John Newman - Ministry Team, Treasurer/Finance 
John (shown to the right with his best Lewis or Clark look) serves as Lighthouse's financial guru.
Growing up on LonggIsland (that's phonetic), New York, John achieved the honor of being an Eagle Scout. (Perhaps that explains the whole canoe paddle thing.) He received the congressional recommendation needed to enter West Point Academy, which he survived, and served as an officer in the Army, trained to fly helicopters. (Blades are sort of like air paddles, right?)
No stranger to adventure, John married Melissa, and found God using her to draw John's heart into a real relationship with Him. Blending a family of two older children (Katherine and Jake), along with raising their youngest by 10 years (Jack) just adds to the fun.
What's really been a ride for him, though, is making our books balance. Talk about paddling upstream.
Michael Mitchell - Ministry Team, Church Administrator
A Cherokee by birth, but a Spartan by choice, Micahel was born in Lansing, although his father was originally from Oklahoma and a member of the Cherokee Indian Tribe. Michael is a proud MSU alumnus (and football season ticket holder and tailgating afficionado), a fact which all but the completely oblivious who walk into his State Farm Insurance Agency office are likely to pick up.
Michael owns a set of barely used golf clubs and a more consistently used camping trailer in which he and wife Linda enjoy the outdoors. He was a running back and defensive half back for his High School football team which was recently inducted into the Greater Lansing Sports Hall of Fame. At the same time, he is no stranger to the stage or camera, since he also has a spot in the Screen Actors’ Guild and has been a professional model.
Michael has been with Lighthouse since just about the beginning, and loves it for the availability of fellowship and opportunities to serve. As everyone at Lighthouse has seen, Michael tirelessly takes those opportunities in whatever forms they present themselves. He serves in so many areas, getting things done, so we gave him the title Church Administrator and went with it.
Bill Schmidt, Ministry Team, Worship Team Leader
Dropped into this world as a result of an alien experiement gone wrong, Bill is a freak of nature heretofore unseen by mortals. (Not really, but we're still working on Bill's bio and it's a good opportunity to give him a hard time.)
Jay Jenkins - Ministry Team Leader, Portable Church Ministry
Jay has called the Lansing area his home since the time he was born as the last of four children. It would seem that since his parents couldn’t improve on anything by having another child after Jay, they stopped. And we think he’s been improving things ever since.
After graduating from Mason High School and attending Lansing Community College (the other LCC) a few classes short of a pre-law degree, he’s been improving properties for 22 years with Wolverine Development Corp. (a name which he can only spit out by also hurriedly adding that the sister company is Spartan Oil).
Jay met wife Jan in March, 1974 at a church camp and 6 months later he improved his general social standing by getting her to marry him. Together they improve the lives of their four kids and two grandkids.
Jay enjoys softball and motorcycles, especially dirt bikes, and you can always find him tinkering....on the bikes and his pitching. What most people don’t know though, is that Jay is not limited to two wheels. He also rides a unicycle. It’s more of a challenge, and if there is anything that can get our resident “MacGyver” into something, it’s the idea that it’s too hard to do or can’t be improved upon.
Jay has been with Lighthouse since the beginning, when he and Jan left their church of eighteen years because they saw planting a new church as an exciting challenge. If there was one word Jay would use to describe his experience at Lighthouse it would be “freedom” – in structure, worship, and new ways of doing ministry.
It seems he’s not interested in improving on that.
Linda Mitchell - Ministry Team, Fellowship Ministry
Linda was born in Ionia MI, the firstborn of four children, graduated from Garden City High School. Linda and husband, Michael, have blended their families together and enjoy the company of their grown children, two grandchildren and chocolate lab named Kaza. If Linda could pick anything to do, you’d find her gardening, cross-stitching or camping.
Linda came to Lighthouse very soon after we began meeting and has been involved in several areas of service ever since, but particularly leading the hospitality ministry. She enjoys the atmosphere of openness at Lighthouse to trynew experiences, to get out of one’s comfort zone, that have drawn her into a deeper fellowshipwith the Lighthouse family over the years.