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FOCUS
He called his shop The Salty Fisherman and filled it with Christian gifts, records, and books. Many ORU students frequented his shop and although he himself was not a Christian, Terry couldn't help seeing their enthusiasm for the books they were buying. Curious, he read his first Christian book, They Speak With Other Tongues, and started "sneaking" into ORU vespers on Sunday nights. He listened to the messages. He watched as they worshipped. One night in the shop, after a young man had witnessed to him earlier, Terry accepted the Lord. That was January 1974. Terry's love for God and fervor for the Kingdom increased through continued ties to ORU and the resulting growth opportunities. Like so many ORU students, he was baptized in the Aerobics Center pool and soon met and married ORU co-ed Julie Copelin ('77). In 1977 he became the Executive Action Seminar Director and Assistant to the Dean of the School of Business. In 1978 he met Rick Fenimore with whom he would found Trinity Chemical Industries.
They bought and remodeled their first fix-it-upper with borrowed funds. Then two weeks after renting the house, their new renters accidentally set it on fire, and the rent check bounced. They found out that being a Christian doesn't keep you from all of life's tragedies. Fortunately, the insurance company paid for the loss of rent while they repaired the fire damage. When the repairs were finished, Rick and Terry sold the house for a profit. Six months later the renter's check cleared and Rick raced to the bank to cash it. They had experienced the sufficiency of God's grace and His provision. After graduation, Rick and Terry went to work for a local company and four years ago, co-founded Trinity Chemical Industries, Inc. Their company offers three major services: they supply raw materials for various manufacturing processes, they coordinate the transportation of by-products, and they facilitate the transportation, distribution, and storage of finished products. Their storage facilities range from locations in the Gulf Coast, to the West Coast, and the Northwest.
Trinity Chemical Industries has experienced an aggressive pattern of growth in sales each year. Rick and Terry directly attribute much of this success to the lessons they learned at ORU. Lessons about our being vehicles for God's prosperity so that the whole world may be reached for the Lord. "While I was attending ORU," Rick explains, "it finally sank in that seed-faith is a cycle: giving ... to get ... to give again. So many times we just give to get. That's self-centered, not Christ-centered. But if you turn it into a cycle, you get off the giving-to-get syndrome. "When you sow your seeds consistently be they money, time, or energies," Rick continues, "you will see the manifestation of Malachi 8:10 where the windows of Heaven are opened for blessings. That's when you get read to give again. It's an aspect of the seed-faith principle that we often overlook. We feel that this principle has had a significant and obvious effect on the prosperity of our business, not only financially but in other areas as well.
Additionally, Terry says that the ORU Ethics Course taught by Charles Kothe taught them to use the wisdom of the Bible as a bench mark for making business decisions and encouraged them to testify boldly of their Christian faith. "We deal with a lot of people from around the nation," Terry says, "and when they hear that we're from Tulsa, they usually ask us about ORU. That opens up a lot of conversation about the Lord and gives us opportunities to pray for them. ORU taught us to see every walk of life as a 'mission field' and it's amazing how that perspective prepares you to share Christ in regular, common-place business situations." Rick and Terry learned that the competitive business world can create stress -- too much to do and too little time and pressures of major financial transactions. But they have found a solution. Terry explains, "After graduation we began to realize just how much we needed God as our Source. It's easy to say and hard to do. It becomes a discipline but without it burn out is inevitable." Both Rick and Terry give of their times also. They teach the high-school Sunday School class at Victory Christian Center, and Terry will go to Russia this September to minister with Toymaker's Dream. "Time is the only thing that we can never get more of, and it becomes so indispensable especially when you have a family. But when you sow your time into others, you reap great harvests that money can never buy," says Terry.
"As we've been involved with the current students we see the same longings in their hearts as we had when we attended -- to reach our fullest potential in God and learn to know Him personally and practically. Then He can trust us with kingdom business and it's in this that we ourselves find fullfillment," says Rick. That perspective is the foundation on which Rick and Terry, like so many ORU alumni, have built their lives and their business. As they put it, "it's not just the ORU vision, in essence it's God's." Rick is married to Shelley Lane Miller; their young daughter, Whitney Lane, was born May 2, 1989, at City of Faith. Terry is married to Julie Anne Copelin ('77); they have two daughters, Lindsey Paige, 7, and Allison Anne, 3, and are expecting their third child in November.
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