I Saw A Giant

Now, those of you who know me have probably noticed that I am a pretty big guy.  I am not NBA tall, but I tend to be kind of obvious in a crowd.  Well the other day I saw a real giant.  Not a physical giant, but a spiritual giant is.

I am a kind of interim pastor filling in for our lead pastor, Rev. Earl Wheatley, as he battles pancreatic cancer.  A couple of weeks ago I preached a message in preparation for National Back to Church Sunday.  I talked about some of the ways that the church turns people off.  Particularly, I talked about how we tend to put people in categories and we are often seen as judgmental.  I closed by challenging the people to strive to be known for loving their neighbors, co-workers, and others who don’t know Christ. 

At the close of the service I invited people to come forward to pray at the altar rail for people they know that need a relationship with Christ; for ways they might show Christ’s love for them; and for openings to invite them to join us in worship.  The Spirit was moving among us and many people came to pray for their own attitudes, and/or people they might be able to reach out to.

The first person at the altar rail was the pastor I am subbing for.  He felt well enough to be in worship that day and sat on the front row with his wife.  The following Tuesday he was scheduled to undergo some tests that would tell what progress the cancer was making and if the very uncomfortable chemotherapy treatments were helping.  Right away, I figured Pastor Earl wanted us to pray for him and about the test results he would get that week.  I moved over to join him, but before I got there I could hear him praying.  To my surprise, he wasn’t praying about the tests, or his pain, or his cancer.  He was praying for people in his neighborhood that need to know Jesus, and asking God for guidance in how he could best approach them.  Of course, I agreed with him in prayer.

After his wife helped him back to his seat.  I just sat down on the steps to the platform.  I have to admit I was stunned.  Here was a man in a fight for his life and his prayer was for his unsaved neighbors.  I was in awe.

When everyone had finished praying and returned to their seats, I said to the congregation while still sitting on the steps, “I want to be Earl Wheatley when I grow up.”  Then I told them of Earl’s prayer.  We have a giant among us.  His body is emaciated, but his spirit is huge.  I am proud to know him, call him friend, and know him as a brother in Christ.  He challenges me to put the first thing first.  Call it what you want: making disciples, filling up heaven, or seeing people saved.  It is all about sharing the love of Christ.  It is this love that gives a man like Earl the sweet assurance of his own salvation and the deep desire for others to experience it too.  I want to be like that.  How about you?

What Pastors Must Never Forget

The interview was going very well.  The old pastor had regaled the young seminary student with great stories in answer to questions about his long life and ministry.  He told how he began as a teenager in the 1920s, traveling by train, carrying a circus-type tent from town to town with a brother and two sisters to preach and sing at revivals.  When he took his first church, it was in desperate need of painting.  He found a deal on white paint, so they painted the little building white.  When finished, it almost glowed in the dusty central California town.  The whole town noticed, so he took advantage by renaming the church White Chapel. 

Later, when he pastored in a small town in southern Indiana, he put large loud speakers in the church’s bell tower and blessed the whole neighborhood with his sermon each week.  Later he was the first pastor in his denomination to try a weekly radio program.  The only available air time was late on Sunday evening.  He decided that people were preached to enough during the day on Sunday.  He felt that something other than a traditional worship service was needed to end the day.  So, he created a program that included music that was easy to listen to, the Gospel spoken in a conversational voice as if he was visiting with his listeners in their living room.  The program was syndicated and reached millions in the 50s and 60s.  Always an innovator, he was also one of the first pastors to dabble in television.  If he thought a method would reach people with Christ’s message, he was willing to give it a try.

All these things he told the younger man with great humility, giving God all the credit.  It was really quite a story.  The old man had been cutting-edge in the mid-20th century.  The younger man was impressed with his record.  Many people had already reported the great things that this elderly man of God had done: churches built, people healed, broken lives mended. This man had a knack for putting everyone at ease and being able to relate to people from all strata of society.  He had always been a consummate storyteller and his messages were richly illustrated, because he wanted to make sure the people could understand and remember the message God had for them. 

Though he had very little formal education, he read widely and could converse with the farmer and the factory worker, as well as the doctor, lawyer and professor.  Upon his retirement from pastoring, a college awarded him an honorary doctorate. 

Finally, thinking he almost had enough information for the paper he was writing, the younger man asked the finishing question about the growth of the churches the older man had pastored.  “What strategy did you use to produce the growth in your churches?”  The old man thought for a moment, then a smile creased his face as he replied, “Well, you know I only went to school until the fourth grade.  I once passed the tests to get into Bible college, but the week I was supposed to start there, a church begged me to come help them with a revival, and I just felt I couldn’t let that church or the Lord down.  So I just never got around to school.  I was never taught much about strategy.  What I tried to do was just love the people, and do what God led me to do.”  For a moment the student was stunned.  He had become so wrapped up in studying the church and analyzing how it worked, he had almost lost sight of the most important thing, the very thing the older man had never forgotten.  The student also realized that wisdom trumps knowledge.  He had asked a question about knowledge, but the old pastor’s answer was one of wisdom.  

It is nearly 40 years later and that young student is now an old pastor.  I have always tried not to forget the lesson I learned from Rev. Ross H. Minkler all those years ago.  Often, I have had to remind myself what the most important thing is: loving the people and doing what God leads me to do.  Whatever vision and strategy the Lord gives us for his church, and no matter how hard we work to plan, the key remains what Pastor Ross said—Love the people and do what God tells us to do. I don’t want to forget that, and I hope that other pastors never forget it.

An Uncertain Christmas – A Certain Faith

We were a daddy and his little boy jostling down the interstate in a 24-foot U-haul truck. It was our third day in the truck which held all the family’s belongings and also pulled our car. The tired tow-headed five year-old, Jarad, tried to sleep, but the ride was just too rough. It was another story for his cocker spaniel. The dog was fast asleep on the hard floor as the boy struggled in the seat. After watching the dog sleep blissfully for a couple of hours Jarad made the dog trade places with him. Soon the dog was fast asleep on the more comfortable truck seat and Jarad was still wide awake on the floor.

I chuckled softly at Jarad’s predicament. It was a laugh at his expense, but I needed to laugh at something. There was not much that was funny about moving the week before Christmas. I was sad that my little five year-old was missing out on the usual Christmas traditions because we were on the road. Sadder still, was the reason we were moving. My sweet wife, Tina, who had long suffered from rheumatoid arthritis, had been fighting an infection for months and no matter what the doctors had tried, it would not go away. It just got worse. She hadn’t been able to walk for a long time; in fact, it was a terrible struggle for her to even get out of bed. Nothing the doctors had done had helped. She appeared to be dying at the age of thirty. I was taking Tina home so she could be near her parents in her last days.

Everything had happened so fast. Tina’s illness had forced her to stop working and I was embarrassed that I didn’t make enough money pastoring a small church to support my family without her income. The church said they couldn’t pay more and they refused to let me work outside the church. I felt I had no choice but to pursue another kind of work. As I started looking for a job, Tina grew worse. Her mom came out to California to help again. My angel of a mother-in-law had spent sixteen weeks at our house in the last year. She was a huge help, but it wasn’t fair for her to be 2300 miles away from her husband the rest of the family in Indiana.

Since we were selling our house, to reduce our debt load, it occurred to me as I watched Tina struggle, that there was nothing holding us in California anymore: I had resigned from the church, and soon we would be out of our house. Since I had to look for a job and a house, there was no reason it had to be out there. Tina needed to be with her family back in Indiana. She needed their emotional support and so did I. I also needed physical help taking care of her, and Jarad.

My parents, who lived in Kansas, traveled to California to help us pack and load the truck. Because she could not have tolerated the four day trip by car or in the moving truck, Tina flew out on the foggiest, dreariest night of the year. The next day, Jarad and I climbed into the truck and headed out with my parents following in their car.

Our plan was to spend the third night of the trip at my folk’s house. The next day they would follow me on to Indiana for as big of a Christmas celebration as we could muster at my in-law’s farm. Everyone was trying to be hopeful, joyous and helpful, but everyone also knew the sad reason for the move.

As we drove a popular song titled “Stand By Me” was broadcast on the radio time and again. The lyrics were of a man promising his loved one that, no matter what happened in life, they would be safe as long as they faced their hardships together. As I drove I would look at Jarad and we would sing it together. I was desperately hoping he might realize, whatever was ahead for us, he could count on me to be with him and uphold him.

It turned out to be a pretty rough trip. When we were going through Albuquerque, New Mexico snow started falling. It was just a few flakes at first, but within a few miles the snow became heavy, after a few more miles, it turned into a blizzard. We passed no towns for a long way, so there was no place to stop or turn around. I had never driven a big truck pulling a car in weather like this. Getting behind a big rig, I copied whatever the driver in front of me did: slowing down as we crested mountains, and carefully trying to keep going straight on the way down. It took four hours to go the fifty miles to the next town and a motel.

My mother took ill in the bad weather. It was not possible for her to continue past their Kansas home, another disappointment in a season of disappointments. After my father and I got Mom settled in her bed, Dad reminded me that the church I attended as I was growing up was presenting its outdoor “Living Nativity” and suggested that I take Jarad to see it. It was a good idea; maybe it would be one special thing in a fouled up Christmastime.

Walking into the church parking lot holding Jarad’s hand brought back wonderful memories of being part of that church and participating in the “Nativity”. This particular presentation was more than a tableau. Actors played out the Christmas story to a beautifully narrated and orchestrated twenty-five minute recording. When I was a youth, I participated heavily in all aspects of the production. As I held Jarad in my arms and watched, my heart was taken up by the familiar Christmas story in a new way. I identified for the first time with Joseph, the one male part I had never played. I was dealing with a lot of uncertainty that Christmas, and it occurred to me that the first Christmas was pretty uncertain for Joseph. Both Joseph and I found ourselves in towns that we no longer called home. Neither of us was happy about the way he was able to provide for his wife. Joseph’s wife gave birth in a stable. Mine was in the midst of moving at time of great suffering. Neither Joseph nor I knew what was going to happen next. Things worked out for Joseph because he trusted God, and God had a plan. I began to realize, that even though nearly everything in my life was uncertain I had to believe that God had a plan for me too, and I needed to trust Him. Whether Tina would live or die, I didn’t know. How I would provide for my family, I didn’t know. But I had given my life and my future to the Lord years before at this little church. Suddenly, I was reminded by the Christmas story, which was coming to life before me, that God would be faithful and that He would not forget my little family. In the midst of an uncertain Christmas, I found a more certain faith.

The next day Jarad and I (and the sleeping dog) jostled on down the road to a new life. Before long “Stand By Me” came on the radio, and Jarad and I again sang with the record. This time I sang it with a new assurance that, just as I would stand by my son in scary times, I, too, had a Heavenly Father standing by me on this uncertain Christmas.

Things didn’t straighten out right away, but the hope in my heart had been reborn. By the following Christmas, things were nearly back to normal. After ten surgeries Tina’s infection was finally cleared up and her health was slowly improving. Our house in California sold in February. After several months of unfruitful job searching, I was asked by my denomination to do something I had always dreamed of doing: begin a new congregation. Christmas that year found me back in the pulpit, my wife doing well, and my son making new friends in his kindergarten class. One thing was certain, God had been standing by us the whole time.

He has continued to do so. In the years since then, Tina finished college with a degree in education. She has recovered to the point that she is no longer considered disabled. After working several years on my staff as children’s minister, Tina now edits a children’s ministry magazine, writes an on-line children’s church curriculum, has authored ten books, and teaches and encourages children’s workers all over the country. Although she still battles rheumatoid arthritis, it hasn’t stopped her. The jostled little boy, Jarad, is an all grown-up and the father of twins. He serves as Lead Pastor at a church not far from Chicago. Tough times will come again, but they won’t be uncertain times because God has blessed us with a certain faith.