Some stories are too good not to share: this one is about Rick Hagan, Auburn University, class of 1984. He was written up in the Summer 2022 edition of Auburn Magazine. I recommend you read it in its entirety (it’s not long – I just don’t have permission to print it all).

Here’s the pictograph summary:

Here are a few highlights:

Rick Hagans ’84 has spent his life walking, preaching, rescuing and breathing hope into those who no longer have any… 

[After dropping out of Auburn and then dropping out of bible college,] In the fall of 1980, he returned to Auburn and started a ministry in a room downtown, but so many people showed up on the first night that the police had to shut it down.

So, Rick and Kim rented a house and opened “The Challenge.” In addition to college students, addicts, alcoholics and the homeless began to come hear Rick preach.

“We would get all the leftover hot dogs after Auburn football games, so these men figured out that we would feed them,” Hagans said. “1982 wasn’t a very good season, so we got a lot—a lot—of hot dogs.”

…In the early ’90s, Hagans opened “His Place” in Opelika, a ministry that provides food, lodging, an intensive recovery program, support and the word of God.

Around the same time, a woman and her newborn were living in a tent that got blown away during a storm. With no other options, police brought her to Hagans because they knew he wouldn’t turn her away. From there, Rick and Kim opened “Hosanna Home” for women and children in the former Chambers County Tuberculosis Hospital in Lafayette, Ala. Both “His Place” and “Hosanna Home” are fully supported by private donations...

He has ministered in the slums as well as in the largest church in New York City—and everywhere in between. He led a group that built an orphanage in Mexico and led a Bible study for U.S. congressmen in Washington, D.C. Hagans says coffee tastes just as good when you drink it with hobos as it does when you drink it with congressmen.

“There’s good in both and there are needs in both,” Hagans said. “My mission is to meet those needs and make sure all of them know Jesus.” – From Walking Humbly with My God, Auburn Magazine.

I get the impression that he just stumbled into ministry, and God multiplied his efforts, using him in mighty ways. Reading about Rick strengthens my faith in God! You can read more about, and donate to, Rick’s ministry here.

I don’t know Rick, but I think he would gladly apply Paul’s words to himself:

God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. (1 Corinthians 1.27 – 31, NIV)

And according to the article’s title, Rick lives by these words:

He has shown you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justly, To love mercy, And to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6.8, NKJV)