Lancaster Bible College will honor three alumni during Homecoming 2024 who have demonstrated significant, outstanding contributions to their profession, whose accomplishments have brought honor to the college and to the Lord, and who have lived out the LBC mission in faithful service while “proclaiming Christ in the Church and society.”
The 2024 honorees are:
- Alumni Lifetime Achievement Award – Jerry L. Rogers (’74)
- Alumnus of the Year Award – Terri L. (Christian ’93 & ’94) Fisher
- Young Alumni Achievement Award – Welton G. Bonner (’14, ’17 & ’24)
Jerry Rogers
2024 LBC Lifetime Achievement Award recipient Jerry L. Rogers (’74)
A resident of Ronks, Pa., Rogers grew up in Aurora, Ill. After high school, he worked at an engineering firm and then joined the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam era. Midway through his four years of service, Jerry heard the gospel from a fellow sailor. “After a couple weeks,” Rogers recalled, “I surrendered my heart to Jesus, and He made me a child of God. This experience caused a dramatic direction change in my life. I sensed almost immediately that God was leading me to share the gospel somewhere outside the United States.”
Within days of being discharged from the Navy in 1970, Rogers enrolled at LBC. He calls these “formative years as the Lord used His Word, caring professors and opportunities to implement truths in practical ways through ministry.” At LBC, Jerry met his wife, Vivian (McDougall ’74), and together they spent two months as summer workers in Grenada, West Indies.
After their LBC graduation and raising support, the Rogers returned to Grenada with their daughter in 1976. There, Rogers was involved in church planting and an evening Bible Institute. Due to a revolution on the island, their steps were redirected to Barbados in 1982.
They returned to the U.S. in 1990, when a new avenue of service opened—mobilizing for missions on college campuses in the Mid-Atlantic region, including LBC. Today, nearly 35 years later, Rogers continues spending one day a week at his alma mater through the global missions organization Crossworld, engaging with students by hosting them for meals, discussions and game nights.
“Jerry is very relational, spending time talking to students over a meal or snack,” shared Dr. Harold Kime (’70, ’71 & ’75), who retired from LBC in 2016 as the longest-serving professor at the time. “He has had a vital role in leading many LBC graduates into ministry.”
In addition, Rogers has worked in ministry for the past seven years to “befriend, teach and mentor men recovering from drug or alcohol addiction. God continues to open doors of service even in our old age, and we are so grateful.
“I can’t begin to express how humbled I am by this recognition,” he added. “I feel I’ve accomplished so little compared to so many others. This honor means a lot to me because the school means a great deal to me. I deeply value the spiritual foundation LBC gave me for life and ministry.”
Entering LBC fresh out of the Navy as a new believer, Rogers said the professors who faithfully taught God’s Word were a significant part of his spiritual formation. “I will always be grateful for classes with Drs. Stuart Lease, Tom Figart and others. They modeled the truth they taught and, as a result, the Word of God became very real to me. I cannot overlook the value and impact other students brought to my life as well. Christian service assignments built my ministry muscle.”
Besides his wife, several of Rogers’ family members are also LBC alumni, including: son Tim Rogers (’98), daughter-in-law Jennifer (Smoker ’98) Rogers, granddaughter Megan (Rogers ’22 & ’23) Shertzer and grandson-in-law Tanner Shertzer (’23).
Terri Fisher
2024 LBC Alumnus of the Year Terri (Christian ’93 & ’94) Fisher
Born in Summit, N.J. and now living in Jonestown, Pa., Fisher grew up in a ministry family. They moved to Wilmington, Del., where her father served as a pastor, when Terri was 4. A few years later, God called the family to missionary service with the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism (ABWE), and the family moved again to Santiago, Chile, South America.
“I loved being a missionary kid, living in Chile, and at the age of 12, I dedicated my life to the Lord for His service,” Fisher shared. “In 1989, I graduated from Santiago Christian Academy and began attending Lancaster Bible College, initially in the one-year Bible certificate program. However, I loved LBC so much that I quickly changed over to the four-year program with an emphasis in missions.”
During her junior year, God led Fisher to add a teaching focus, and she graduated with a degree in Bible as well as Education a year later. She taught in the Manheim Township School District for nearly 10 years and earned her Master of Education degree from Millersville University in 1998.
In this season, she met her husband, David Fisher Jr. (’99). They married in 1995 and have five children, “both through the blessing of adoption and the miracle of birth.” In 2001, Fisher began teaching at LBC, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels in the Education Department until 2011, when she began to homeschool her children and care for a daughter with special needs.
In 2014, Terri and David were called to full-time missionary service with ABWE and, in 2020, moved to Iquique in Northern Chile with their three youngest children. “We just completed our first term where we served in church planting and crisis pregnancy ministry,” Fisher shared. “When we return to the field in 2025, we will be moving back to my childhood home of Santiago, Chile, where we will continue with our church planting and crisis pregnancy ministries. I will also be serving as an educational consultant at my high school alma mater. God has brought me full circle, and I am excited to continue serving Him!”
LBC Professor Emeritus Dr. Penny Clawson met Fisher during her freshman year at LBC, but their relationship deepened when Terri shifted to Education. Clawson remembers how Fisher flourished in a first-grade Spanish immersion class at Nitrauer Elementary. “Over the years, I have seen Terri learn, grown, mature and, above all, seek to follow Christ in all she does. As a family, the Lord has always been a priority. She is a woman who both talks and walks a life of service to the Lord. I am humbled to have played a part in her life.”
Added Fisher, “To be honored by LBC in this manner means that someone, somewhere, somehow, saw something in me that demonstrated to him or her the qualities that Lancaster Bible College seeks to instill in the students that it graduates and sends out into the world to serve the Lord. I am honored to be found faithful to the Lord and LBC in this way, and I hope that I can continue to be an ambassador for Jesus Christ and Lancaster Bible College in the years to come!”
Welton Bonner
2024 LBC Young Alumni Achievement Award recipient Welton G. Bonner (’14, ’17 & ’24)
Born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Prince George’s County, Md., Bonner grew up as a pastor’s kid and was well acquainted with the Bible and Christianity. However, he shared that he did not come to true repentance and faith until the age of 18. Throughout his teenage years, Bonner said he pursued the pleasures of the world that eventually landed him in jail on four separate occasions. On his fourth and final stay, the Lord drew him to Himself, and Welton entrusted his life to Jesus Christ. He has been passionately pursuing Christ and sharing His grace and truth ever since.
After graduating from DuVal High School in 2010, where he had once dropped out, he attended Washington Bible College and later transferred to Lancaster Bible College, where he graduated in 2014. At LBC, he met his wife, Kacie (Scott ’14). He and Kacie have four children and helped Welton’s father plant Greater Love Church Washington, D.C., where Welton served as the preaching pastor.
Today, Bonner is an assistant pastor and church planting resident at Capitol Hill Baptist Church, preparing to plant Eastside Community Church on the east side of the Anacostia River. He earned his Master of Arts in Biblical Studies and is completing requirements for a PhD in Biblical Studies, both from LBC | Capital.
Like Ezra in the Bible, “the good hand of his God was on him. For Ezra had set his heart to study the law of Yahweh, and to do it and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel” (Ezra 7:9-10). Bonner shared that he “exists to study, obey and teach God’s Word to his people and has seen Yahweh’s good hand upon him to fulfill that purpose.
“I am encouraged to receive this honor from LBC,” he continued. “It helps me focus on seeking the eternal honor of a crown in glory that far surpasses any earthly reward. I love how LBC equipped me with both orthodoxy and orthopraxy. So often those are pit against one another, but I felt like I was pushed to prize doctrine and practice.”
Dr. Mark Meyer (’93), Director of the PhD in Biblical Studies program, has worked closely with Bonner along his LBC journey. “When God created a pastor-theologian,” Meyers said, “He created Welton Bonner. Even as the youngest member of his PhD in Biblical Studies cohort, Welton loved his fellow disciples and ignited within each one a holy spark to love the One Who revealed Himself to Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3:1-15).”
Dr. Mark Farnham, Director of Master of Arts in Christian Apologetics program, welcomed Bonner as a speaker for the 2023 Apologetics Conference. “Welton’s love for Christ and commitment to the spread of the knowledge of God has inspired many from the moment he stepped onto campus as a transfer student from Washington Bible College,” Farnham said. “He loves the Church, the lost and his brothers and sisters in Christ. His life is a demonstration of what it means to be fully devoted to Christ.”