On the Day January 15 1955
Khen Lim
Image source:foothillsamishfurniture.com
Total surrender is a Christian concept but rarely do we hear
or see it played out in modern society. Whatever the commitments, they’re not
quite ‘total’ surrender. But that doesn’t stop us from constantly looking into
Scripture for an Old Testament story that inspires as much as it awes. Other
than Jesus sacrificing Himself at the cross, Abraham’s famous story of giving
up his son Isaac completely to God lays down a powerful marker of what it means
to totally surrender to the Lord.
As difficult as it may seem to just hand over his son,
Abraham’s obedience is a lesson for all of us. Yet, many of us probably assume
that a story of such grand biblical proportions hardly affects us in reality.
Though a purpose lesson, that is all it seems. In the world we live in, it’s
extremely rare to find something that might remind us of what a total surrender
means unless you come across a man by the name of Stanley Tam who defined ‘total
surrender’ under his own terms.
When Stanley became a Christian, it was a serious thing. It
was a decision he measuredly thought about in terms of what it would do to
change his life inside out. Here was a young man caught in the middle of the
Great Depression and not knowing if he’d get out of it alive but in the midst
of the most difficult part of his life, he gave in to God and by his action,
the harvest of success eventually came.
He not only began to share the Gospel
with whomsoever he met but amazingly, he ceded his business to the Lord,
welcoming Him to be his business partner. To underline how serious he was in
this endeavour, he had his lawyer legalise the whole process.
But that wasn’t all. By January 1955 when he and his family
visited South and Central America to observe how missions work, it was then
that life took another inescapable turn. This took place in Medellin, Colombia,
where he was speaking to a small crowd gathered around him when the Holy Spirit
began to stir in him. Stanley began to realise that more and more people were
coming forward to pray with him and he couldn’t move to sit.
“For I came once again into a milestone encounter with God,”
he recalled. That experience elevated his relationship with God and he never
looked back thereafter.
Though born just outside San Francisco, Stanley Tam was raised
in a town called Lima in Ohio from the time he was nine years old, right in the
midst of the Great Depression. There, he lived on a farm where his church-going
parents gave him an early appreciation in upright moral living.
“We didn’t smoke, drink or swear but we were not really
Christians,” he said.
Following the completion of his high school in 1933, Stanley
began canvassing household items including what he called ‘Stanley products.’
Going from door to door one day, he encountered a customer, a farmer’s wife,
that would change his life forever. After she had bought something from him
that day, she asked if he was willing to hear her pitch something to him.
This
was when he heard and understood the Gospel for the first time. It was also a
rare moment for him to witness someone who had a relationship with Jesus. That
sense of clarity resonated through his spiritual life unlike ever before. The
impact he felt was profound enough to substantially alter the way he saw life
and the manner in which he would conduct his business.
Stanley came away from that experience with a deep and
heartfelt conviction.
“I was convinced she had the kind of spiritual reality I
wanted,” he remembered.
Hardly six weeks later, he accepted Jesus as his Saviour but
even so – just as it was for all of us – doubts and frustrations clouded his
life. It was only when he began to indulge in the Bible that he felt the
reassurance from God. Summarily, Stanley fully committed himself into a life of
a Christian. Through the Great Depression, he witnessed, first hand, the enormous
financial burden that many, like his parents, had to shoulder.
As the
Depression firmed its grip across the whole country, the reality became more
crushing for so many families. That impacted Stanley enough for him to realise
the importance of keeping his chin above all of that, and the only resort was
to earn enough to stay above water.
In his search for the ideal business idea, he stumbled across
the burgeoning photography market where American icon, Eastman Kodak Company,
was making still camera roll film that the public was buying at a prodigious
rate. And with that, he discovered that as much as 80 percent of the unexposed
light-sensitive silver halide was simply washed down the drains once the film
was developed and then treated with a stop bath solution.
Curious with what he
could do, Stanley got in touch with an inventor in Cleveland who had contrived a
device that could reclaim all that unused silver. A royalty agreement was
struck in 1936 in which he would have the contraption built and then for the
photo labs to use them. All of that seemed a sweet deal to Stanley.
A vintage TAMCO silver collector tool (Image source: ebay.ie)
Brimming with enthusiasm, he set up his first company and
called it TAMCO but it didn’t take him long to see shortcoming emerge from what
was otherwise a brilliant business model. Despite all the great expectations
and the increasing number of labs taking his idea up, Stanley discovered that
his distribution costs had quickly become unsustainable.
Inevitably, he became
so crestfallen with all of this that he was just about to call it a day that
is, until he sensed God urging him not to give up but to keep going.
It happened when he was on his way home to Lima when he had
arrived at the outskirts of Columbus when God said to him, “Stanley, it doesn’t
need to be a disappointment. You don’t have to go broke.”
“There just isn’t enough going for me, Lord!” he replied.
“If I had (the) capital…”
It was then that God cut in.
“You shouldn’t be concerned about a lack of finances. All you
need is faith in Me.”
“I do have faith, God,” Stanley responded.
“Enough to turn your business over to Me?” God said.
“To let Me run it for you?”
In reply, the defeated businessman said, “Take my business,
Lord, and if You’ll make it succeed, I’ll honour You in every way I can, I
promise!”
Feeling somewhat reinvented and with God as his new-found
business partner, Stanley borrowed $12 from him (equivalent to $205 in today’s
money) on top of the $25 he had in his pocket and ventured out again.
In the
next three years, he visited thirty states in a bid to develop his business and
even as he struggled to cope, he was mindful to persistently keep his expenses
manageable as he kept in view his vision to expand.
And sure enough, expand, he
did. Little by little, his business began to show signs of flourishing and by
1940, Stanley made good his promise to God by making Him, the majority partner
of his now-successful business.
Stanley Tam with his wife, Juanita (Image source: hsydney.com)
To prove his sincerity, he had his lawyers
establish the Stanita (coined from Stanley and Juanita, his wife) Foundation, a
tax-exempt non-profit entity to which 51 percent of the company stocks would go
to. The dividends earned from this ownership would then be invested directly in
Christian missionary work.
TAMCO by now was doing exceptional well. At any rate, the
success was unlike anything he had thought possible but after surrendering the
majority of his business to God, now the impossible appears very plausible. In
an interesting twist, the ill-reputation earned by Stanley’s rivals in the
silver-recovery industry wasn’t going down well.
Apparently many of them were
not honouring their agreement to reimburse the lab operators their share since
the silver halides had to be proceeded before they could be usable.
Furthermore, lab operators were kept in the dark as to how much silver was
actually recoverable and hence, they had little to no idea how lucrative it was
all to the reclaimers.
It was against this backdrop that the labs were
switching their businesses to Stanley who, by now, had garnered an enviable
reputation for honesty and integrity. They were also aware that in his
business, God was the majority owner and they felt comforted by that.
In 1945, while praying, Stanley felt God calling him to win
souls for Him. Despite his relationship with the Lord, many around him couldn’t
quite work out how a businessman like him could turn out to be such an ardent
and loyal evangelist.
Yet in 1952, Stanley was suddenly left stranded in Korea
during an evangelistic tour but instead of feeling deterred or discouraged, he
ploughed on, sharing his testimony and letting the Koreans know how God had
come into his life and turned him around. He recalled in his later life how
this was “one of the greatest experiences of my life.”
Three years later in 1955, Stanley developed an electric
silver collector that incorporated a plastic-made container. Unlike today,
plastic products were not only few and far between but they were novel. Despite
not being widely distributed, demand for custom-purposed plastic containers was
on the rise, which eventually expanded to all sorts of other plastic products
including valves, tubing, piping and fittings.
Caught in the very midst of an
explosion in popularity and a huge surge in demand, Stanley’s silver-recovery business
was easily outstripped by customers wanting plastic products! Inevitably, that
was how the United States Plastic Corporation® was founded.
Stanley Tam (right) with Warren Hardig (left) of the One Mission Society (Image source: menformissions.org)
It was then that at Medellin, Colombia while ministering to an
approaching prayerful crowd that Stanley found himself caught up in the Holy Spirit
at a church service. There, as he stared glaringly at the altar, God asked him,
“What is the most important thing in all the world to you?”
“To see people seek Your face, Lord, as a result of the Holy
Spirit’s blessing upon my testimony,” he said.
“Stanley, if you agree a soul is the greatest value in the
whole world and is the only investment you can make in this life that will pay
dividends throughout eternity, would you be willing to go back to Ohio and
become an employee of Mine?”
Confounded by such a question, he answered back, “What are You
asking me to do, Lord?”
It was obvious Stanley had little idea what God’s plan was.
What could be he do more than what he had already given the Lord, he thought.
With the Stanita Foundation, he and his wife had already ceded to Him far more
than most people would.
“Stanley,” God said, “if a soul is the greatest value in all
the world, then what investment can you make that will pay you the greatest
dividends a hundred years from now?”
Stanley struggled to understand where God was going with all this.
After all, he was already under His employ.
“An employee, Lord? Isn’t that what I am now?” he asked.
God replied, “We’re partners now, Stanley. I want you to turn
your entire business over to Me!”
By now, Stanley was completely taken aback. Caught between
what he thought he had already done so generously for God and what He was now
asking, he wasn’t quite sure how else he could move forward from this point.
“I can’t go back to Ohio and turn my business over to you,” he
replied.
“Isn’t sixty percent enough? Many Christians don’t so much as
give you ten percent.”
But then he humbled himself and went quiet. After considering
what it was that God had asked of him, he conceded.
“If this is what You want, I will obey.”
That whole picture of Abraham and God talking about
sacrificing his son Isaac was crystal clear. Here was a perplexing situation of
what God has given His child and now appeared to be taking back. How did
Abraham feel when he realised what God was asking of him? How was Stanley
looking at what God wanted from him? Why take back what the Lord had given in
the first place?
Incredibly, right at that poignant moment, God took a leaf out
of His own Word:
“The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a merchant seeking goodly
pearls, who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that
he had, and bought it.” (Mt 13:45)
This was a parable that Jesus used to illustrate the great
value for those who seek the Kingdom of Heaven. During those days, pearls were
precious and priceless and they carried far greater value than anything else in
the world.
For the merchant in the parable, it was therefore considered a ‘deal
of a lifetime’ (Nolland, 2005) and one that no one in their right mind would
ignore. Craig Keener in his book ‘A Commentary of the Gospel of Matthew’ (1999)
reiterated the point that those who do not stake their whole faith in the
Kingdom of Heaven are unworthy of the Kingdom.
And with that, Stanley’s mind was made up. On January 15 1955,
he told the Lord that he would cede his whole business to Him. Lock, stock and
barrel. He would no longer be part of the shareholding. He would, in effect,
totally surrender all he had in the business over to God. Nothing less than
that. The whole works. And in complete obedience, he turned over 100 percent of
his very successful business to the Heavenly Father.
It wasn’t just an outrageous decision by any mortal standards.
It was probably going to be very difficult to explain to anyone else, much less
his own wife. So en route home from South America and with that experience
fresh in his mind, Stanley plucked up enough courage to disclose his decision
to Juanita, his wife. That couldn’t be an easy task but he had no way out of
this. Having made the decision with no other than God Himself, he could not
turn back. Now the ominous task of letting his wife know of all this laid
before him.
Much to his complete surprise, Juanita wasn’t only all ears
but she loved the idea and gave him her full support. Together, they signed
over every bit of their company’s stockholding to the Stanita Foundation and
set into motion, one of the most stunning business decisions the world has ever
witnessed. But, remarkably, that wasn’t all.
Seeing that God was now going to take over as the full
business owner, Stanley and Juanita set about paving the way for Him to take
charge of one that had even greater potential. To do that, they immediately
launched plans to replace the existing plant with one that was four times as
expansive, totalling five acres in all.
Image source:foothillsamishfurniture.com
Besides, seeing that the new plant was
now located right at the curve on the all-important Interstate 75, which passes
through as many as six states including Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky,
Ohio and Michigan, the couple erected a billboard on the side of his new
building with highly visible gigantic lettering that said, ‘CHRIST IS THE
ANSWER’ for every motorist not to miss reading.
And with that decision, all profits from the business were now
God’s to do with. It didn’t take long to realise that whatever the business
earned so successfully, the Gospel was advanced further around the world than
Stanley could ever do on his own.
Till today, the setup remains unchanged; God
was the full owner of the United States Plastic Corporation® and thanks
to the work the company did, many have come to experience and understand the
Lord’s love for His people.
Image source: usplastic.com
Today, the company’s Ohio-based operation, located between
Toledo and Dayton, right at the heartland of America’s Rust Belt, is within easy
access of 75 percent of the entire population of the country. Through God’s
hands, the U.S. Plastic Corporation® touches the lives of thousands
of customers from the largest and most prestigious to the small start-ups, offering
more than 32,000 different plastic products such as sheets, valves, pipes, totes,
rods and food industry items as well as their own line of TAMCO®
industrial-strength tanks, bottles, lab products, tubing and buckets.
Through
all of this, according to Wes Lytle, CEO, the Lord has prospered the business, earning
more than $140 million that goes to mission work in Third World countries and at
least one of the ministries that enlists 1,600 people going door to door
sharing the Gospel in over 42 counties across the country.
For Stanley in the end, it was all about being obedient. Just
as it was with Abraham, God is always right no matter what it is that He asks
us to do. When Stanley put God first in his life, the rest of the story was
bound to be fascinating, inspirational and quite a fair bit out of the
ordinary. What one man can do, hopefully others will follow.
Reading sources
Giants for God, Stanley
Tam – U.S. Plastic. Available online at http://www.giantsforgod.com/stanley-tam-us-plastic/
Keener, Craig S. (Jul 2009) The Gospel of Matthew – A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand
Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans) Available at https://www.amazon.com/Gospel-Matthew-Socio-Rhetorical-Commentary/dp/0802864988
Nolland, John (Nov 2005) The
Gospel of Matthew (The New International Greek Testament Commentary) (Grand
Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans) Available at https://www.amazon.com/Gospel-Matthew-International-Testament-Commentary/dp/0802823890
Tam, Stanley and Anderson, Ken (Jan 1969) God Owns My Business, New Edition (Hannibal, MO: WingSpread
Publishers). Available at https://www.amazon.com/God-Owns-Business-Stanley-Tam/dp/1600661874
United States Plastic Corporation, About United States Plastic Corporation®. Available online
at http://www.usplastic.com/content/aboutmission.aspx?clickid=footer
United States Plastic Corporation, Corporate History: Dr Tam’s Journey from Business Owner to Employee.
Available online at http://www.usplastic.com/content/aboutcorporation.aspx?clickid=footer
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