Harold A. Moore (MDiv '79) TEDS 2003 Alumnus of the Year

The TEDS Alumni Board, on behalf of the Trinity Alumni Association, salutes Hal Moore’s life of service to the Lord and enthusiastically and gratefully extends to him the Alumnus of the Year Award for 2003.

Teaching Shepherd to the Fourth World

“I believe the Lord is an economizer of our life experiences. I learned that the Christian life has been an extremely exciting adventure for me and my family. I learned to see my own life through engineering, problem solving eyes and through the eyes of my spiritual gifts. As a teaching shepherd, I put my energy into people who are in need of shepherding and understanding the Word of God.”

Anchors

New beginnings usually happen in the middle of something rather than at the end, and that’s just how it’s been for Hal Moore. Hal was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on June 26, 1934. His family moved to Toledo, Ohio, where he graduated from High School. He was appointed to the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, graduated in 1956 with a B.S. in Naval Engineering, and was commissioned as an Ensign. He married his high school sweetheart, Mary Taylor, and launched a naval career. He served around the world and distinguished himself as a leader, serving as an officer in a variety of operational and logistical roles. He also became a technical expert and rose to the rank of Commander.

He completed two master’s degrees in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering and in Naval Engineering from MIT, and he became an expert in deep-sea diving and submarine technology.

At age 37, Hal was a happily married man with two children ages five and eight. Even though they were not believers yet, he and his wife regarded their children as gifts from the Lord because infertility issues had frustrated their desire to have children. “Our children were very precious to us. I often felt very inadequate in raising them because drugs had really come on the scene since we had grown up, and we saw children from all walks of life succumbing to them all around us. We feared for our children. I also felt inadequate in my job for the first time in my naval career. I had been assigned as Officer in Charge of a major Navy laboratory in New London, Connecticut.”

Then Doug Barker, a fellow submariner who later became an Evangelical Free Church pastor, and his wife, Donna, befriended them and shared the gospel. “In April 1971, at twenty-hundred hours,” states Hal, “I asked the Lord Jesus to forgive my sins and come into my life as my Lord and Savior.” In the middle of all this career and stress, the Lord got hold of his life, his focus changed, and he began to see everything through a very different periscope.

Sheep Without a Shepherd

As the Officer in Charge of the Navy laboratory, Hal was invited to a fundraising cocktail party sponsored by the SE Council on Drug & Alcohol Dependence. “Go figure!” exclaimed Hal. There were a number of community leaders, former Governors, and some teenagers from the local drug and alcohol rehab facility who were to make an appeal for funds after the party got warmed up. Everybody seemed to be ignoring the kids, so Hal went over and started talking to them. They freely described their frustrations and problems with life and the fact that drugs and alcohol hadn’t helped.

Hal found it quite natural to share with them how Jesus had just come into his life and was changing it – helping him to solve his own problems. They seemed interested that God Himself would come into somebody’s life and help him or her. They invited Hal to come to their rehab facility to talk more. “So over I’d go with my brand new big black Bible and talk to them. I’d leave with a bunch of questions I didn’t have the answers to and go over to my friend Stan Farmer’s Bread of Life Christian bookstore during the week to find the answers. I’d go back over the next week with answers, and the Q & A continued.”

After several months of this, a young seventeen-year-old girl was kicked out of the program and called Hal to tell him she and her boyfriend were running away. Both were high when he went and picked her up. He brought her home. It turned out that her dad worked for Hal and had asked her to leave his house some months earlier. She stayed with Mary and Hal for a year and became like a daughter to them. God used that struggling but fruitful relationship to create a vision in Hal. His friend, Stan, already had a similar vision to reach troubled young people.

Diving Deep to Repair the Damage

Midcareer, Hal had been sent to the South China Sea to assist in the unique salvage operation of a Navy destroyer. The USS Frank Knox, returning from a tour in Vietnam, had run aground on a coral reef. The next day a typhoon had further impaled it on the reef. The Knox suffered more damage than any U.S. Navy ship since World War II. Hal and four others dove under the ship in pounding surf to place plastic explosives in the coral so that the ship could be freed from the reef.

Hal saw vivid parallels between this massive ship run aground in the coral reef and what he was observing and experiencing with troubled youth. He had assessed the damage and the depth of their spiritual and emotional debilitation. Rescue efforts would be complex and costly in many ways. Bringing real help to them would require patience, great love, and careful programming. The vision grew along with his prayer. He was driven to find ways to liberate lost youth whose lives had run aground on sin and the complex consequences that held them captive and wounded in a very rough world.

In December of 1971, Hal, Stan, and two other men got together to discuss and pray about their common burden for troubled young people and their personal ministries to them. Within a few months, they had formed a nonprofit organization, found a 100-year-old Victorian mansion to purchase, and made a down payment from their pooled resources, trusting the Lord to provide the rest. Nine months after the ministry’s conception, they dedicated themselves to the service of the Lord, as well as the mansion, which was called His Mansion. It began filling up with troubled kids even before they had finished preparing it for the dedication and grand opening.

The ministry included a living facility where youth could escape their troubled environment and find refuge, acceptance, and love. At His Mansion the students took part in the care of the home and worked in the gardens, orchards, and in animal care. Together, they grew, raised and prepared most of the food they ate. The program also included classes, Bible teaching, one-on-one counseling, and opportunities to learn proactive life and career skills to ease the transition back into the real world. If the students remained for the one-year program and were showing signs of maturing in the Lord, they graduated from the program to live productive lives away from His Mansion.

Tooling up at TEDS

“My military experience had a tremendous impact in preparing me for ministry. Although trained as an engineer, I saw my role in the Navy as working with, training, and supporting the people assigned to me. When I discovered my heart and gifting as a teaching shepherd, I learned from Scripture that my primary role was to equip other believers for their works of service. That’s been my primary ministry at His Mansion.”

Immediately upon retirement from the navy, Hal and his family moved to Illinois so that he could attend TEDS and retool spiritually for the Mansion ministry. Hal describes his TEDS experience:

“I was 42 and a five-year old Christian when I started pursuing my MDiv and felt like a kid in a candy store. I had trouble deciding which courses to NOT take. There were some very influential people for me at TEDS. Vic Walter met with me weekly for a not-for-credit time of mentoring. Walt Kaiser reminded us daily, ‘Keep your finger on the text!!!!’ Kenneth Kantzer was my advisor, and in our weekly meetings, he shared his heart with us. He had been asked by Billy Graham to come back to Christianity Today as editor and  shared with us how he felt about that, what he was trying to consider in making the decision, and the process he was using to make that decision. The profs also taught me stuff you don't learn in a classroom. Norm Geisler met with me privately and taught me how to write a paper after he saw my first assignment for him. David Wells taught this ole engineer how to study and to remember history so I wouldn’t have to take his class twice.”

Tried by Fire

By the time Hal came aboard following naval retirement and TEDS graduation, his partner, Stan Farmer, was hanging on by his fingernails. A fire had destroyed the original Mansion, so the ministry had moved to a new site in New Hampshire. They operated on the “faith principal”: no fundraising, no government assistance, and no charge for the youth coming for help. Taking his cue from Jethro in Exodus 18, Hal helped reorganize the ministry to prevent burnout of key leaders. He set up and taught Bible classes for the ministry and later developed a program and taught a curriculum to prepare the students to reengage life after graduation from His Mansion. Students began a reentry phase for the last six months of their one-year stay at His Mansion. Hal also developed and taught a six-week, very intensive Christian counselor training program every six months for the next 20 years for His Mansion staff and other ministries.

Teaching Shepherd to The Fourth World

His Mansion has been called to minister to a very special cross section of God’s flock, those who are referred to as citizens of The Fourth World. The lambs of The Fourth World include those with addictions, victims of abuse, those suffering from emotional and behavioral dysfunction, and pregnant women in crisis. This is a fairly widespread group of people, from all walks of life and from all types of family backgrounds and from many countries.

Hal took on a variety of roles as the ministry grew, especially in lay counseling and mentoring interns. Hal and Stan also planted a church nearby and assumed pastoral roles, which Hal continues today. His Mansion Ministries became so effective that other centers were established, including two special centers in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Bridgeport, Connecticut, founded as transitional centers to help youth reintegrate from a supportive home base.

Soon other ministries were asking for help to start similar efforts, and an association of ministries developed in the Bahamas, South Africa, Prince Edward Island, Ontario, and Washington state.

Copyright ©1986
Jesus and the Lamb
by Katherine Brown
Reproduced with the
express written permission
of the artist.

Since 1989, he and his wife, Mary, have also been assisting a group of believers in Hungary develop a viable ministry similar to His Mansion, called Menedék (“place of healing,” or “refuge”), which works with street people and those the former communist government condemned as “deviants.” Hal has been teaching them to counsel. His classes have included pastors, missionaries and others interested in helping troubled people. Hal and Mary have also discipled and counseled many Hungarian believers. In fact, Hal reports, “Through this ministry, God has enabled Mary and me to train 590 lay counselors in America and 492 in Hungary. Each of those counselors is becoming a shepherd to The Fourth World. It’s worth everything I’ve invested.”

Júlia, the Moores’ faithful translator, training facilitator, coworker, and Hungarian “daughter” says, “Hal was the very first spiritual leader in my life who was transparent and a man who was brave enough to be real! I felt honored and lifted up when Hal and Mary accepted me as I was, and their love stopped my old relational styles in many different ways. Jesus lives in him so powerfully that I started to believe that I do not have to be perfect to receive grace. I just have to be real.”

“I started a new life driven by grace and mercy instead of perfectionism and performance. I committed myself to spread this Good News of Jesus Christ, and I live life more out of compassion instead of expectations. I have lots of thanks to say to my Heavenly Father for Hal and to Hal!!!”

Is it worth it?
Hal comments on his ministry with His Mansion:

Family: “At times, the burden of both the Mansion and church ministry has taken its toll on me, our marriage and our family life. I can clearly remember Mary asking me one evening if I thought our children would want to go into full-time ministry based upon the way they saw and heard me act when I came home after a tiring and discouraging day. As for our children now, they are both in the people-helping professions and have spouses who are as well. Our daughter teaches special needs children in a public school. Her husband counsels teenagers in crisis. Our son and his wife have set up their own private practice in neuropsychology - counseling, consulting, doing evaluations, teaching, and doing research. Growing up and being a part of the family at His Mansion has been a very good thing in their lives.”

Calling: “Over the past 24 years, I have never been sure which full time job I should devote myself to, His Mansion or the local church, so I have been trying to discern which job needed me more. It’s been a little like walking a tightrope, trying to keep myself balanced so I don’t fall off and hurt myself or those I am serving.

Ministry Relationships: “Relationships amongst the staff at His Mansion have brought challenges at various times through our 31 years of ministry. Art Johnston and others in the Missions Department at TEDS regularly informed us that most missionaries return home because of disharmony amongst the missions team on the field. I came close to leaving the ministry on at least two occasions. However, a great strength of the ministry has been the diversity of spiritual gifts and overall, ongoing unity of purpose, with love covering a multitude of sins.”

The Fourth World: Stan Farmer wrote in the His Mansion newsletter, “I am reminded of the light that gives light to every person every time I observe a broken, depressed inquirer who comes to us, hoping to be admitted. Yet, six weeks later I often see the same man or woman glowing with confidence, the darkness of shame and guilt washed away by the blood of the Lamb. The Light is proclaimed so loudly that it causes the spoken word to fade.”

Success: “We’ve never been able to effectively determine a ‘success’ rate – nor adequately define success. Is success staying sober, maintaining a job, staying in a stable marriage situation, remaining moral - and with what evidence is this is happening? At times we get discouraged when we hear of former students who return to their vomit, as the fool in Proverbs 26:11 who repeats his folly. But there are enough graduated students who go on for the Lord to make it well worth the effort we all have put into this ministry. To God be the glory!”

Story based on the nomination, interviews, and information from the His Mansion Ministries website: http://www.hismansion.com/.