Magazine Teaser: Keith Jaspers Retires

 

Keith and Karen Jaspers attend a special banquet in their honor celebrating Keith's retirement and the couple's dedication to Rainbow Network. Our new Chairman of the Board, Tim Geisse, looks on.

It’s official: Keith Jaspers has retired as the President of The Rainbow Network. Now, to be sure, neither Keith nor his Co-Founder and wife Karen are really gone; they’ve just handed over the daily details to a team of senior leaders they’ve chosen. Still, this transition marks a special time in the life of a dynamic ministry that has grown from a prayerful inner voice driving this couple to do something more into a life-changing force that serves more than 50,000 people.

Keith Jaspers founded The Rainbow Network back in 1995 with his wife Karen. For the past fourteen years they have continued to operate their family businesses alongside Rainbow Network! The hours required to do so as effectively as they have are astronomical; yet they have done it. Even in retirement, Keith and Karen have both accepted life-long appointments to our board of directors.

Keith is fond of saying that Rainbow’s work is an answer to prayer. The people of Nicaragua are people praying for opportunity, for healing, for God’s presence. “How amazing is it,” Keith often says “that we can answer prayers on behalf of our God.” That focus on providing for the physical  solutions to the prayers of others made God’s love present to thousands in Nicaragua and here in the United States.

Keith refers to the prayers of today’s Nicaraguans but as I sat and listened to stories about Keith I couldn’t help but think of another prayer to which he has responded so well. The Lord’s Prayer, offered by Christ, provides a path to follow for those who are willing to listen closely. It keeps pulling inward towards the tangible. If you can, think through the prayer in your mind. First we speak of God in heaven, then of God’s kingdom coming to earth, then we narrow all the way down to bread. It would not be wholly inaccurate to claim that Christianity is a bit materialistic – just not in the way we most often use that word.

Jesus’ prayer illuminates that for him physical matters were the spiritual matters. Keith’s focus on providing housing, healthcare, education, and economic development as expressions of God’s love is one of the

Keith, and Karen, today I offer you my thanks along with the thousands of others whom you have touched and into whose lives you have helped bring Christ’s Kingdom of God.

- Ryan Owen

 

To read more, click the magazine to the right for our online version of our magazine. Or, watch for your copy in the mail later this week.

To make a gift in Keith’s honor, click here.