“Only in later years,” writes Steve DeWitt, “could I look back to those somber days and realize Mr. Flamm was teaching us his greatest lesson.”

Steve DeWitt came to know Christ’s beauty through his high school science teacher, Bob Flamm. Flamm’s classroom was filled with skeletons, snakes, and graduated cylinders. “This same space anywhere but a school would suggest a mad scientist, if not someone on the FBI’s most-wanted list,” writes DeWitt. But it wasn’t through Flamm’s teaching about the periodic table or a chemical formula that the future pastor learned of Christ; it was when 17-year-old DeWitt saw Flamm’s spiritual character amid his grief.

Flamm’s 6-year-old son, Ezra, suddenly died while taking a nap, likely from a viral myocarditis. “I still remember a lamenting teacher returning to the classroom. I remember feeling awkward as he once again stood before us—but now always on the verge of tears. . . . Seeing death through the pain of Mr. Flamm and his family introduced me to the beauty and desirability of Jesus Christ.”

“I saw gospel grit, not bitterness,” DeWitt writes. “I saw hope, not hate. I saw fatherly love in a broken human vessel. What was it that I saw? The reflected beauty of divine love in a real human being.” A science teacher at a Christian high school in northeast Iowa may appear small and insignificant. But Christ’s beauty often shines brightest when we’re most broken.

Read more of DeWitt’s testimony in his 2019 article, and consider joining him and other TGC Council members for our Expositional Preaching cohort this fall. DeWitt will teach on how to preach effectively. He’ll encourage you in practical skills for sermon delivery.