hope but to pass on the pain and infliction their parents have known.  Or it say it in Newton’s language:  A body in motion will continue in motion destined to maintain and repeat the events it has inherited and programmed to do.

With this undercurrent, divorce was all but inevitable. I remember, the day sitting in a psychologist office hearing asking me who I wanted to live with as if a 9 year old child can choose.  I also remember vividly the day, where the courts told my father to leave where my father packed up his belongings into his blue Datsun with camper shell, gave me an hug and then drove away.  Divorce had a devastating effect on my family.  My dad in one home, my brother another, my sister still another and my mom and I alone.  For the next 10 years I stepped into a cave and buried my feelings.  It appeared that the cycle was about to repeat itself.  “A body in motion will continue in motion.”

Children do stupid stuff when families divide.  In public school, I started mixing with those circles who would provide more stability and purpose. My mom worked 3 jobs to take care of us.  I was a latch key kid.  On my own for most of the time.  I got exposed to sexual activity, drugs, alcohol and gangs at this vulnerable season.  Somehow, I managed not partake, but I sat with those who did.  It was only a matter of time when I would. It appeared that the cycle was about to repeat itself.  “A body in motion continuing in motion.” 

One summer, some friends and I were to Gemco, which is now Lucky’s on Mowry Ave.  As I went a neighbor lady told us to not steal anything.  I thought it was odd she would say that.  I don’t remember when I started shoplifting, but I stole something from stores practically every time I entered them.  It was as if God was giving me a warning and I did not heed it.  I remember stealing some lighters and putting them in a bag.  I got caught and was arrested at 11 years old.  My mom came down and yelled and yelled.  I shut down.  I remember coming home laying on my bed shut down.  I did not say or respond to anything.  My mom yelled and cried and no response. She begged me for a response.  I didn’t know how to give one.  My older brother came into the room and said, “Don’t you see how your hurting mom?”  “You are just hurting the family.”  The cycle continued.  Another body floating through space continuing the same pattern that programmed it.

Newton said this pattern would continue itself over and over again UNLESS AN OUTSIDE FORCE ACTED UPON IT. 
“A body in motion will remain in motion, UNLESS ACTED UPON BY AN OUTSIDE FORCE.”

Or to say it in Pauline terms…

Eph. 2:4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us,
Eph. 2:5 even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),

It was if the intervening hands of God scooped up my brother, sister and I and put on the life boat of Fremont Christian School.  It seems as if God said, “Enough pain, enough brokenness, enough separation, it is time to break the cycle.”  An outside force intervened and changed the projection, velocity and purpose of my life and the life of my lineage.

Fremont Christian School provided an island of SECURITY and STABILITY for a young life that had very little.  I can’t say I had any transformative moments the six years I attended.  I wasn’t the type of kid that needed a lot of direct attention.  But I did take notice of what I saw and pondered several events. 
 
I saw STUDENTS live life without many of the negative vices I was exposed to. Derek Meekins, Bill Dougherty, Scott Byrd and Don Hendricks.
I saw TEACHERS take time to probe beyond academics to the check to see how I was doing.  Though I don’t remember sharing much, I took notice of their concern. (Bob Yovino, Rich Cordes, Bill Elliot, Marla Cambell and Darryl Guzman)
I saw ADMINISTRATORS and STAFF befriend me and show me kindness. (Darryl Hunt and David Loughborough)

For the first time the rhythm of my life was SAFE and PREDICTABLE.  I don’t remember being able to open much to many people, but I do remember feeling SECURE.  I took a few more steps to come out of my cave.

Then one day, my mom told me that tuition was rising faster than we could afford.  Though I didn’t show it, the thought terrified me to leave.  I prayed that God would make a way.  I don’t know how it happened, but I imagine one Tuesday night at an FCS board meeting, the issue came up on the agenda. My gut tells me that Pastor Ken Rankin and Pastor Robert Goree found a way where I could work 2 hours after school each day cleaning class rooms and working Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter vacations to pay for my tuition.  Financially, I imagine such a deal was a loss in the ledger.  But it saved me.  So I played my sports, worked in classrooms and did my homework. 

As finances got tighter at home and my mom needed me to buy my own cloths, Pastor Ken would expand my hours. Being the gracious man he was, he hired me at $3.10 an hour.   First on weekends, cleaning the church, nursery, bathrooms and pastoral offices.  Then the summer with maintenance painting classrooms, weeding the property, and my favorite killing gophers on soccer field. I remember waiting for Nancy Bean and Lola Yokela to stop praying so I could clean the church on Dusterberry.

It may sound strange, but just vacuuming the offices of Pastor Goree, Pop Mincey, Dwight Dean, Ken Rankin, Sherry Miller and Merle Sousa provided me my first interaction with pastors and staff.  I liked these folks, respected them and admired what they did.  My family visited First Assembly, but their attendance didn’t stick. As a Jr. Higher, I went on my own without any other family member for my entire duration of Jr. High and High School walking on my own to church and back home.

When it came time to graduate, I wanted to go to Berkely or San Jose St.  Bob Yovino suggested I go to a Christian college.  I told him that I was interested in engineering and that there were no accredited Christian colleges.  The very next week, a sign went up on Dusterberry under the Fremont Christian School sign saying “LeTourneau College.”  Bob Yovino asked Darryl Hunt to get me an application.  Even though I had a 4.0 GPA in high, and I applied to UC Berkely, Davis, UCLA and San Jose State, the ONLY school that accepted me was LeTourneau.

My first year in LeTourneau was not a good one.  Being in an engineering school in East Texas where only four women were in my incoming freshman class and studies pressed me to the limits, I hated my setting.  In this setting, the hand of Fremont Christian School, came to me.  Glenn Orr called me one day and told me how much God was doing in his life.  I was surprised to hear Glenn talk to so bold about Jesus.  He then asked me how I was doing and I began to give him a laundry lists of issues.  Before I could finish my list, he told me this line:  “Roger, God can’t use a person like “you who complains as much as you do.”  I realized for the first time that thought I followed God because of the people I respected at Fremont Christian and First Assembly.  I felt God was asking me this question, “Will you do it for Me?” 

I did that day and never turned back. Looking back, that one phone call from an FCS student changed the course of my life.  23 years later I know sit in one of the offices I cleaned.  My journey has taken from engineering to the pastorate, from Texas to Massachusetts, from providing relief in Bosnia during the war, to fighting poverty in Haiti, to studying theology in Israel and Palestine and to building churches in Europe.  I now have two Bachelor degrees, one Master’s and God willing, this year my doctorate.  Through each one, God has been faithful to provide a means to work so that when I have walked across that stage to grab that diploma, I did so without any debt.

But more importantly, because of my FCS experience and the new course it set me on, the giants of ABANDONMENT and ABUSE in my brother, sister and I are gone.  All of us have wonderful spouses and marriages that far lasted our parents.  Our children are blissfully ignorant of the demons of our families past and move ahead in life like nothing ever happened. 

In the church, I have heard people talk about “generational curses” that characterize one generation to the next. I don’t always understand all the theology that people put into this.  All I know is, an “outside force” scooped me up, put me in the lifeboat of FCS and introduced me the “curse-breaker”, Jesus Christ and a new day has begun for me and my family.
Moses tells us that the sins of the fathers passes down to the 3rd and 4th generation, but the love of God extends to a thousand generations (Exod. 20:5-6).    

I used to wonder what the transition FROM a lineage of a family caught in the cycle of destructive traits TO one who experiences the blessings of the Lord.  Now I know.