Still here [Dave's story]

In his first year as principal at Shire Christian School, David was diagnosed with leukemia. He had a three-year-old son, a daughter in primary school, a wife in her 30s, and a faith he'd spent years building on paper. None of that made the hospital bed easier.Part 2 of David's Chip Lunch conversation picks up where Part 1 left off — and it goes somewhere unexpected. Before the leukemia, there's the story of how David met his wife through a devotion on the early church martyr Polycarp, helped start Soul Revival out of a cockroach-infested garage, and was part of the "house band" in Belvedere Blues — a jazz-flavoured R&B band playing to thousands of teenagers in the grunge era.Then comes the diagnosis. David talks honestly about what it's like when a theoretical theology of suffering meets the reality of your own mortality — the loss of control, the anger, the questions, and the slow, hard work of trusting a sovereign God who he believes ordained every step, including the hard ones. His brother Peter was a bone marrow match. The transplant worked. He's still here.Now in his fifth year as Principal for the second time, what he calls being the fifth and eighth principal of the same school, David reflects on 34 years at Shire Christian School, what it means to lead an institution you love, and the one thing he'd tell his younger Christian self: it's about the people. When it's not about the people, it's still about the people.