Second GLANCE
By Andrea Lucado
Love God, love people: The legacy of Stanley Shipp Stanley Shipp earned his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from ACU in 1946. He spent the rest of his life as a missionary with his wife, Marie (Milstead ’48), in places like France, Switzerland, Wyoming and Missouri until he passed away in 2002. I am one of many who is grateful Stanley did not use that chemistry degree and lock himself up in a lab somewhere. He belonged among God’s people, loving them as only he could. I got to know the man I like to call my adopted grandfather because he mentored my dad, Max Lucado (’77), during a year he spent as an intern with Stanley in St. Louis from 1978-79. That year solidified a lifelong friendship between my dad and Stanley. He and Marie often visited us in San Antonio and eventually moved there from St. Louis in 1997. I was thrilled my adopted grandparents had finally moved just down the street from us. I remember eating Swiss meals at their house prepared by Marie while Stanley told crazy stories about meeting Mother Teresa, a crash-landing in a hot air balloon, paragliding in the Alps. I was, and am, in awe of him. Perhaps what Stanley did even better than tell stories was disciple people. Most of that occurred at the St. Louis Spiritual Internship he and Marie started at McKnight Road Church of Christ in 1975. For 25 years, numerous ACU alumni, including my dad, participated in the program and most likely all of them would agree that the internship, and Stanley, changed them. “Stanley taught me so much about compassion,” my dad said. “He was as quick as anyone I have ever known to give people the benefit of the doubt. I can remember a time when a story of a drifter stirred cynicism in me and tears in him.” Stanley’s life mantra was simple and he said it again and again: “Love God. Love people.” Brent Pennington (’93), who was an intern in 1991, recalls witnessing Stanley’s love for people while visiting the house of a man who had AIDS. After hearing the man’s story, Stanley asked how they could help him. The man said he needed a pack of cigarettes. “Stanley looked at me with tears and a cracked voice,” said Brent. “He said, ‘I don’t like it that this guy smokes, but I want to love him. I think loving him today looks like buying him a pack of cigarettes.’” Stanley loved the types of people most of us easily overlook. I remember many instances of this during an overseas trip my family took with Stanley and Marie when I was 12 years old. As a self-conscious pre-teen, I would get embarrassed when Stanley talked to a homeless man on the street or befriended our waiter at dinner. At that age, I didn’t realize what I was witnessing: the gospel in action. The gospel in action was exactly what the Spiritual Internship in St. Louis was all about. Until 1999, it ran year-, summer- and weeklong programs. Its mission was to reach people with the gospel by training and sending out men and women. Graduates of the program have planted churches all over the world, but Stanley wanted to produce more than just missionaries and church planters. Dale Robinson (’79) co-led the internship program with Stanley from 1985-91. “The internship began because Stanley believed that ‘regular’ people (vocational Christians as opposed to full-time ministers) wanted and would benefit from hands-on ministry training,” Robinson said. “Ministers most often had 80
Spring-Summer 2015
ACU TODAY
opportunities for training, but the folks in the pew didn’t.” More than anything, Stanley wanted people to do what they were called to do, whether that meant remaining on the pew or standing in the pulpit. While many past interns are in ministry today, or are missionaries, many of them are also doctors, writers, artists, stay-at-home moms and teachers. They are people like Brent and his wife, Julie (Griggs ’94), who now run Chiang Rai International School in Thailand, where they have opportunities to share the gospel while they educate. “People who Jesus loved through Stanley go love other people,” Brent said. “When I teach my students in English classes, Jesus consistently helps me see them and love them. This mark of Stanley from Jesus stays on me.” Not all who met Stanley felt the call to go overseas. Don W. Crisp (’64) has worked in finance and real estate in the Dallas area for 40 years and was chair of ACU’s Board of Trustees from 1992-2007. He and his wife, Carol (Croson ’64), knew Stanley through retreats he led at their church, and through their son, Dr. Brad Crisp (’93), associate professor and director of ACU’s School of Information Technology, who did the summer internship. “Stanley took every opportunity to reach Shipp (right) was out to whomever happened to be around,” Don quick to spot said. “That’s inspiring to me, but not something and talk to I thought I could do.” Don is a self-professed strangers introvert while Stanley was the epitome of an about their extrovert. Still, Don and Carol were inspired faith. by Stanley to start a Bible study in their home. The study has been meeting on Monday nights for the last 30 years. “We’ve invited people to come, but it wasn’t like I was approaching them on the street or doing the sorts of things that Stanley might have done,” Don said. “I think his influence on me was to think in terms of how you could relate to people.” Russ (’89) and Tracy (Brasher ’88) Pennington, who served the internship in 1990, did take the missionary route. After an around-the-world mission trip with Stanley and Marie, the couple moved to Thailand, where they were missionaries for 17 years. “Our ministry was not marked by huge numbers of people coming to Christ, or hundreds of churches planted, but by individuals like Sombat, who we met when he was picking through the trash, and Samaan, who had contracted AIDS,” Russ said. “We loved him through his dying days when he had a dream of Jesus coming for him in the clouds.” Sounds like the type of people Stanley would have befriended. My dad has felt Stanley’s influence throughout his career as a missionary, a minister and also as a writer. “He modeled the power of Bible study,” my dad said. “It wasn’t enough for him to read a scripture; he wanted to help people put it to use.” I think this passion for the Word comes through each page of each book my dad has written over the last 27 years. ACU graduates discipled or influenced by Stanley are now scattered around the world in various jobs and career paths, from missions and medical missions to marketing to business to health professions, even English majors. One right now is sitting at her desk in Nashville, Tenn., typing up a story. When I think about Stanley, I feel grateful to have known him, to have listened to his stories, to have traveled with him. His memory reminds me to simply love God and love people.