from Dick Stum:
I was born and raised in south central Pennsylvania near Carlisle, went to Franklin and Marshall College majoring in Mathematics and later a Masters in guidance and Counseling from Johns Hopkins University. I came to Christ at the hand of a wonderful Sunday School Teacher in my family Methodist Church the summer of 1967, between my Junior and Senior year of high school. While at F&M I was involved in the ministry of The Navigators at what is now Millersville University being personally discipled there. by my junior year in college I was living in Millersville and commuting to F&M, but actively involved in ministry to others on the MIllersville campus. After graduation and a year teaching math in Pennsylvania, I moved to Delaware for more training in collegiate ministry, but my heart remained with high school teenagers. Two years later I moved here to Columbia with the intent of starting a ministry to high school students. That was the summer of 1975.
I landed a job teaching math at Glenelg High and for the next 13 1/2 years taught in the Howard County Public Schools full time. At this point I joined the ministry staff of The Navigators in a half time capacity while continuing to teach half time for the next 6 years. I have been full time in teen ministry ever since. If you have been doing your math correctly (I’m checking), at this writing I turned 70 this summer (2020) with no plans to retire in the near future. I love what I do. We call this ministry “Navigators: Next Generation”. Although we do many of the standard youth ministry activities, our focus is discipleship and one-to-one or life-to-life ministry, meeting individually and regularly with as many teens as we can, walking through life together pointing them to a deeper, grace filled relationship with Christ as it applies to their daily lives, pointing them to a vision of doing the same with others as they grow.
My marching orders came from the Lord as we made that original decision in 1975 and haven’t changed.
Psalm 48:12-14 (ESV)
12Walk about Zion, go around her,
number her towers,
13consider well her ramparts,
go through her citadels,
that you may tell the next generation
14that this is God, our God forever and ever.
He will guide us forever.
My wife Marti (short for Martha) was with me on the ministry team while at the University of Delaware and moved here to help with this startup teen ministry a year after I did in 1976. We started dating several months later and were married in July of 1977. The rest of that history is that we have four grown children, three of whom are married with a combined twelve grandchildren ranging in ages from 2 1/2 to 17 (as of 2020). I also currently serve as a ruling elder at Columbia Presbyterian church (PCA).