Lehigh University: Alumni

Lehigh Christian Alumni

In 1995, Rich Earl ’80 and Bob Inserra ’79 founded the Lehigh Christian Alumni (LCA) to encourage evangelical student Christian ministries on campus. The group now boasts a mailing list of over 250 and is still growing. The LCA desires to network with as many Christian alumni as possible.

Rich Earl became a Christian in 1979 while still an undergraduate at Lehigh. He found great difficulty in finding others who shared his interest and experience with Jesus Christ on campus, and so struggled to grow as a young Christian man and avoid the drug and party culture of 1970’s Lehigh. This experience gave birth to a desire to see the Christian witness and visibility of various campus ministry groups at Lehigh grow. The LCA is the result of that desire.

Shortly after leaving Lehigh Earl felt a call to the ministry and was trained as an Assembly of God minister. Earl has pastored in three churches on his native Long Island including Franklin Square, NY; Yaphank, NY; and Hampton Bays, NY and also ran a maternity home with his wife Faith in Selden, NY. He now pastors a growing flock at Mountainside Assembly of God Coal Township in central Pennsylvania where he has been since 1998.

The LCA has a set of very clear purposes which include:

• Supporting existing evangelical Christian groups on the campus of Lehigh University. 
• Networking alumni and others who have an interest in promoting Christian evangelism, discipleship or fellowship through the existing student-run groups on campus. 
• Fundraising for both the operating and special project costs of the LCA. 
• Projects include: 
  - Sponsorship of Annual Prayer Breakfast for all Christian students, faculty and alumni.
  - Donation of important Christian books to the campus libraries. 
  - Sponsorship of lectures by outstanding national Christian leaders.
  - Moral support and encouragement to campus leaders
  

The Lehigh Christian Alumni will also seek to restore a sense of Lehigh's spiritual and moral history. This educational arm of the LCA will inform the Lehigh community of the writings of Lehigh founding father Bishop William Bacon Stevens, and of other important aspects of Lehigh's spiritual past.

Lehigh was founded in 1865 and had strong ties with the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania through the involvement of Bishop William Bacon Stevens. Many do not know that Lehigh’s logo is a depiction of the trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, with a Bible, Sun and Heart as the main symbols.
The LCA meets twice a year, once in the fall for a prayer breakfast with students and in June during the Alumni Reunion. Over the past few years, the group has also given money for a Bible distribution led by current Lehigh students.

The LCA is an alumni affinity group, and is not operating through any single campus ministry group. The LCA is willing to assist and support any group that desires to promote the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the Holy Bible.
 
 Several sermons by Stevens and more information about the LCA can be found online at http://www.lehighchristianalumni.org/
If you are interested in donating time or finances to the work of the LCA or if you would like to receive mailings from the LCA, please e-mail Rich Earl at richearl@verizon.net.