John Couch has always been a man who I have admired and respected since I first met him back in the late nineteen eighties.

     He and his family, had recently moved down to Rancho Santa Fe to live in one of the four or five houses they had acquired during his stardom at Apple Computer. Yes John had been one of the first employees that Steve Jobs had hired after John had been involved with some of the major product developments at world famous Hewlett Packard. As a matter of fact, there are many people, including Steve Jobs, that give John the credit for taking the company from a struggling starting company to a company doing one billion that’s $1,000,000,000 in sales in its first five years of operation.

     Now by today’s standards $1,000,000,000 in sales after five years is no big deal, but twenty years ago it was huge. As a matter of fact, John not Steve Jobs, was on the front cover of “Business Week” as he was the key note speaker for over 2,000 people at the annual computer trade show.

     While those are certainly impressive statistics, those are not the highlights of the man’s career that were impressive for me. It was the man who revealed the incredible pinnacle of success professionally in his early thirties that said to me, “I wasn’t even sure who I was, and it was very apparent that my wife and our four children were very sure that they didn’t know who I was, that got my attention”.  You see the four or five homes, the big salary, the huge stock options, the position, power and prestige of Apple Computer didn’t make any difference to my family, they wanted a father & husband, and they really didn’t have one.

     So John and his lovely wife Diana made the awesome decision to sell all their houses, retire from the “stuff accumulation” position with Apple and retire in his middle thirties to become the husband and father that God wanted him and needed him to be.

     He accepted the head master position with a struggling to survive K-12 Christian school known as Santa Fe Christian, and took no salary, and then wrote checks for six figure dollars to put into the school to not only keep it going, but to help take it to it’s next level of effectiveness, which is where it is today. A school of approximately 800 students that is receiving local as well as national recognition for the well rounded educational experience their students are getting through academics, campus life activities, and a very successful athletics program for both the men and women.

     I had the privilege of sharing an office next to John’s for a year and we had many talks and I had many opportunities to watch his humble, mild mannered, how can I be available for how God wants me to use me attitude in action day after day, and week after week.

     God truly has blessed John Couch with the incredible gifts of mind, body and sprit and I’m sure as you read this exciting chapter of his life on how he became willing to be so transparent that you will also say, there goes a humble servant who not only wants to but is making a difference for the Kingdom of God here on Earth.