JOSE TORRES
Staff Writer
If Calvin and Hobbs, H.G. Wells, runaway vehicles, and the Klingons and Romulans of Star Trek attend a Sunday worship service in Elkin’s Auditorium, don’t be alarmed. They are the invited guests of a Ken Durham sermon.
Having served as the preaching minister for the University Church of Christ at Pepperdine since 1998, Durham uses stories during his sermons to connect with the members of his congregation.
“I think stories reach us as at a deeper level then just propositions or facts or theological concepts,” Durham explained. “And so I try to illustrate to the best of my ability the truth that I am talking about in ways that are authentic to the human experience.”
In this regard, Durham is unique because of the infinite amount of authors, ministers, and friends he can quote to make a point.
But nothing is simple about the sermons Durham delivers in his church services.
“Every Sunday I get up and there are going to be forty to fifty Ph.D.’s in my church listening to me and another ten to fifteen lawyers,” Durham said. “Not to mention two or three hundred university students.”
“It’s a great challenge and an intimidating one because these are smart people. They expect to be challenged, they expect you to be on your game, they expect me to have prepared carefully [and] they expect me to have a message that is relevant to their lives.”
Durham, however, never intended to be a minister, until he started attending Louisiana State University.
“I wanted to be a professor,” Durham said. “I loved the life of academia, and I loved communication. That’s what I studied, so I thought that’s where God was calling me. But once I got involved in the lives of students in ministry, that spoke so clearly to my heart. I really felt a clear sense of calling– a vocation. And so really it wasn’t a big adjustment to go from a communications person in the classroom to a pastor, minister on campus, communicating the word of God.”
The choice to be a minister led Durham from the campuses of the University of Texas and the University of Kentucky to churches in Virginia, Missouri and Connecticut.
But it was on college campuses that Durham built a passion for his ministry.
“My first seven years of ministry were on large university campuses because that’s what I like,” Durham said. “I love the mix of campus life, and young people, and inquiry and lives coming in to fullness. People getting engaged. People choosing their vocations. Setting their life course. And [me] being able to bring what I hoped was a clear and lovely picture of Jesus to the mix, as people were putting the prime ingredients of their lives together.”
Durham’s love for college students is evident in what he is willing to do for them. Once, a student asked him to play the role of a hit man for a film, which Durham accepted. He also teaches various courses at Pepperdine as a way to interact with students. Therefore, no one should fret when approaching him for help.
“I want to be an accessible person,” Durham said. “I want to be someone who people don’t feel intimidated by. I think today it’s important for a minister to be a normal person, so I want to be a normal person on this campus. I want people to feel like they can laugh around me and ask me to be in there films and do goofy stuff.
Added Durham: “That’s an honor to me that people don’t look at me and say you’re too dignified for that or you’re too important for that.”
What normal things does a minister do then? For starters, Durham stays in shape by running around the campus track. He also collects coins from biblical times and baseball cards that include Mickey Mantle.
Some might even catch Durham listening to the Eagles or to Emmylou Harris on his iPod. Furthermore, Durham has been a New York Yankees fan since the age of 10.
Life, however, was not always normal for Durham.
“I suffered the loss of my [first] marriage,” Durham said. “[But] the church here and the community here loved me through that. Didn’t send me out, didn’t say, ‘Well, you’re damaged goods. We want a more whole person. We want a person who’s really got their life together.’ And a divorce person clearly doesn’t have their together, but they didn’t do that to me. They didn’t say that to me, so they just held on to me when I was kind of stumbling around in the dark.”
Despite the darkness he faced, Durham eventually restored his life and remarried to Nancy Magnusson Durham, Pepperdine’s Vice President of Planning, Information and Technology. However, the divorce did not leave Durham unchanged.
“It certainly humbled him,” Gabe Durham, the minister’s son, described. “Beyond that it’s tough to say. I mean I think there has always been an appreciation for the leaders of the university church for their compassion and understanding that they extended to him during that difficult time. Also, just his relationship with Nancy, my step mom, has probably loosened him up—made him even more fun. So that’s been cool to see too.”
How much different then is the more “loosened” and “fun” father of two children and a stepson compared to the minister who preaches on Sunday mornings in Elkins?
According to Gabe, his father is not far removed from the person people see during church services.
“He [was] just such a consistent presence in my house as a kid,” Gabe recounted. “And I think that’s what people at his congregation respond to as well in that they know that he is so solid and reliable and so willingly to care for them whenever they need it—they can always seek him out. And I definitely saw that growing up in my house as well, which is kind of the same thing he extended to his family.”
In addition to Durham’s compassion for his family and congregation, he also desires to stay connected with those he meets through his ministry.
“As long as I can be relevant and in tune with this community I want to be here,” Durham added. “I want to have my ministry here. When the day comes that I’m not connecting anymore; or, that I’m just not getting it; [or], that I’m just not perceiving what’s going on in the lives of my students or the faculty or the staff, then I need to leave here and bring in someone who does.”
If Durham’s sermons are any indication of the relevance he’s having on Pepperdine’s campus, then expect him to be around for quite awhile.
04-23-2007