By Jim Herbst
Some are grouches, gossips, and grumps. I”ve met one or two who have the personality of uncoated aspirin. Some can spread news faster than NBC, CNN, and Fox combined. Others have allergic reactions to giving compliments””unless it is a roundabout criticism of someone else.
Then there are those whose personalities match the apple pies for which they are so popular. They are the slightly wrinkled, sweet-hearted servants who often keep a church going. I”m referring to the senior saints, the silver-haired young at heart, the little old ladies in a congregation. They are reminders of God”s long-term providence.
A visit to my grandmother”s church started me thinking. Two rows in front of me was a widow named Charlotte Newcomer. Charlotte opened her home to my mother on weekends when my mother was in nursing school. It was through Charlotte that my mom became a Christian and met my dad. They married, and three years later I came along. It dawned on me that if it were not for this woman”s simple act of hospitality more than 36 years ago, I wouldn”t exist.
Ironically, I was at the church to make a presentation on our work in Pittsburgh, yet none of what I”m doing would matter were it not for the hospitable senior sitting in front of me. God was setting things up long before I became aware of it.
Here is another great example. The day I was ordained in 1995 my grandmother and another senior named Doris Palmer approached me afterwards. It turned out Doris had been my dad”s Sunday school teacher when he was growing up. They told me a story I had never heard.
Decades earlier, before my dad graduated high school, Doris and my grandmother began praying dad would enter ministry. My dad was in line to become a dairy farmer like his father and grandfather before him. Guess what? He developed hay allergies and entered ministry. I don”t know if Doris Palmer ever baptized anyone. But how many people has my Dad brought to Christ through the decades that began with the prayers of a mother and his Sunday school teacher?
God”s long-term work
I”ve found such stories to be a treasure of encouragement. They point to God”s long-term work. Seniors help me stay focused because they”ve been around to see how God works.
In our drug-infested and sometimes violent neighborhood I can easily grow discouraged at the amount of work that remains to be done. It”s not unusual to lay in bed at night and hear gunshots. The shots do more than scare me. They break my heart at how important it is for us to do our job better. I lay awake and worry about how to fund a more effective outreach and whether some project will succeed or fail. Am I able to pull it off? Is it worth it? Should I just give up?
A lifetime of faithfulness
Then I think about Dorothy Savage. Most of her 77 years have been as a member of the church. She is a lifetime resident of this community. Dorothy has had multiple opportunities to move out but hasn”t. She believes this is where God wants her.
Last summer a young man tried to rob her on her street at 12:30 in the afternoon. Did that stop her? No. She still goes everywhere she did before. What right do I have to give up when there are people like Dorothy who keep on going?
They”ve also taught me another lesson about long-term transformation””take a look at myself.
I was recently frustrated over a single mother and her son. About a year ago she approached me twice about her drug problem. I prayed with her both times on the street, shared the basic gospel, and gave her some recommendations about help. She got clean, but only after losing everything. The process took its toll on her son, who spent time in the psychiatric center and is now charged with sexual harassment of a teen girl. The mother keeps saying she wants to get serious about God, but just hasn”t done it. I think, What a waste. If only she had taken Jesus seriously.
I could tell a dozen similar stories. I get frustrated at the lack of transformation.
But then I see how much””and how slowly””I have changed. The very fact that I can now pray openly on the street with people is evidence of God”s transformation. God took an introverted, shy kid voted the quietest in his high school senior class and has him praying on the streets of the city. I guess God has been at work all this time.
Seniors have even longer stories to tell.
And sometimes their stories are filled with pain, pain that produces wisdom that a young man like me really needs.
On a Wednesday this January, I answered my door to find a man and his daughter in tears. The girl was Shannon, a 7-year-old in our music program. Shannon”s 18-year-old brother had been shot the day before. It was drug related. Her dad needed a minister and a place for the funeral. I agreed to help him, but my heart was heavy about how to connect with the audience. I knew it wouldn”t be a church crowd. I am 31, white, with no kids; how should I approach a funeral for a black youth? I couldn”t pretend to understand their situation or pain.
How would I look Shannon, her family, and dozens of youth in the eyes with a message of comfort, challenge, and most of all the story of Jesus? I didn”t want to offer clichés or minimize their pain. I considered it the most important message of my life.
(Only afterwards did I find out the funeral-home personnel carried guns for protection and there was at least one undercover detective there.)
Powerful Words
I decided to call Barb. I had met Barb a few years earlier and recently had seen her at a birthday party. She is a dear black saint from another church. Barb knows about pain. She lost both a son and a daughter to violence in the neighborhood. Her daughter was shot down just outside her mother”s door.
I called Barb the day before the funeral and said, “Barb, if this is uncomfortable to talk about please let me know, but I need your help. I have the Perry funeral. What do I say?”
Here is what she said. “Tell them they don”t have to worry anymore about Scott. God is the giver and taker of life and we belong to him. It”s all about church and people coming to the Lord and getting right with the Lord.”
The building was packed for the funeral, including Barb. I closed the message with her words. Barb has never headlined a Christian convention, but no other Christian speaker in the world could have shared more powerful words that day. Barb gave her number to the grieving mother. Thank God for Barb.
Before the funeral I put out five Christian rap CDs and at least 14 copies of the My City, My God New Testament from the International Bible Society. All were taken. I had to take orders for more Bibles.
I recently sent Shannon”s mother five more. She asked if she could have the whole case of 24. I was happy to honor her request.
The drug dealers had their thugs and their guns. I had the Word of God, a praying church, and a dear saint named Barb. Even in the midst of such evil, we won the day.
Some unlikely and overlooked people have taught me God is always preparing us for the future. Where would most of our lives be without people like Charlotte, Doris, Dorothy, and Barb?
God”s transformation of our hardened hearts may be slow, but it is undoubtedly relentless. When I look at God”s long-term work I reach the same conclusion as Paul: the only thing we can boast about is the cross of Christ. All our supposedly great triumphs are the result of his plan long before we even entered the picture.
Jim Herbst is the minister with Hazelwood Christian Church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
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