Dumb Luck or Divine Guidance: My 31 Years with the Council of Churches of the Ozarks

By Dorsey E. Levell

In a folksy, easy-to-read style and a deeply personal account, Dorsey Levell recalls his thirty-one years as founding executive director of the Council of Churches of the Ozarks, Springfield, Missouri.

He takes readers through his successes and his failures; from his early and tentative days with the Council when he was ready to quit because there was no office, no staff and no budget, to an annual budget of twelve million dollars. From the heady days of seemingly unstoppable growth of the Council, to a fear he would cause its downfall in his despair over the unexpected death from cancer of his closest friend and co-worker.

Dorsey speaks candidly of the reasons for his divorce after forty-two years of marriage, being diagnosed with degenerative arthritis, battling prostate cancer, undergoing five-way heart bypass surgery, his nearly three decades as a chaplain in the U.S. Army Reserve, and his love for the outdoors, especially fishing.

During his tenure the Council created fifteen human service agencies, grew to 120 paid staff and more than one thousand volunteers, and was recognized throughout the United States as a model of effective outreach ministries.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorsey E. Levell
• Release date: Aug 11, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465731531

Dorsey E. Levell

Dorsey E. Levell is an author, motivational speaker, seminar presenter, and retired fundraising executive. For more than fifty years he has served churches, healthcare organizations, higher education and nonprofits with his positive attitude, homespun humor and practical calls to action. Humanitarian of the Year, named by the Community Foundation of the Ozarks. He has been names Springfieldian of the Year, Humanitarian of the Year, and Outstanding Fundraising Executive. He is a retired pastor of the United Methodist Church and a retired U.S. Army chaplain and colonel.

Book preview

Dumb Luck or

Divine Guidance

My 31 Years with the

Council of Churches of the Ozarks

by Dorsey E. Levell

as told to Wayne Groner

Copyright 2009

Published by Be eRead ePublishing

Smashwords Edition

To the memory of my dear friend and esteemed colleague, Rosanna Bradshaw. And to the many staff, volunteers, donors, friends, and ministry partners of the Council of Churches of the Ozarks, whose support and prayers are making a difference in the lives of families in need.

Foreword

"You have to know one big thing and stick with it. The leaders who had one very big idea and one very big commitment . . . permitted them to create something. Those are the ones who leave a legacy." – Irvin Kristol

For eight years it was my privilege to sit in the shadow of a man who has left an enduring legacy in the Ozarks with the contributions of his life. As the third executive director of the Council of Churches of the Ozarks, Inc., I surveyed the landscape and saw monuments to the work of Dorsey Levell. Not statues or plaques, but living institutions that, long after Dorsey’s retirement, continue to provide essential services to the people of the Ozarks and beyond.

Today’s Council of Churches of the Ozarks serves at least one hundred thousand people every year. The work of the Council blesses people in every stage of life and truly serves as a source of hope for a lifetime. Dorsey’s legacy will continue because the Council of Churches remains central to the sustainability of the quality of life in our service area. Through its ministries and services, the Council brings hope to children and adults in almost half of Missouri’s counties.

In this book you will read that the formative scripture in Dorsey’s life is from Matthew 25. Jesus clearly tells his followers that faithfulness is not a matter of personal piety or theological or doctrinal purity. According to the Jesus of Matthew 25, faithfulness is a servant-life ministering to real people: families, neighbors, and strangers alike, who have down-to-earth, unmet basic needs.

The Council meets those needs by building on Dorsey’s legacy through nine operating agencies, a staff of over fifty employees and thousands of volunteers from dozens of churches and the wider community. Beyond us are other organizations and institutions which grew out of the work of the Council at the hands of Dorsey over a forty-year history.

Ozarks Food Harvest is the handiwork of Dorsey and a group of farsighted Ozarkers who saw the need of providing a central source for the distribution of commodities and other food items to pantries and other service agencies across the Ozarks. Today, 340 food pantries and feeding stations in twenty-nine counties in Missouri are blessed each month by the services of Ozarks Food Harvest. In 2009, Ozarks Food Harvest moved into a new facility making it better able to serve the pantries of the Ozarks. We celebrate that Ozarks Food Harvest is a partner agency in the legacy of Dorsey and those who stood with him, enabling the ministry of the Council to grow beyond its own borders.

You will read in the pages that follow of the creation of Alpha House, Sigma House, Larry Simmering Center and other agencies that serve the Ozarks. In a time when other institutions and organizations lacked the vision or the wherewithal to make possible a prison prerelease center and two major drug treatment facilities, Dorsey led the Council to reach out boldly into the future to provide these services essential to the community.

Another dimension of Dorsey is a legacy of cooperation and collaboration that has existed between and among the churches of our regions for these forty years. The Council was built as a part of the great ecumenical movement that arose in North America following World War II. The ecumenical movement today is being reshaped into a more fragmented and secular world. But the structures of cooperation that built great faith based networks of hope, promise, and purpose remain in a spirit of mutual respect and collegial support that affirms the time tested mission of the Council: Improve the quality of life through collaborative outreach in the name of Jesus Christ, by doing together what can best be done together.

Work such as that of the Council is only possible when faithful people with visionary leadership understand the power for good that comes from mutual respect, shared mission, and the generous commitment of resources. Dorsey has never been a person who was bashful about asking for money or cooperation. He was able to build coalitions of religious leaders to make happen what needed to happen. That legacy continues in the churches and the denominations that continue to support the work of the Council today.

In reading this book, I have been blessed to learn many things that I never would have known otherwise about the formation of the Council of Churches and its life-giving work in our community. I trust as you read it, that you will be enriched, as I have been, in the knowledge that an individual can make a difference. Few of us will be the founders of great organizations, leaving great legacies in our communities, but each of us can make a difference. We can make a difference as donors and volunteers in service to those who organize blessings for others.

Thank you, Dorsey, for your legacy of love and leadership. It is a privilege to walk in your footsteps.

David W. Hockensmith, Jr. Executive Director Council of Churches of the Ozarks, 2001-2009

Acknowledgments

Unlike the more-or-less smooth and straight lines of a superhighway, I speak, think, and remember much like the curvy, hilly, narrow, and sometimes rutty unpaved roads of the Missouri Ozarks. I’m grateful to the many friends, supporters and professionals who kept me on track in telling the story of my ministry.

Thanks to staff members of the Council of Churches of the Ozarks who committed at every level to make this book work. Executive Director Dave Hockensmith enthusiastically agreed to publish the book as part of the Council’s fortieth anniversary celebration and talked it up everywhere he went. I’m especially thankful for his generous Foreword. Director of Advancement Mark Struckhoff promoted the book on the Council’s Website and with excerpts in Life Together!, the Council’s magazine. He provided valuable leadership in working with ministry partners, board members, news media and vendors. Advancement Assistant Paula Austin researched historical facts regarding the Council and assisted in identifying persons in photos. Executive Assistant Barbara Gardner, who worked for me in that capacity for three years until my retirement, responded to dozens of telephone calls, emails and personal visits; gave unlimited access to photographs, minutes and other records; confirmed facts; and encouraged many people to provide stories.

Special thanks to Carolyn Levell and Eryleene Groner for their careful and loving review of early manuscripts and for their valuable suggestions for improvements. Their perceptive insights made this a better book than it would have been otherwise.

Thanks to my professional and personal friend of more than twenty years, John Rush, for his warm Introduction. I’ve lost count of the number of rubber-chicken dinners we’ve attended together, as well as the number of times he has zinged me with one-liners.

Thanks to the following who readily shared their stories, helped restore faded memories, and confirmed details: Hank Billings, Winston Bledsoe, Ed Brown, John Bucher, Peg Carolla, Noel Chase, Tony Coffield, Larry Cooper, Pam Copling, Joe Cox, Kent Crumpley, Bill Gaut, Floyd C. Geeding, Robert Glazier, Joyce Head, Junior Henry, Jerry Jared, Carol Jones, Rick Jury, Dorothy Knowles, John J. Liebrecht, Don Lucore, Donald G. Martin, Sr., Bill May, Mary McMillan, John Moore, Jr., David Neale, David Peck, Robert Pennycuick, Raeanne Presley, Jerry Reynolds, John Roeder, Betty Schlesing, Stan Schlesing, Maryan Smith, Lee F. Soxman, Jr., Neil Stenger, Frank Tinney, Darren C. Tourville, and Ginena Dulley Wills.

Thanks to Ava Crotinger for faithfully and professionally transcribing recorded interviews, to Reta Stewart Allen for her advice based on many years of experience as an author and public relations executive, to Eric Baker for his skillful and poetic cover design that captures the essence of my journey through hills and valleys, and to editor Barb Jones for her attention to details and her keen sense of story flow.

Finally, I have to say a few words about my writing partner and friend, Wayne Groner, to whom I’m deeply indebted. We’ve known each other since he was a reporter and news anchor for KTTS-TV—now KOLR-10— in the late 1960s and he interviewed me on issues involving the Council. When we wrote our first book together, The Pastor’s Guide to Fundraising Success (Bonus Books), we started out to write a history of the Council. It turned into a book to help church staff and volunteers develop sustained funding for ministry. Now, with this book, we’ve returned to our original purpose. My thanks to Wayne for his writing skills that organized and shaped my sometimes muddled thoughts into logic and clarity, for pushing me to dig deeper, and for his dogged research of anecdotes and checking of facts that give the book a finished touch.

Introduction

Dorsey said to me several times that he wanted to write a book about his work with the Council of Churches of the Ozarks. He hoped it would contribute to the public’s understanding of the Council’s ministries. He knew it would be good therapy for him. I’m glad he got around to it. Besides being a comprehensive history of the area’s most influential human services organization, it is a treasured memoir for Dorsey’s family, friends and colleagues.

Dorsey retired from the Council in 1998, ten years before I retired from United Way of the Ozarks. During his retirement he has kept busy generously sharing his storehouse of knowledge and experiences with churches and nonprofits, as long as it doesn’t keep him from going fishing. I got a big kick out of telling people that, when I retired, I wanted to be just like Dorsey—sitting around meetings making smart-aleck remarks.

Dorsey is the only Dorsey I ever met. I don’t know why his parents named him Dorsey. They probably just liked the name. As far as I can tell, the name doesn’t mean anything in this language or any other.

There are famous people with the last name Dorsey, including Tommy Dorsey and Jimmy Dorsey. A handful of people in Springfield have the last name Dorsey. Several towns in the United States are named Dorsey and there is a Dorsey Village in Ireland. If Dorsey Levell could play the trombone or clarinet we might have something, but I don’t think he does that. It really doesn’t matter much. In Springfield, the name Dorsey meant only one man and one mission—Dorsey Levell and the Council of Churches of the Ozarks.

It was quite impossible to talk about one without including the other. Dorsey was the Council’s founder and its chief executive for thirty-one years. He teamed up with an equally remarkable person, Rosanna Bradshaw. Apparently nobody told them they couldn’t do all of the things they did for over three decades. They seemed to have a knack for finding money and taking on high-risk projects that nobody else thought could work. The Council’s budget at one time was more than seven million dollars and about that much in products was generated by Ozarks Food Harvest. At one time the Council had more staff than the national office, and the people of Springfield did not seem to think that unusual.

As an individual, Dorsey defined himself as the pastor to the city. Indeed, he was. He would clear his desk at a moment’s notice for a personal counseling session with me. When a local CEO was dying and had no religious connection, she turned to him to get her through the agony. There are many stories like ours.

He also saw himself as the conscience of the city. Racism and bigotry were anathema to him. If something happened that was mean and ugly, Dorsey was on the short list of those to call for a community response. He was often the first to be called, whether by the news media wanting a quote or by people wanting to respond.

Outside of priests in a monastery, Dorsey was the only person I knew who wore a wooden cross around his neck every day. I suppose he took it off for bed, but I am not sure. In some ways that is a symbol of what he did every day. He carried around the cross for all of us.

John Rush President/CEO United Way of the Ozarks, 1988-2008

Chapter One

Four Thousand Weddings Later

The Backbone of My Ministry

Christmas break of my freshman year at York College—then an Evangelical United Brethren school in York, Nebraska—I traveled all night on a bus to get home to the farm where I had grown up in Bynumville, Missouri. I arrived at the bus station in Marceline the next morning around eight o’clock. The farm was approximately eleven miles from the bus station, about halfway between Marceline and Bynumville. My fiancée, Mary Ann Spradling, met me at the station and drove us home. I had given her an engagement ring in September before heading off to York. Her father, Harold Spradling, pastor of Mount Zion Evangelical United Brethren Church in Bynumville, had invited me to preach during my break. It was my first sermon.

Whether by dumb luck or divine guidance, the text I chose while on the bus was from Matthew 25, When you have done it to the least of these. I wouldn’t realize until near the end of my working life that the principle of the gospel in that text would be the backbone of my ministry.

Never Back a Difficult Person into a Corner

During my sixteen years as a pastor and thirty-one years with the Council of Churches of the Ozarks, I had a hard time saying no. I wouldn’t take the telephone off the hook, even though sometimes it seemed to never stop ringing. I’d get up in the middle of the night and go just about anywhere for anyone who asked me for help.

Long before there was an emergency telephone number in Springfield for persons thinking about suicide, there was me. Police, social workers, even telephone operators would forward calls to me because they knew I was willing to take them. Many of the calls came to my home between midnight and six a.m. I’d lie down on the floor and sometimes spend hours talking callers out of their desperate situations.

Alpha House, which the Council started in 1972 as a residential transitional center for men who were convicted felons who had served their time, had its share of problems over the years. Sometimes I was right in the middle of them. We had a structured program to teach residents to be responsible for their behavior, including drug abuse. The