*Jason Spence is on Brazil and would not be back until April 30th, in time for Kit's Memorial Service. He e-mailed this reflection and we thought it's appropriate to post this on Kit's blog as the continuation of our expression eession for Kit.
Hello Everyone,
Like the rest of you, I’ve been reflecting on the privilege of knowing Kit Lauer over the years.
In the mid/ late 1980s, I knew him as Kit the “hammer”…but God transformed him into Kit the “lamb”. I remember in the early years a time when he was kicked out of one of our Hope Chapel Bible Studies for his too overbearing opinions. God use this though to temper him and soon he began to lead his own Wednesday evening small group in his house with his brother Buddy. Those were awesome days of worship and much evangelism through the Lauer Family gifts of hospitality.
Beginning in the early 1990s, my children were in baseball and soccer with the Lauer kids with Shelly/Kit coaching so we and many families spent lots of wonderful years at the Kalama park fields doing lifetogether. It was always fun hearing Kit yelling on the sidelines what Mikey and the other players should be correcting and cheering them on. Kit was such a jock!
In 1993-1994, Buddy and Sons Construction with Kit’s oversight built our house on Ponana Street . It turned out to be a positive experience. I remember Kit’s “can do stay in the budget” spirit. I chuckle when I think of the compassion he had for Rick Horowitz whom he hired to do some of the painting…which Kit had to do over in his own time and dime!
In the mid 1990s, Kit joined our staff as our church Administrator. Here are some things that stand out to me about those early years.
* I will never forget one of his major contributions. He was appalled over our message system of answering the phones and all us of putting little paper messages in our individual mailboxes…so he budgeted getting us all computers and using the inter-staff outlook box feature so that we could have instant communication.
In those days, I wasn’t into computers since I smoked marijuana in my typing course in high school and never was good at typing etc…but one day arrived in my office which at that time Kit and I shared the same room….and there was a computer…right in the middle of my desk….I was shocked and Kit said…Get over it…you are not going to remain a dinosaur and he coached me that year how to use it…and the rest is history.
*Another big thing Kit did was organize a DCAT ( Doing Church as a Team) Saturday seminar at Hope Chapel which offered Christians a spiritual gifts, talent, personality/passion analysis to enable believers to discover the person God wired us to be…so all of us can serve in the right place for the right reasons at the right time. God used Kit to pull off large events that our current staff load was not able to do. My prayer is that this gift based, passion driven serving philosophy of material he developed can be used more frequently in the years to come.
*Of course the Friday Night service which rotated teachers in & out really took off when it was handed over to Kit and Buddy. God used them to bring it to the place it is today.
Moving into the 21st century….I loved the way Kit performed weddings and funerals. He was so sensitive to the parties involved. I will never forget his compassion of singing worship songs over the bedside of Randy Insley as he was nearing going to Heaven. I saw God that day. I always admired his touch, quite literally and spiritually that he had on people.
Speaking of touch….I will miss those massages Kit would give me in the Tues a.m. Senior Staff meetings. Often while he was waxing eloquently at length on some subject I would move over to his knees in front of the couch and sit on the floor and he would massage me while making his point/s.
Of course many of us have and will continue to benefit from Kit’s apologetic course. Kit was an amazing combination of intellect, humor and compassion. My brain cells always would hurt when he would corner me in the hall about his new insight on “infinite regression” or whatever he was saying or something!
In these last few years Kit excelled in team ministry thru mentoring, discipleship and delegation to our young adults. He taught us a lot about transferring the baton of leadership as exemplified in Ben Prangnell, Sam Gyorfi, Jeremy Napier and others whom he had a major role in spiritual & ministry development.
Kit served God´s purpose in his generation…and has helped equip a new generation…he´s been an amazing inspiration and example.
“For when David had served God's purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep “Acts 12:36
May we follow in the footsteps of King David and Kit Lauer and serve God in our remaining days as well.
Sincerely,
Jason
