Summit Ministries' Founder David Noebel to Retire
David Noebel, Christian author and promoter of the Christian worldview among young Americans, is retiring from Summit Ministries, which he founded five decades ago.
“It’s hard for me to believe I’ve already spent five decades doing what I love,” said Noebel, who will retire on Sept. 30 from his position as president of the Manitou Springs, Colo.-based organization, which teaches young adults to view the world through a Christian perspective.
“But what’s easy for me to believe is that Summit is more alive than ever and that Jeff Myers is the perfect new leader for this ministry,” Noebel added.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
The board of directors for Summit Ministries has unanimously endorsed 45-year-old Myers as the new president. Myers “has become one of America’s most respected authorities on youth leadership development” in the last 20 years, according to a statement from Summit.
Noebel is particularly known as a crusader against secular humanism – which he describes as unscientific and a religion just like Christianity – and socialism in America, which he suspects to be a camouflaged version of communism. “Decades before there was a Christian right, Noebel, 75, proclaimed many of its ideas in books, broadcasts and lectures,” The Colorado Springs Gazette reported.
Noebel was a member of the Council for National Policy, a network of social conservative activists in America, in the 1980s, and a candidate for Congress against Rep. Robert Kastenmeier, (D-Wis.). According to The Gazette, some observers say Noebel fomented the culture wars, over such issues as homosexuality that began in earnest in the 1980s.
The outgoing president, who recently moved from Manitou Springs to Prescott, Ariz., with his wife, says Summit has kept him young.
“It has been a constant race to the top of the curve – creating, equipping and imparting the rich content of our resources to adults and young people, hoping beyond hope and praying through each step of the way that this biblical worldview organization would entrench itself in the very fabric of each generation.”
Summit, a nondenominational ministry, mainly offers Christian school curricula with two- and 12-week teaching programs for 16- to 21-year-olds. About 30,000 young Christians have attended Summit programs, and tens of thousands more have followed its curriculum at Christian schools across America.
America’s Christian leaders think highly of Noebel’s successor. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family and president of Family Talk, referred to Myers as “a very gifted and inspirational young leader.”
On a Family Talk show last April, Dobson told Noebel, “Thank you for the contribution you made to our family, our life and our son [Ryan, who attended a Summit program in 1987].”
Apologist Josh McDowell called Myers “a man who is 100 percent sold out to preparing the next generation to reflect the character of Christ in the culture.” Author Tim LaHaye considers him to be “a rare find,” and World Magazine founder Joel Belz said, “Some people bring competence to the challenges they take on; others bring passion. But Jeff Myers always brings both.”
Myers’ involvement with Summit began in 1983, when he attended one of the Colorado summer sessions as a student. Through the years he has served as a summer staff volunteer, instructor and most recently, chairman of Summit’s board of directors.
Expectations from Myers will be high as his predecessor Noebel had a great influence on the lives of many Christian leaders.
