Then there was light

The journey of a BIC college professor who engineered his gifts to serve others
By Laurie Brown

The day that David Vader realized he had achieved the American dream—a great career with a Fortune 500 company, a lucrative income, a flourishing marriage and family, and a home in the New York City suburbs—was also the day he heard God calling him in another direction.

David, who was working as a heat transfer engineer for IBM Corp and had earned seven United States patents, experienced a transformation so powerful that it changed his life and, for the past 16 years, has touched the lives of others around the globe.

“I realized two things simultaneously,” says David, of Dillsburg (Pa.) BIC Church. “One, the whole point of my particular job at IBM was to recruit fame for my company; and two, that all along I was asking God to bless my plans but never really asking what His plan was for me. It was really disturbing.”

David claims that this awakening compelled him to consider how his engineering skills could be used to forward the kingdom of God. “I began to think of my profession in terms of stewardship, and wondered how to use my gifts to reach those with resources too small to participate in a market economy.”

In 1992, David invited the Lord to lead by accepting a teaching position at Messiah College in Grantham, Pa. “I came to Messiah on a mission,” he recalls, “talking to anybody who would listen about how engineers could be stewards.” While at a conference with a group of Messiah students, David approached Serving in Mission (SIM), a non-profit church-planting and missionary organization. SIM responded by inviting David to build a solar power plant for a Burkina Faso medical clinic specializing in high-risk pregnancies. The team of Messiah College engineering students and faculty members set to work.

David describes the project’s profound success in the simplest terms: “It was remarkable to witness the clinic convert to solar-electric power. The night before, doctors delivered babies with flashlights. Then there was light.”

David didn’t set out to create an organization based on the solar system project, but one did evolve. “Once we connected with a place and people, projects began to emerge,” he says.

In response, Messiah College created the Collaboratory for Strategic Partnerships and Applied Research in 2000, naming David as its director and absorbing Dokimoi Ergatai, another campus organization which provided similar services. The Collaboratory brings Messiah College students and educators together to apply disciplinary knowledge through hands-on problem solving. Participants engage their academic disciplines in math, engineering, business, education, and information sciences, among others, to address needs brought by clients, such as solar power for the Burkina Faso medical facility.

Today, Messiah’s Collaboratory has helped create dozens of income-producing, life-sustaining systems in countries around the globe, including accessible drinking water for the disabled in Mali, a micro-economic development paper-making enterprise in Zambia, and an ozone-based water purification system in Honduras. The group is currently researching the potential for a wireless communications device to provide support to persons with Aspergers syndrome (a form of autism) in the workplace by connecting them with a life coach.

As the work of the Collaboratory continues, David also continues to pursue what the Lord has planned for him, sharing with others the importance of finding a deep sense of purpose in life.

“I love my work,” he says with the humblest of smiles. “I want to instill in [my] students the importance of having a meaning and purpose in their work that goes beyond buying groceries and paying the mortgage. Life is simply more compelling and exciting than that.”