Dan Smick - Part I

I’ve been thinking about Dan Smick recently so I thought I’d write about him. It has been over ten years since Dan went to be “at home with the Lord”; his funeral at Park Street Church, Boston, was packed. Haddon Robinson delivered a message in which he said (relying on memory):

Dan once said to me, “Haddon, when you’re preaching my funeral, don’t talk about the flowers coming up every spring after a long hard winter – give them the Gospel”.

And the Gospel is just what Haddon gave us. Andy Mills, chairman of The Marketplace Network, a ministry Dan founded, received a phone call after the funeral from a man who had known Dan and who heard Haddon’s message; the man said to Andy:

I get it! Now I get it. I see that Jesus Christ died for me!

Dan would have been pleased – he was all about people coming to know Jesus.

One of the most moving and instructive moments of my life was visiting Dan in the hospital during the final stages of his liver disease. As I entered his hospital room his eyes were closed and I assumed he was asleep; not wanting to disturb him I sat quietly by his bed for a few minutes. Dan opened his eyes, saw me and smiled, saying:

Oh, it’s you, Bob. I was just thinking about some new ways to share the Gospel with folks.

Here was a young man with liver failure, with a wife and two young boys, and he is thinking about others. A few weeks later when Dan, his wife Susan, and Andy Mills traveled to a hospital in Lincoln, NE in search of a liver transplant, they took literature with them about Jesus Christ. Within a week or so we received a request; Please send more material, we’ve given all we have away to the folks we’re meeting here in Lincoln.

When life doesn’t go as planned I often think of Dan Smick; he certainly didn’t plan to leave this life as soon as he did; he had hopes and dreams for his family, for sharing Christ, for making an impact in the Boston marketplace and academia and beyond; he had more insight and knowledge in him – both in depth and breath – than most of us could dream of…but he got sick…and he died. But through it all he loved Jesus and he loved others – and I got a glimpse of that for which I’ll always be thankful.