Members you Need to Meet: Charlie Webster from the Rotary Club of Morgan County
Sunday, August 6, 2023
By Barbara Myers Myers Mason APR

In this month's edition of members you need to meet, we will visit with Charlie Webster from the Rotary Club of Morgan County.  From working for NASA to translating the Bible, he has lived a life full of adventures.  Charlie hasn't been a Rotarian for very long but he has a long history of using his talents to serve others. Get to know Charlie now. 
 
Seeking truth is what drives Charlie Webster in his two primary callings – that of a rocket scientist and a Biblical scholar. It’s no surprise that Webster is also a Rotarian, as truth is the first objective in the Four Way Test.

He said he has a powerful desire to understand “not just the what, but the why. If you look at the bigger picture and see why you want to do it this way and not that way, it changes everything.”

Webster, who serves as the Sergeant-At-Arms for the Rotary Club of Morgan County, has only been a Rotarian for a little more than two years. For many years, he was a member of a Kiwanis Club, but when the Kiwanians changed to a venue with an environment not conducive to hearing, Webster decided to become a Rotarian – lucky for District 6910.

Webster’s story is fascinating. At 79-years-old, he’s a self-taught engineer with a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree from Johnson Bible College (now Johnson University) in Knoxville, Tennessee. He is currently working on upgrading NASA’s Artemis launch vehicle, while closing in on completing a translation of the New Testament from the original Greek.

Webster credits God with his talent. When he was in high school, an aptitude test uncovered his gift for electronics, but he wasn’t interested. He chose to pursue a ministry degree, but was unable to adequately support his family in this profession. He eventually enrolled in a technical training school for six months and was hired by Pratt & Whitney. At the firm, he read engineering books and studied higher math, eventually becoming the company’s top control systems technician.

Webster also worked as an industrial electrician for Honeywell International, Inc. and Onan, and in 1988 he was named the top control systems engineer for the NASA booster project.

He decided to retire shortly after his first wife died of breast cancer. When she was diagnosed, he dug into the available information and realized she only had a short time to live. They made four trips out West to the National Parks and she died seven weeks after the last trip.

Webster married again in 2000, moved to Rutledge, Georgia, and began teaching science and New Testament studies. But NASA once again came calling. Since 2005, he has worked from his home as a contract engineer for booster control systems, laying out the architecture and working as the lead engineer for the control systems design, requirements and test operations.

He recalled that as a contract engineer, he worked all over the country, staying in hotel rooms with a TV and “200 channels you don’t want to watch.” He would peruse the Gideon Bible, but found parts of it like the genealogy of Jesus tedious. “People might throw it down and never pick it up again,” he said. “I wanted to create something more conversational,” similar to The Message, but more accurate. He went back to the original Greek and found that some of the meanings of words had been changed in the Latin translation; words like “church” really should be translated as “team” in every case.

Changing what he had believed all his life was sometimes painful. “I had to be honest with what was there,” he explained. “I asked myself, ‘is this really the author’s opinion or am I injecting my own.”

Webster firmly believes that the message of Christianity is that “God is the boss…God is love. He cares deeply about people’s needs.”

He gave the example of being cut off in traffic. “What does Jesus tell us to do,” he said. “Think about the person who cut you off. Realize that something is wrong in his or her life and that he needs God. Pray for them.”

“Prayer is one of those things we get wrong,” he believes. “It’s talking to your Daddy. It’s making your Daddy a part of your life. When Jesus talked about God, He called Him Father. When He talked to God, He called Him Abba or Daddy.”

Webster loves the Lord. And as a scientist, he loves science. “I know science,” he said. There is nothing in the Bible that contradicts science,” he believes.

“A big bang doesn’t create life. Order doesn’t come out of disorder. We can’t get the science to work out,” he said.
Whether it’s science, faith or Rotary, rest assured that Webster will continue to seek the truth with passion in all he thinks, says and does.