MEREDITH RODRIGUEZ
Assistant News Editor
Hundreds of freshmen gathered in the Waves Cafe for Care Group’s Wednesday night NSO worship service. They absorbed a capella worship led by undergraduate Campus Ministry interns, a warm welcome from Campus Minister Linda Truschke and an inspirational charge from graduate Campus Ministry intern, Ryan Bien.
Nobody saw, however, a key figure behind Wednesday night’s service. Few freshmen will meet the man whose fingerprints decorated the vision, faith and spirit of today’s Campus Ministry. Scott Lambert — who has helped mold Pepperdine’s on-campus church community for two decades with his enthusiasm, vision and passion for people and for Christ — has moved on from his days as the University Church’s campus minister.
“This is the hardest decision Kim and I have ever had to make,” Lambert said. “I am not tired of my work; I could see myself being a campus minister for the next 20 years.”
He said he feels called to leave a job he loves to enrich a new church-planting ministry.
“God has been hearing me think and dream about planting churches,” he said. “I realized that I had to either move in this direction or give up conversation about it … I had to put up or shut up.”
Last Monday, Lambert finally “put up.” He and his family moved 30 minutes away from campus to El Segundo, Calif., where he will work in two capacities: one with the Hilltop Community Church of Christ as associate minister and another as regional director of Kairos ministries, where he and his wife will play a key role in raising leaders to plant churches throughout the state.
“Our hope is to just start working with leaders who want to plant churches,” he said. “I hope to have a whole new generation of Churches of Christ on the West Coast.”
Lambert is a visionary, according to his seven-year Campus Ministry partner, Linda Truschke.
“He is always about the future and what can be,” she said, and his new position envisioning churches for the West Coast fits Lambert’s visionary nature perfectly.
Lambert added that the past 18 years helping transform Campus Ministry from a student body of about 20 to a body of almost 300 has prepared him for this new chapter.
“I have trained myself to see what people are now and what they could be,” he said. “Love them now and love them as what they could be.”
His niece and a student at Pepperdine, senior Lori Lambert attests to how her uncle applied his visionary nature to students’ lives.
“He keeps his eyes open for people with special gifts and things he wants to nurture in them,” Lori said. “He relates to people, knows them and wants them to grow.”
Lambert’s ministry was not about him, she said. It was about empowering others to lead.
“You see his thumbprint all over the lives of people,” University Church of Christ Minister Ken Durham added. “You see the qualities of Scott being replicated and encouraged in so many students.”
One of the most distinctive of those qualities is Lambert’s ability to reach out to the wounded, according to Durham.
“He’s really best at reaching out to people who are lonely, people who are confused, people who are hurting and giving the kind of healing a loving touch gives,” he said. “I’ve watched him do that with hundreds of students on campus over the years.”
Durham added that the servant-oriented spirit of Pepperdine’s Christian community may be largely attributed to Lambert.
“I think he nurtured and modeled a kind of Christian spirit that has created a very healthy and servant oriented Christian group on our campus,” Durham said.
Lambert is sad to leave a community that he has molded for so long.
Friends and family joke that this year Lambert and his wife have finally graduated. They met at Pepperdine, studied at Pepperdine, and Pepperdine is the only home that their three children, Luke, 12, Micah, 10 and Isaac, 8, have ever known.
Lambert first transferred to Pepperdine in 1982 from York College in York, Neb. His childhood in small-town Iowa shaped him long before he stepped onto the sandy shores of Malibu. His extended family has attended the Redline Church of Christ in Redline, Iowa, for more than 110 years.
“He has an incredible family,” Director of Housing Jim Brock said. “They are all incredible midwestern Iowa people with a love for God and a passion for people.”
Brock, more commonly known around campus as “J.B.”, was Lambert’s academic advisor at York College in 1977. They have been close friends for 28 years.
“I can’t imagine anyone being a better friend than Scott Lambert,” he said. “I don’t know too many people who are so caring and who are totally wanting to be involved helping students with their Christian life, with their Christ walk and with their whole lives.”
Lambert’s niece, Lori, grew up in the same Midwestern town as her uncle. She said that her family loves to tell stories.
“We tell the same stories over and over,” Lori said.
Lambert inherited his family’s passion for stories. “Scott has a great narrative style,” Durham said.
But beyond that, Lambert is known to have passion for hearing and for molding the stories of others.
“He has a passion for other people’s stories,” Lori said. “He loves helping people see the fingerprints of God in their stories.”
In 1984, Lambert began serving as a campus Ministry intern. A year later, in 1985, he graduated from Pepperdine with a bachelor’s degree in communication and public relations, and in 1987, he became full-time campus minister, in which capacity he has worked for the past 18 years. In 1990, he graduated from Pepperdine with an master’s degree in religion.
“He fell in love with the community and the spirit of Pepperdine,” Lori said. “He was inspired by the vision of Pepperdine.”
Not only did he fall in love with Pepperdine. He fell in love with Kim Sauer.
“It was in the context of ministry that we got our start,” Lambert recalled of the beginning of their relationship. Lambert made his first move on their way to the annual World Missions Workshop as an undergraduate. He asked to sit by her on the plane, he said. They married in December 1988 and have served as a team since then, according to Truschke.
Kim served as the West Coast coordinator for Let’s Start Talking for the past 13 years, which has sent hundreds of Pepperdine students all over the world to share the gospel. Through LST, the Lamberts have gone twice to Moscow, as well as to Brussels, Belgium; Heidelberg, Germany; Antwerp, Belgium; Chemnitz, Germany; Eindhoven, Holland; and most recently this summer to Zapresic, Croatia.
The Lamberts intentionally involved their children in their ministry. Because of the family’s summer world mission trips through LST, Lambert’s son, Micah, has celebrated more birthdays outside the county that inside the country.
“That’s one of the best things he taught his students,” Truschke said. “Family is such a priority.”
His kids have inherited some of his traits.
“They inherited their father’s passion for God and for people,” Truschke said. And they have won the hearts of Seaver audiences, playing child-star roles in Pepperdine theater productions – most recently in “The Music Man.”
“They are fearless; they’ll talk to anyone Lori said. “And they always listen to what you have to say.”
Lambert leaves a legacy not only in his children but also in the structure of Campus Ministry.
According to Truschke, Lambert came up with the Campus Ministry mission statement: “To draw Seaver Students closer to the cross of Jesus.”
“Other Campus ministries all over the country have been shaped by this one,” Truschke said. “They do internships and ministry teams in the same way.”
In 2003, Lambert was named “Campus Minister of the year” among Churches of Christ at the National Campus Ministry Seminar.
“He will be missed dearly,” Truschke said. “But the foundation he laid forming in this place is solid and will help the future of our ministry … He is still here.”
08-29-2005