It’s a day I’ll always remember, not only because it was my dad’s funeral and we were saying our goodbyes. It was also the day Ravi Zacharias told me, “David, there will never be another Norm Geisler.” Immediately the implications of that touched my very soul and almost caused me to start weeping. Four years earlier, when my dad and I had agreed to start NGIM and he asked me to be the president, I knew then it meant that at the very least I had pretty big shoes to fill. But I didn’t realize the implications of what that would mean until that personal moment with Ravi, now frozen in time in my mind.
About seven years earlier, I actually had a moment similar to this. We had moved back to the U.S. after living and ministering in Asia for seven years. By divine appointment one night I had the privilege of having dinner with Brad Bright, the son of one of the most famous evangelists of the 20th century, the late Dr. Bill Bright. Brad had developed Bright Media as a way to teach a new generation of Christians all the things his father had taught so many of us around the globe. He told me then, using the same words Ravi would use seven years later, “…there will never been another Norm Geisler.” For me that was the day God gave me the confirmation that coming back to the states wasn’t just so that my father could see his grandchildren more often. In fact, that was that day that God began to unfold that He had a much greater plan in mind. To learn more about the impact my dad’s life made on modern evangelical Christianity, see the trailer that just premiered at both the SES and VIU national apologetics conferences at NormGeislerthemovie.com.
My father’s emphasis was on an integration of Apologetics, Philosophy, and Theology, which he learned from his mentor from the middle ages, Thomas Aquinas. But along with this training from my dad, for the last 10 years my thinking about discipleship has been radically changed through the influence of my friend, mentor, and global discipleship leader, the Rev. Edmund Chan. It is now clear that all these years God has been preparing our ministry to become a catalyst for a global movement of Christian leaders who not only have a greater understanding of my father’s integrated apologetic model (a trifecta of Apologetics, Theology, and Philosophy) but who are motivated to apply this knowledge within the Christian disciplines of evangelism and discipleship. See our new promotional video introducing our renewed vision at NGIM.org.
Please pray that in the coming months God would make it clear who the strategic partners around the globe may be that God would want us to partner with as we seek to raise up leaders who are both trained and motivated to reach the lost in culturally and personally sensitive ways. I am greatly counting on your partnership, prayer, and personal giving to help us become this catalyst for a new generation of leaders in the days ahead!
His Servant,
David Geisler
