Steward YOUR Vocation
Rejoicing the City
Dan Blevins: A Paper Chemist Discovers the “WOW” Factor in Vocational Stewardship
March 26, 2011
Paper chemist Dan Blevins doesn’t really see himself as an extraordinary guy. He grew up in a small town in Michigan, went off to college, and got a job after graduation. He found a wife, started a family. They joined a church. At Mt. Pisgah Methodist in Atlanta, Dan sang in the choir and volunteered with the recreational ministry as a soccer referee.
In April 2003, Dan turned 50. He’d worked for Dow Chemical Company for nearly a quarter century. He heard about a missions conference coming to downtown Atlanta in June and decided to attend. Given his recent milestone birthday, he choose to follow the track at the conference organized by the Finishers Project. (Finishers’ mission is to connect mid-life adults with “global impact opportunities for God.”) On the last day, Dan attended a workshop titled “Finding Your Place in Ministry: Your Skills are Needed.”
“The instructor began his presentation stating that regardless of what your skills were, there was a ministry somewhere that could use you,” Dan remembers. Then the presenter said he’d ask each person in the room a little about their jobs, and then make a recommendation of a ministry that could make use of their skills. “He started around the room to my left,” Dan says, “and the examples began to flow. Teacher, electrician, nurse—and with each person [he’d] reel off ministries and places in the world where they could be involved.” When the presenter got to Dan, though, he was stumped. He wasn’t sure how God would use a paper chemist.
[1] Except where noted. information in this profile is based on Amy Sherman’s interviews with Dan Blevins in September 2010.
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