Dick Shorthouse admits to being a good salesman.

The Penn Hills resident started out as a young man selling gym equipment with his father, but, in 1968, he took a leap of faith and turned his skills to peddling something intangible to young people.

He kept in mind Revelations 3:20: "Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him."

"You stand by many doors," Shorthouse says. "Some open. Some don't."

The ones he did open made a difference in many lives.

Last month, Penn Hills YMCA presented Shorthouse with the 2008 Community Champion Award to honor his years of dedication and commitment to the Penn Hills community during a dinner at Hebron United Presbyterian Church, where he is an active member.

The YMCA recognized the key community role he has played through the last four decades, including service on the Y's board of directors. He has shared his energy with Kiwanis, local Association of Christian Clergy, the now-defunct Christian Community Forum, Shining Arrow and Penn Hills Family Support Group.

"Dick Shorthouse is one of the key leaders in the Christian community in Pittsburgh," says the Rev. Doug Rehberg, senior pastor at Hebron Church.

But it is his 30 years as area director for Young Life Pittsburgh East Hills, a non-denominational Christian organization that introduces adolescents to Jesus Christ and helps them grow in their faith, where Shorthouse had the most impact.

"There isn't a day that goes by that I don't get a report of some kid I worked with," he says.

During those years, he and his staff formed personal relationships with youths in the Penn Hills, Woodland Hills, Gateway and Franklin Regional school districts through Young Life clubs, volunteer work in schools and coaching athletics.

Although Shorthouse has been semi-retired for a decade, he still serves as director of development for the local group, which now serves Franklin Regional, Penn Hills, Penn-Trafford and Riverview school districts.

One of Young Life's goals is for caring adults to build genuine friendships with teens, earning the right to be heard by them. Young Life workers invite their young friends to personally respond to Jesus -- and continue to love them regardless of their response.

One of the challenges of working with Young Life is to become "as Christ is as best you can in a world that doesn't care that much," Shorthouse says.

"We are the only Jesus they may ever know."

In his youth, it seemed unlikely that Shorthouse would have chosen such a career path.

He started out studying mechanical engineering at Pitt, dropping to part-time after a few years as he worked at U.S. Steel. Shorthouse says he was "a typical goofed-up 19- or 20-year-old" from a church-going family when he was introduced to some of his younger sister's friends from Young Life.

He became their project. At age 24, he went to a Young Life camp as

"just a nice guy" and "at the end of the weekend decided to commit my life to Christ."

Over the next several years, he married his wife of 44 years, Sarah, and had three children -- Jayne, Dean and Steve.

He eventually finished at Pitt and became an ordained minister, graduating with a master's degree in youth ministry from Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, Calif.

"The key to what we've always done is go where the kids are," Shorthouse says.

In his early days, Young Life staffers weren't permitted in the schools. So they reached out to teens by volunteering as school athletic coaches.

Shorthouse was a physical fitness team assistant under coach Bob Ford at Penn Hills High, but his real sport was "fishing" -- in the Biblical sense.

In the early 1970s, Young Life started a breakfast club as an outreach to high school students, offering a Bible study on the side. The staff encouraged the teens to bring their friends to Young Life meetings and camps.

The separation of church and school changed in 1977, when high school students began throwing trays in the cafeteria.

Then-principal Bucky Walters asked Shorthouse, who had his Young Life office nearby at Mt. Hope Church, to come over and talk to the students, all of whom he knew.

After that, Shorthouse and Young Life staffer Marshall Prentice were invited into the cafeteria at lunchtime, first at the high school, then eventually at what was then Linton Intermediate High School.

"Everyone knew who Dick Shorthouse was," says Jay Mitlo, the current Young Life East Hills area director.

The Penn Hills Progress named Shorthouse its 1983 Citizen of the Year. He has also been involved in the Pittsburgh Leadership Foundation and Pittsburgh Experiment.

Today, Shorthouse spends a lot of time with his 11 grandchildren, who range in age from 6 months to 15. He now begins his day at 4:30 a.m., working part-time at Anlauf's Sunoco on Rodi Road.

He's come a long way since he had the first day of the rest of his life in 1961.

"I had a new start," Shorthouse says. "Every kid I see, family or individual -- that can be a new start for them."