I first met Professor Jim Evans my freshman year in college. That was in the fall of 1969 and he was the faculty sponsor for our class. Jim and Ellen welcomed our class into their home on multiple occasions over the next four years and to simply say they were a blessing to our class would fail to describe the godly, Christ-like way Jim and Ellen treated the Class of 1973 at Atlanta Christian College.
I really got to know Professor Evans in my junior and senior years when I took two years of Greek under his oversight. He was a demanding professor in whose classroom you knew to come prepared. My Greek II term paper on Colossians 1:15-20 (which he saved a copy and gave to me 40 years later) was no doubt the best thing I did as an undergraduate student. He taught me more about interpreting Scripture than any single person I could name. Students in my classrooms who think Huxford knows something about how to interpret Scripture should really think “Jim Evan taught him well.”
When I went to graduate school and took an advanced Greek grammar class my first semester, I quickly realized what a blessing all the hard work Jim Evans demanded of his students really was. No one in my class – from a variety a different Christian colleges – came close to knowing what I knew about Greek grammar. It was because of Jim that I became the graduate assistant to Dr. Lewis Foster for the next two and one-half years in graduate school.
When I eventually came back to Atlanta Christian College as an instructor, no one made me feel more welcomed than Jim Evans. When he left ACC to become the preacher at Westside Christian Church, I became the Greek teacher at ACC. Following in Jim’s huge footsteps would become a pattern for me. I was never the Greek teacher Jim was, but if learning principal parts of verbs was important for Jim, it became important for me and students had to learn the same kind of material in my class that I learned in his!
Like Jim, I eventually left “full-time status” at ACC and became a preacher! By now Jim was executive director for the European Evangelistic Society and he and Ellen occasionally visited First Christian Church. No one made me more nervous by simply being in the audience than Jim Evans, and no one made me feel better about myself as a preacher than Jim Evans as he spoke to me after the service.
Jim would finally decide that he needed to retire from the daily grind of working for EES and I emailed him and asked him if he thought I might be a good fit. He immediately responded that I would be a good fit and no doubt I was hired to do that job – again following in Jim’s footsteps – because of his influence. As was always true in every context, no one was more encouraging to me than Jim and Ellen. I hope they are in charge of the gates of heaven when I get there!
While working for EES, Vick and I were members at Southwest Christian Church, where Jim Donovan – the neighbor of the Evans, and like me, a student blessed by Jim’s teaching – was the preacher. One Sunday I was asked to preach for Jim Donovan. I will never forget what Jim Evans said going out the door that Sunday morning: “That was a real expository sermon.” Having been the preacher for the same church for 20 years and having preached many, many sermons, I can’t remember a compliment that meant more to me than that. My Greek teacher thought I preached a biblical sermon!
One day Jim asked me to stop by his house and of course I did. Lunch with Jim and Ellen was always a treat. (Best chicken salad ever!) After lunch, Jim took me to his office and gave me a stack of books. He said that he wanted me to have these books and reminded me of what a gift that was by saying, “Books are like your children, you don’t just let anybody have them!” I will die with those books on my shelf.
Late this afternoon I learned that Jim left this world for the one for which he lived his entire life. Ellen, Celeste, Lisa, and Eric and their families have suffered a great loss. So have countless former students whose lives were shaped in kingdom ways by the teaching of Jim Evans. It is not trite to say that our loss is heaven’s gain.
One of the classrooms in the new academic center at Point University is named the “Jim and Ellen Evans Classroom.” I was privileged to help raise the money to name that room in their honor. During that process I received countless letters – with contributions – from former students who said something like “Jim was the one who taught me to study Scripture well.” As I said the day the room was dedicated in their honor – I hope, from the bottom of my heart, that Jim and Ellen know the impact they have had on so many students who were privileged to sit in Jim’s classroom and visit in their home.
May God raise up more people like Jim and Ellen Evans. We need them.
Wye Huxford 