A ‘bulldog’ spent Monday
Night Football on his knees
By Deborah A. Hills, Posted Monday, Jan 5, 2009
He loves “seeing the coin drop.” And no, he’s not a financial expert or accountant. He’s a retired airline pilot turned church leader and Bible teacher who loves explicating Old Testament truths.
He says that too many people don’t understand the importance of the Old Testament or its connection to Christ Himself and therefore, they ignore it. That is why he loves teaching about that connection in Sunday school classes, Bible studies, home groups and more. “It’s very exciting … to see that look in their eye when they know they’ve grasped a concept.”
That’s one of many things that the newest member of the board of directors of the Presbyterian Lay Committee, David J. Hulbert, finds exhilarating these days. Another is the Alpha Program, which is designed to bring people who have never received Christ into an understanding of the Gospel through video, lecture and discussion combined with sharing a meal together. Hulbert has a heart for God’s Word and helping others understand and love it like he does.
He lives to serve
That’s why he’s so involved in his local church, Desert Hills Presbyterian in Carefree, Ariz. Along with his teaching activities, he has served for 12 years on two different sessions, chaired a building committee, chaired the Pastor Nominating Committee when they searched for and found their current pastor, served as commissioner to the local presbytery a number of times, and now serves on a “Connectional Committee” to evaluate his church’s relationship to the Presbyterian Church (USA).
How did an airline pilot who describes himself and others like him as the kind who “believe they have control … and believe they’re supposed to have control,” give control of his life to Jesus Christ?
It happened as the result of a tragedy that he didn’t have control of. In the fourth year of his airline career his wife was pregnant with their second child. Everything was normal until the delivery date, but the child was stillborn. It was a gut-wrenching experience for him and his wife, Jeanie.
Even though he now describes himself in those days as a “pagan,” he says he felt as if he was in a “deep, deep spiritual valley. … All of a sudden I had come face to face with the fact that I was not in control of anything.” That was an “epiphany by itself,” he admits, and it started causing him to question why this was happening to him.
“The very next month, as God would have it,” Hulbert explains, he began flying with two Christian pilots. They “fellowshipped” about how much they enjoyed their church and what activities were taking place there. Hulbert started asking questions that he thought were real “toughies” that they “just patiently answered.”
Finally, one of them invited him to his Baptist church, and the pastor presented the “typical come to Christ message.” Hulbert walked out of the service not having responded to the invitation, yet knowing “he had committed a huge boner.”
The next night, during Monday Night Football, the pastor and one of the deacons came to his house, laid out the Gospel for him and he “knelt right there in his family room and received the Lord.” He describes life since then as a “real sleigh ride.”
He was so grateful, because he had never been able to believe “that something like Romans 8:28 could be true until it actually happened to him.” His wife became a Christian a few short weeks later and they began serving Christ together.
Transformed by Calvin
When they moved to Seattle and were unable to find a Baptist congregation they liked, they began attending a Presbyterian church. Hulbert started reading John Calvin and “the more I read, the more convinced I was that Calvinist doctrine was what I believed.” He immediately began to learn and serve in the Presbyterian church.
The Hulberts’ only daughter, Crista Marie, is married with two young teenage children who are also Christians.
As valuable as he has proved to be in local congregations, however, he has never been attracted to the bigger venue of the General Assembly and the politics that go along with it.
While he calls himself a “problem-solver,” even going so far as to claim the label “bulldog,” that commitment and tenacity are only now being applied to a national sphere of influence through his participation on the Board of Directors of the Lay Committee.
He admits that he has experienced many disappointments with the PCUSA in recent years. “They dishonor the Holy Scripture,” and “Jesus Christ as head of the church.” “They do not understand what ordination is. … Ordination belongs to God. We are only agents of His choice.”
“I think what has happened is that the denomination is desperately trying to fit its theology to right a perceived cultural injustice. … It’s trying to validate folks that they don’t feel have gotten a fair shake from the church …” but “the way it’s doing that is wrong, plain and simple.”
“We should never conform our theology to the culture; we should always conform the culture to the theology.” Such straightforward thinking is what draws him to serve, both in his church and with the Lay Committee.
He has always felt that the Lay Committee is doing great work, yet it’s been misunderstood – “tarnished” by others who don’t grasp that “the laity has been left behind … and our church has been taken away from us.”
Hulbert will be working with the Communications Committee, and he looks forward to working hard to “see the church restored to the ownership of the laity,” and those misunderstandings about the Lay Committee clarified. To listen to him talk, you can be sure that this “bulldog” will see to it that it happens.