Imagine having five years until you received a fully funded, comfortable retirement.
Now imagine you leave that job because you felt called by God to do something else, something more fulfilling for His kingdom. For Jeff Dimick, that was his reality.
Dimick, the 2008 Oklahoma Christian University Alumni of the year, is now the chief operating officer of the university. Before he returned to the campus which shaped him, he held prominent positions within major corporations . From Boeing to owning his own video production company working on shows such as “Pimp My Ride,” Dimick has done it all.
“I lived in Los Angeles for 27 years working for Hughes, then in 2000 it got bought by Boeing,” Dimick said. “I spent the first 12 years of my career as an astrodynamicist. I worked the whole life cycle of satellites, from proposals to studies to launches to on-orbit operations to deorbiting satellites. Over the next 15 years, I did management and ground system development. I managed the development of command and control systems that would control satellites. The biggest one that I can talk about is the GPS ground system.”
Dimick left Boeing in 2012 when he got a call from a former colleague, who was now the president of Ohio Valley University in West Virginia, and asked him to come out and help run the university.
“That call got me thinking, ‘I really believe in your generation’,” Dimick said. “I had been on the board of trustees at Oklahoma Christian. I was here when we shut down Cascade in Oregon, and it broke my heart. I wanted to prevent that from happening again. So, I left Boeing on May 31 and started working there on June 1.”
He got hired full time at Oklahoma Christian in July of 2018. Leaving Boeing to pour into another generation’s lives was no easy decision, according to Dimick.
“I was five years from a retirement that would have allowed me to retire with a substantial benefit,” Dimick said. “I felt that God was telling me to ‘let it go.’ He did not want me to hold on to it and to find my identity in what I make. I had someone here at Oklahoma Christian who I was mentoring, and he asked me, ‘Why are you still at Boeing?’ and I said that I was there because I had this contributary retirement so I can retire in five years and I’ll be able to give this money away then. After that he just looked at me and said, ‘God doesn’t want your money. We want you, not your money.’ From there I felt a real call almost like the rich young ruler in the Bible being told to sell his possessions to the poor. You always think you could do that, but being able to walk away gave me this freedom that was pretty exhilarating.”
Since being on campus, Dimick has helped boost the international population. He has also become involved in athletics, attending the vast amount of home games for every sport.
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