Dave Anderson has been in lay ministry for 61 years. His experience includes years as a youth director, an author, a concert singer, and a ministry organizer. He was involved in youth ministry during the Jesus Movement days which brought together tens of thousands of youth and adults. He was the founder of a drug rehab facility in Los Angeles, and he had years of sponsoring worship & music conferences and seminars which brought together well-known composers, worship leaders, and hundreds of music ministers and pastors.
Dave published 1,000,000 songbooks and he published a book of funny true stories from the lives of pastors (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Church). He is the founder of a ministry which provides counseling retreats for men and women in full-time ministry who are in the midst of burnout, stress, depression, and conflicts of all kinds called Shepherd’s Canyon Retreat. Week-long counseling retreats are held at Standing Stones Retreat Center near Wickenburg, Arizona.
Dave and his wife, Barbara, survived a plane crash in the Being Sea. This story has been heard by millions of people on Focus on the Family, Family Talk, and on TBN, Daystar, and CBN and by Dave’s book and DVD, The Rescue. Go to www.YouTube.com and write in The Rescue Story Being Sea.
Dave and Barb Anderson live in Phoenix.
Please contact him at 480-838-8500 or email him at dave@shepherdscanyonretreat.org.
THE RESCUE STORY
A Miracle of Survival
On August 13, 1993, while returning from a mission in the Russian Far East town of Lavrentiya, a charter missionary plane with seven on board lost one engine at 7,000 feet and the other, 9 minutes later, at 3,500 feet. The plane fell 3,500 feet in 3 1/2 minutes and plowed into the Bering Sea at 90 MPH. It took the seven on board this flight about one minute to get out of the aircraft; one minute later the plane sank.
On board were: Dave and Barb Anderson from Phoenix, Arizona, keyboardist Cary Dietsche from Amery, Wisconsin, singer/songwriter Don Wharton from Nashville, Tennessee, soundman/roadie Brian Brasher from St. Louis, Missouri, passenger Pam Swedberg from Kenai, Alaska, and pilot Dave Cochran from Soldotna, Alaska.
The group found themselves in 3'-5' swells, 2 1/2 miles west of Sledge Island; 22 1/2 miles west of Nome, Alaska; about 100 miles south of the Arctic Circle. The water temperature was about 36F degrees. (Life expectancy is between 5 and 15 minutes in 36-degree water).