Like many of you, the pandemic has led me to cleaning out and organizing things at home. I have a three-car garage and can barely get one vehicle inside. So, it was time to reduce the clutter and work my way through boxes and boxes of old correspondence, newspaper clippings, and school papers. And the result has been a journey down Memory Lane.
In 1968 I was a second-year, pre-med student at The University of Louisville. After preaching a Youth Sunday at Midway Christian Church, one of the members who happened to own a horse farm wrote me a beautiful letter encouraging me to think about seminary and promising to pay my tuition, if I would consider ministry.
I responded in part: “I find myself, like so many people, searching for my place in what you so beautifully expressed as ‘our exciting, troubled world.’ My future sometimes seems to be one big question mark. I have a habit of not letting go and letting God. But, in reviewing the search, there are several things I am seeking to orient myself towards: a desire to minister, in some way, to not what many consider the rag-tag end of civilization, but to what I consider as the vanguard of a new and better world—the youth of America, and a desire to use what God-given talent I may have, whether it be speech or whatever, to challenge people to tilt at those ‘quixotic windmills,’ to right some of those ‘rightable wrongs’... Your interest in my future along with the interest expressed by many within my own congregation is causing me to take a long, hard look at the ministry. Thank you for challenging me anew to take that look. Thank you so very, very much.”
Two years later, I entered Louisville Seminary and was ordained on July 3, 1973. Counting three years as a Student Minister, this year marks 50 years of service—and what a year it has been!
In the middle of Lent we had to change the ways we were doing nearly everything—and fast. Our staff became tech experts, recording, editing, sound mixing, lighting, inviting people to and teaching them how to participate in and manage online meetings. I am so grateful for our skilled staff. Reluctantly, at seventy-two years of age, I have been called to become a television evangelist. Ministry looks different than it has in those fifty previous years. Once again, I am trying to figure out where it fits in my sense of giftedness and call. I struggle to understand new technology. The language I am being forced to learn is much more difficult for me than Hebrew and Greek. My church camp keynotes were on-line this summer and Zoom meetings with campers provided my only chance to see young people. The things that energized me for ministry—hugs, faces, interaction—are gone. I am no longer able to pray with those in the hospital facing surgery or death. Communication, pastoral care, and decision making are infinitely more difficult. While it is the best we can do, virtual connection leaves me cold.
The pandemic has revealed that our healthcare system is broken, that there are racial inequities, that we lack leadership at almost every level, and that our infrastructure is inefficient in responding to crisis. The virus has forced all of us to find new ways of being Church, driven us into our homes and away from one another physically, wreaked tragedy the world over, and left us all doing life in ways that leave us exhausted, feeling alone and traumatized. I never imagined my call would lead me to such a time as this. And yet, here I am.
I started fresh in ministry some 50 years ago. I have tried to stay fairthful wherever I have served from Benton to Hazel Green to Somerset to Louisville. With God’s help I plan on finishing strong.
Agape, Mike