This (October) is pastor appreciation month. I wrote this story in honor of the men I had the privilege and honor of serving with at New Life for 35 years, men of God, who I was blessed to love Jesus with: Brad Smith, Jim Kent and Eric Slotman. Thank you for pastoring me and my heart. Also to my pastor friend Ron Wallace. We spent our younger years singing and preaching about Jesus. I can think of no better way to spend our days. And to the young lions that I have come to know, Shane Mumford, Sabastian Sebastian Masson and Charles Felton. Young preachers, beginning their journey with the Savior…May you become wise and full of fire.
When I was a young preacher, the Lord was kind enough to place some old men of God along my road.
They were not famous men. Most never wrote books, preached beneath bright lights, or stood before thousands. They were simply old preachers who had put their hands to the gospel plow and never looked back.
They had baptized sinners and buried saints. They had stood beside hospital beds, gravesides, wedding altars, and kitchen tables. They had preached when the house was full and when there were more empty pews than people.
And if you were quiet enough around them, every now and then they would tell you something the years had taught them.
I have been in the ministry for fifty years now, and some of the lessons I remember best were never spoken from behind a pulpit.
They came on front porches.
Over cups of coffee.
In empty sanctuaries after everybody else had gone home.
Years ago, I had the blessing of knowing one particular old preacher.
He preached Jesus.
That was the best way I knew to describe him.
No theatrics.
No performance.
No smoke.
No tricks.
He would simply open the old Book and preach Jesus.
And somehow, that was enough.
One Sunday morning, he asked me to ride with him to a little Baptist church where he had been invited to fill the pulpit.
I had never attended a Black church service before, and I did not know quite what to expect.
But I remember walking through those doors.
You could feel life in that little church.
The women were dressed for Sunday. The men greeted one another with firm handshakes. Children shifted in the pews while their mothers gave them that particular look mothers have perfected through the centuries.
Then the music started.
And those people did not merely sing hymns.
They sang from somewhere deep.
They sang as though the words had been paid for through suffering.
They sang about heaven as though they had already caught a glimpse of it, and about grace as though grace had met them personally.
Hands lifted.
Heads nodded.
Feet tapped against the wooden floor.
And every now and then someone would call out,
“Amen!”
“Preach it!”
I remember sitting there with my guitar thinking,
Lord, these folks have come to church.
Then the old preacher stood.
He walked to the pulpit, laid down his Bible, opened the Word of God, and began to preach.
Jesus.
Grace.
The cross.
Mercy.
The mystery of a God who loves sinners enough to come looking for them.
The morning grew warm, and the ladies began working their church fans.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
You could hear them fluttering beneath the preacher’s voice.
Every so often someone would answer him from the pews.
“Amen!”
“That’s right!”
“Preach it, Reverend!”
And he did.
He preached until it seemed as though grace itself had settled over that little sanctuary.
When the sermon ended, church still wasn’t finished.
We sang another song.
Then another.
And somehow another after that.
Nobody seemed particularly concerned with the clock.
Eventually the last prayer was prayed, the final amen spoken, and the congregation began drifting toward the doors.
There were hugs.
Handshakes.
Laughter.
Folks stood around talking as though nobody was eager to leave the House of God.
Then, little by little, the parking lot began to empty.
The sanctuary grew quiet.
I started packing my guitar.
I wrapped the cord, closed the case, and gathered my things.
The service was over.
Or at least I thought it was.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the old preacher.
He had not left.
He was sitting alone on the steps beneath the pulpit.
Only a few minutes earlier, that room had been filled with singing and shouting. Now the church fans had stopped moving. A few bulletins lay scattered across the pews. The voices were gone.
And there he sat.
Nearly eighty years old.
His shoulders had begun to bend beneath the years. His hands were weathered, veins rising beneath thin skin, fingers bent from a lifetime of work and turning the pages of an old Bible.
His hair had gone white.
His face carried the deep lines that come from years of laughing, grieving, praying, and preaching people through their darkest nights.
But it was his eyes I remember most.
Old eyes.
They had looked into hospital rooms and open graves.
They had watched young couples take vows and old saints draw their final breath.
They had seen sinners walk down aisles and prodigals wander away.
They had cried prayers nobody else ever heard.
Yet there was still fire in them.
Not the restless fire of a young preacher trying to prove something.
A quieter fire.
The kind that comes from walking with God long enough to know that He does not need to prove Himself anymore.
He looked over at me and lifted one weathered hand.
“Come here, boy.”
I put my guitar down and walked over.
He patted the step beside him.
I sat down.
And that is when the real sermon began.
He looked at me and asked,
“Boy, when do you know you’re following Christ with your whole heart?”
I sat there thinking.
Then he asked,
“How do you know when you’re close to His heart?”
Well, I was a young preacher, and young preachers have an unfortunate habit of believing every question requires a deep theological answer.
So I began reaching around inside my head for something impressive.
Doctrine.
Sanctification.
Prayer.
Spiritual disciplines.
I was preparing an answer that belonged in a theology book.
The old preacher watched me struggle for a moment.
Then he smiled.
Finally, he saved me from myself.
“Boy,” he said, “you know you love Him because when you sin, you weep like Peter wept.”
I stopped.
The words went straight through me.
When you sin, you weep like Peter wept.
Not because somebody caught you.
Not because your reputation might suffer.
Not merely because there are consequences.
You weep because you have wounded the heart of Someone you love.
Peter denied Jesus.
Then the rooster crowed.
And when Peter realized what he had done, Scripture says he went out and wept bitterly.
Those tears said something.
Peter loved Him.
Brokenly.
Imperfectly.
But deeply.
The old preacher sat quietly for a moment.
Then he lifted his head.
I can still see him there.
An eighty-year-old man sitting on worn wooden steps beneath an empty pulpit.
His sermon finished.
His congregation gone.
His old Bible nearby.
He looked smaller sitting there than he had while preaching, but somehow he carried more weight.
Not importance.
Not ego.
Years.
Years of failing God and finding mercy.
Years of watching grace carry people when nothing else could.
Years of learning that the gospel he had preached as a young man was still true when his hair turned white.
He had reached the place where a man no longer needed to impress anyone.
He simply knew Jesus.
And I wanted what he had.
Then he said,
“Listen to me, boy.”
His voice was softer now, roughened by age and years of preaching, but it carried through that empty sanctuary.
He looked around the room.
“Look at this.”
“We met with the Living God this morning.”
He paused.
“We sang.”
“We danced.”
“We prayed.”
“We wept.”
Then that old preacher looked at me and said,
“And we’re all leaving here alive.”
The words hung in the silence.
At first, I thought he simply meant the service was over and everybody was going home.
But that was not what he meant.
We had come into the presence of the Living God.
The God who spoke worlds into existence.
The God before whom prophets trembled.
The God whose holiness exposes everything hidden in us.
And yet we had not been consumed.
Because of Jesus, we had been welcomed.
We walked into that little church carrying sin, sorrow, weariness, fear, and burdens known only to God.
We sang.
We prayed.
We repented.
We wept.
And grace met us there.
Something died in that room.
A little pride.
A little hardness.
A little more of the old self that keeps insisting it can live without God.
And something else came alive.
Hope.
Mercy.
Repentance.
Joy.
I sat beside that old preacher and said nothing.
There was nothing to say.
I just let the lesson settle into me.
Fifty years have passed through my hands since those days.
Fifty years of preaching.
Hospital rooms.
Weddings.
Funerals.
Victories.
Disappointments.
People coming to Christ and people walking away.
And yet, when I think back to that Sunday morning, what I remember most is not the sermon.
It is the silence afterward.
An eighty-year-old preacher sitting on the steps beneath the pulpit.
White hair.
Weathered hands.
Old eyes still bright with the things of God.
And a young preacher sitting beside him who did not yet understand how much he had left to learn.
I thought I had gone there to help with the service.
I did not know I had gone there to be schooled.
After fifty years of ministry, I am still trying to learn what that old preacher already knew:
Love Jesus enough that your sin can still break your heart.
Never become so familiar with holy things that you cease to tremble before them.
And never forget what a wonder it is that sinners can come into the presence of the Living God and, because of Jesus, not be destroyed—but forgiven, restored, and made alive.
We do not merely attend church.
We come before the Living God.
And by His mercy, we leave different than we came.
A little less proud.
A little less hard.
A little more awake.
A little more alive.
That is what the old preacher meant.
We met with the Living God…
and by His mercy, we walked away alive.
Fifty years later, I can still see him sitting there.
And I still pray:
Lord, when my hair is white, when my voice is worn, when most of my sermons have already been preached and the sanctuary grows quiet around me—
let there still be fire in my eyes.
Let my heart still be tender enough to weep.
Let me still marvel that sinners may stand in Your presence and live.
And let me know Jesus well enough that some young preacher sitting beside me might recognize that I have been with Him.
May I become that wise.
Selah.
