gave leadership to the worldwide ministry
for 15 years as OMS expanded from 14
to 46 countries. Celia faithfully served in
Communications as an editor for those
years.
David leads with organization and innovation and strategically in vision and
direction. After logging over a million air
miles, he realized that time and energy
limited how often he could visit each
country. He restructured the worldwide
operations into regions, appointing directors for four regions—Asia Pacific, Latin
America, Europe, and Africa. He brought
these leaders together, with others from
headquarters, to form an ad hoc strategic
evaluation and planning structure for field
ministries called the International Ministries
Advisory Council (IMAC), a group that
continues to meet today.
For outreach to be strategic in ministry and direction, David worked to ensure
that annual field plans incorporated fieldspecific mission and vision statements
and that annual ministry and personal
performance evaluations were aligned
with mission statements, goals, and objectives. He inaugurated the first mission-wide and field-specific emergency
contingency planning with guidelines to
be proactive when dangerous situations
occurred on a field. He cast the early vision for Church Planting Movement principles and methods, which subsequently
have been developed and widely used in
ECC ministries worldwide.
Today, David, with Celia supporting him,
serves as vice president at large, continuing to touch the world for Christ through
the International Ministries Department
and serving as a champion for Islamic
ministries.
she served as librarian. She also served
as the academic registrar of the seminary.
David’s leadership of the Theological
Education by Extension (TEE) program,
with classes in many outlying churches,
contributed greatly to the training of lay
leaders, some of whom subsequently
enrolled in the seminary and went into
full-time ministry. He expanded our Every
Community for Christ (ECC) church-planting ministry and mentored the first national
coordinator of the program. Together, we
also developed and installed the first computerized financial reporting system for our
OMS fields.
After completing two successful terms
on the field, the second as field director, the
Dicks returned stateside in 1991 for home
ministry assignment. David was offered a
position at the OMS World Headquarters.
Within a year, he was appointed vice
president of Field Ministries, where he
Spiritual Legacy
photo page 22-23: David and Celia ministered in the South
Pacific in the 1980s. photo page 22: The Dicks today
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