John Karraker has been helping faculty and students at a college level for most of his life.  For the last several years he has been in campus missions. “I reach out and connect with faculty members on secular university campuses in the Indianapolis area which has a combined student population of 45,000, he says.  “I seek out professors of faith to help them live out that faith and to be available to those who don’t know Christ, to learn to know him.”

John and Jennifer Karraker

He regularly meets with faculty members from Butler University, the University of Indianapolis and Indiana University Medical School which is not only Indiana’s largest medical school but also the largest medical school in the country.  In addition, Eli Lilly, one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world in located in Indianapolis and so many of the faculty John connects with do research in bio-tech.  Lilly has annual revenues of more than twenty billion dollars and is the largest manufacturer of psychiatric medicines and one of the three largest insulin manufacturers in the world.

Karraker describes his values in this way: “As a Bible believing Christian, I see myself living my life “coram deo”, that is under God’s hand, under His view.  My prayer is ‘Lord, help me live a life that pleases you.’ Very early in my life and Christian experience, Matthew 6:33 became a key verse for me. “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you.” That was kind of the summary statement to a passage where Jesus was encouraging his disciples not to be afraid concerning the things they need for their lives. That’s how I sought to live. I set a high value on friendships with people who live that way as well. Of course, that is not completely consistent with every person.  Another truth I believe is that we tend to become like the people we spend time with so I enjoy and am strengthened by spending time with people who share that same commitment.”

Karraker is married with four grown daughters and lived most of his married life in the Philadelphia area. Then came eleven years in Orlando. “Then it dawned on me,” he recalled. “Our daughter, son-in-law, and grandkids were here in Indianapolis and they were going to go through their lives really not knowing us as grandparents. So we were able to get a work assignment at Indianapolis and then moved here in June of 2019. Here again, I guess, because family is a high value – passing on our faith and our values.  We place a high value on education as well. We’d like to be in a position to help our grandchildren go to college. We had the good fortune of all four of our girls graduating from college debt free, able to go out into the world and do whatever they cared to do. Two went to Penn State, one went to Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and one went to University of Florida. And thanks to the grandparents help, the children were able to graduate without any debt. And we hope to be able to do the same thing for our grandkids.”

There is no question that Karraker’s Christian values have driven his life. “Long ago we chose to become campus missionaries and that choice has determined most of our life circumstances. I don’t know that you’d exactly call us prosperous. We live in a single family home but we still have a mortgage when so many of my peers have their houses paid off and even have second homes.  We have two cars, but they’re not new. And thankfully they’re paid off. But we’ve never been able to take fancy vacations. We don’t have large retirement funds. I mean, I think what we have will be adequate but we’re probably just not going to be the people who travel the world after we retire. I’d say our choices seem to have always been in the direction of service.”

John Karraker has always been the kind of person who, instead of taking a sabbatical, would take on an extra assignment. “Even in my chosen career, there are several assignments that I’ve accepted, but didn’t have to. Even though I’m trained for a thing, I am not required, for example, to teach in our theological institute. That’s a summer assignment. For us, usually that’s kind of tedious, it’s extra work. But it’s something I enjoy. And it’s an enterprise I guess I value from the standpoint of extending and building up other people’s skills. That’s another important value. You need to invest yourself in the things you’re good for. You might not be good at it but you’re good for it, if that makes any sense. I kind of have a stewardship with the educational experience I’ve had and I need to be a good steward of that. When our organization sometimes requests an extra assignment of me, I’m happy to take it on because it helps me be a good steward of my training and experience. I think that kind of stewardship is an important value.

Karraker also cites Psalm 107, Verse 2,”Let the redeemed of the Lord say so,” as an important value:  “Basically the point is if God’s done something good in your life, tell somebody. It’s the idea of having been blessed in order to be a blessing. We generally don’t think twice about whether or not we’re going to take on some service opportunity at church. We don’t generally think twice about being asked to help in some particular mission effort.

As a mentor himself John Karraker is well aware of and thankful for the mentors he’s had in his life. “I’ve definitely had some great mentors whose wisdom, grace and service I admire and respect. I had a boss named Greg in Philadelphia who was like a father figure or older brother to me. One of his sayings was, ‘It takes sixty-four atta boys for every one aw shucks’.  The ideas that we need to give more applause and approval than criticism. Another thing he said to me was ‘You don’t have to tell everybody everything you know.’ I don’t think it was because he thought I was acting like some kind of know-it-all. It actually related to some security issues related to our work. There are some fields around the world where it’s just not safe to let everyone be completely aware of everything you’re doing. I guess I’m kind of speaking about the persecuted church.  I also greatly admired my dad. He’s now deceased but he fathered seven children and five of them died before he did. Three were stillborn – they had come to term or almost came to term but didn’t survive. And then I had two brothers who died during his lifetime. And that was just really hard. In spite of all that my father was a merry soul. He was never too serious for very long. He was a hard-working fellow with a lot of integrity who was always faithful to my mom. But he just never took himself too seriously. He always had something fun to say. And more than anything I guess I always knew he loved me. I know I didn’t always do everything he hoped I would do, but I always knew he was satisfied. I always knew he was proud of me. My own hope for myself is that my children will always think of me the way I think of my dad as someone who was always been in their corner and would do anything for them.”

Another important value, Karraker ascribed to is the important of parents speaking into their children’s lives. “Parents have to be assertive in doing that. We spent a lot of our lives, career-wise, reaching out to teenagers. And I’ve always found myself encouraging parents to be assertive with their kids – not overbearing, but embracing the role of the parent. Let them know how you feel about many aspects of life. There’s a lot of people who grew up never really knowing their parents’ views on many things in life because the parents weren’t assertive enough to explain it. It’s the difference between communicating and demanding.”

As to the state of today’s world, Karraker, like many others, wishes politics would be less combative.  “I guess, my first thought is I wish we could all just chill. I think everyone is so distressed at the rancor. In my current role I encounter many friends in secular colleges where the environment is… the word they always use is toxic. The departments are toxic because people don’t trust each other, they lodge formal complaints against each other over the misuse of pronouns or any language that could flag bias attitudes towards women or races. There’s so much legalism…If people would just sit down and talk between themselves, they probably could iron things out instead of filing formal complaints with the dean.  I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t respect each other. I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t take into account each other’s personal histories and struggles, but there are a few authors out there who have just stirred the pot and made it worse. I think the only way forward is to live with grace and humility as much as we can. G.K. Chesterton, the British essayist, said in his series of essays entitled What’s Wrong with the World, that ‘What’s wrong with the world is that what one man says is the solution, another man says is exactly the problem.’ The only place I could see us finding reconciliation would be if we came together in front of the cross. I’ve traveled enough to know that the us Americans don’t have a corner on the market of truth. It’s just very refreshing to go to other parts of the world and find out people have solved all the same problems but in different ways. I have been to other places and marveled at the different ways people handle things. If everybody traveled inter­nationally a little but it would promote so much better understanding of so many things”

John Karraker stresses that to be a person who communicates important values and to be an encourager one also has to be accepting of the Providence of God.  “There’s got to be some kind of settled emotional climate within one’s heart that’s kind of okay with whatever happens. Then, if I’m living under the hand of the God of Providence it’s not unreal or pollyanna to imagine that things are mostly going to work out. At end of the day, I believe in a God of Providence and despite whatever I might suffer and I will likely suffer, just as the Bible says, all things will work together for good.”

It is these kinds of attitudes that makes John Karraker a true Man of Value.

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