Dr. David Beckman, a Colorado native, passed away on March 6, 2014. Born in 1926, David grew up in Wheat Ridge. In May of 1999, I had a rare Sunday off from my position as a youth minister, due to Mother’s Day. I planned ahead of time to join my grandma at her church across town. Windsor Gardens Community Church was her church, a church within a retirement community.
Grandma was elated when I arrived to escort her across the street to the community center. All of the people there were of retirement age, and some were quite elderly. Several women came up to her and said, ‘Is this your grandson?’ Grandma told them ‘Yes, this is my grandson,’ with such pride. I thought, ‘These folks are cute and nice.’ Meeting in the auditorium, there were many people there. The service went along, and it was nice.
Finally they got to the sermon. A tall man stood in the pulpit. Speaking in front of that large congregation, he spoke with the most natural of manners, yet with much authority. He rolled with his sermon.
I listened.
I kept listening.
Then in the midst of his sermon, I had a thought, which was so clear it was as though I said it out loud: “Who is this guy?”
That man was Dr. David Beckman. He served that church for over 20 years. He was there 18 years straight, and then retired. About five years later, he even came out of retirement because they lost their pastor of five years, and Dr. Beckman felt compelled to help them in such a time of need.
The wild thing is that many Christians in the Denver area knew of Dr. Beckman for a reason other than his incredible service as a pastor. He was well known in the Denver area because of his many years of service at Colorado Christian University as president and as a professor.
Regarding the Christian journey of Dr. Beckman, I read a piece a man wrote on the memorial tribute page at CCU where he told of how David turned to Christ during a Sunday school in his early youth. All I personally know about Dr. Beckman’s youth was from a few personal stories he told in certain sermons.
He once told of how he liked this girl in his neighborhood. Yet rather than talking with her, he just kept riding his bike back and forth in front of her house.
Yet my favorite story from his youth: David told of how one Sunday afternoon during his senior year, he was alone in the family living room listening to a sermon on their big radio. (Of course they did not have a TV.) I think World War II had started, thus it was a time of change and uncertainty.
After hearing that sermon, David Beckman dedicated his life to ministry service.
The first result was his enrollment at Wheaton College. His first year there was Billy Graham’s final year of college. They were friends apparently. In another sermon, Dr. Beckman told of his aspiration in college to become a great evangelist. He said that instead, God used a tall lanky guy to be that person. (Such comments display Dr. Beckman’s consistent sense of humor, since Billy Graham and Dr. Beckman had just about the same physical build in college.) Dr. Beckman went on to say that as for himself, he got the call into the realm of Christian academia. However, Dr. Beckman, in a different manner, was likewise a great evangelist.
A graduate of Wheaton College and Dallas Theological Seminary, indeed academia became his primary position. Dr. Beckman’s accomplishments at Colorado Christian University are well documented, so I will not detail them. I will simply say this: Dr. Beckman had such a heart for students at CCU that I developed the dream of studying there because of his devotion to CCU.
Yet back to the subject of his service as a pastor at Windsor Gardens, I make a bold statement: Dr. Beckman was my favorite preacher of all time!
I say this for two main reasons. First, he was always prepared. The beaming man who stood in the pulpit preaching away on Sunday was a special teacher due to the hours he spent week after week at his desk. He almost always had historical information about the passage to share which contained facts which most people had never heard before. He would utilize his collection of hundreds of books, perusing numerous books regarding a specific passage. (Dr. Beckman only a few years later donated many of his books to the CCU Library.) And he was such a convicted man of God due to the hours he spent in prayer with our heavenly Father.
About a year and a half after the Mother’s Day I told of above, I resigned my job. I then started driving 22 miles across town to take Grandma to church. Yet I was not doing it because of her. I was going there to hear Dr. Beckman preach. I would take notes! (Considering the average age in that church, it encouraged him that I would sit in the second row and take notes.)
Second, he almost always gave an invitation to receive Jesus. Consider the average age in the congregation was quite elderly, and consider that many of those folks had been following Jesus since long before I was even born. Yet each time Dr. Beckman gave an invitation for anyone to turn to Jesus as if there was someone in that room who did not know Jesus. And Dr. Beckman always gave the invitation in love.
I add that David Beckman had a heart for Jewish people. He even served as a chaplain in Jerusalem for around nine months during the period when he was still single. Then after he retired as the president the final time at CCU, Dr. Beckman led trips to Israel, at least 18 of them, open to anyone at Windsor Gardens. He truly cared for the Jewish people, and he had an interest in the land where Jesus did ministry work when incarnate as a man.
Dr. Beckman was my friend. One of the toughest things I ever did in my life was leave friends and go to Appalachia to teach at a small school in a remote area. (I now edit this piece at a later time, yet when I first wrote the original and posted it, I was still at that school campus in Appalachia.) On my cross country drive in a moving truck to get to Appalachia, the one night I stayed over in Concordia, Missouri. While at a pizza place having dinner, Dr. Beckman called and left a voice mail. Calling him back on my flip phone when I returned to the motel, he was so encouraging to me. Before hanging up, I told David that I loved him. That was the first time I told him that. I treasure that conversation.
And during the fall, regardless of his age, he wrote me twice, with short personal letters that encouraged me.
Dr. Beckman gave a book to me years ago which contains marvelous paintings of some places in Israel. Painted on a trip in 1839 by British artist David Roberts, that artist employed romanticism in his art. Yet I find something unique about the paintings. In one painting, the painting captures a scene involving many people around or in the Jordan River. Some people are resting on the shore. Yet some people are darting into the Jordan River. And some people are already basking in the water. During a time of reflection in the wake of our loss of David, I pictured him in similar setting. He was utterly joyful at the River in heaven. He ran right in.
Hunter Irvine
Scripture Love Blog
“I will build you up again and you will be rebuilt, O Virgin Israel. Again you will take up your tambourines and go out to dance with the joyful.” (Jeremiah 31:4 NIV)
“This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” (Matthew 26:28 NIV)
