Giving Thanks

Pastor Rick noted Sunday that he only has a limited number of sermons left; therefore my opportunities to respond to them are also limited. I’d like to take this blog, then, to speak for us all and say that (at the risk of sounding like a mutual admiration society) FAC will “thank their God upon every remembrance of you,” too, Pastor Rick and Kathy. In this season of thanksgiving, we want to express our gratitude not only to God but also to both of you:

Thank you.

Thank you for setting a high standard for us all in your conduct and speech and attitudes. Your example has called us higher in all these areas. And when we’ve chosen the low road, we’ve never been able to excuse it away, saying, “I’m just following the leader here.”

Thank you for shepherding all the flock, not just a favorite few or an influential circle. Thank you for genuinely caring about not just the elders and the members with large pockets, but also the seeker on the fringes and the children and the elderly whose years of ministry involvement are largely behind them.

Thank you for your transparency and honesty. We learned you weren’t perfect. We saw you were sometimes struggling. We were thereby able to identify with your various situations, and were comforted in our own troubles with the comfort that you received from God, and passed on to us.

Thank you for your patience. For not becoming totally and irreparably disillusioned with us when we listened to your advice and nodded our heads and went right back out of your office or home and did exactly the opposite. Thank you for not throwing up your hands in despair (or, if you did, Pastor Rick, thank you for not locking your office door and telling Ruth, “No more! I will see no more wayward, balking sheep ever!”).

Thank you for your sermons. For all those hours you researched and prayed and wrote and rewrote and prayed again and wondered if we would get it and if we would remember it and if we would do anything with the truth God was speaking through you. We have remembered, by the way, far more than you realize. And those sermons have made a far greater difference in our individual worlds than you can imagine.

And thank you for your music. For your faithful and excellent ministry on the organ and piano and at the mike. For bringing the sounds of heaven to earth, and directing our praises from earth to heaven.

For some reason, God seldom allows us to see the extent of our influence on others and our fruitfulness for Him. But one day, to be sure, God will show you both. And then I know you will be truly astonished to see how even the dullest days and the smallest acts and the most pointless-seeming steps of obedience were fraught with eternal significance. You will have “an embarrassment of reward.”

That will be true of your years here at FAC – and it will continue as you serve the Erie City Mission. Know that we are sad to see you go, and proud of where you are going. And behind your backs, after you have left the halls of FAC, we will be saying what was said of Oswald Chambers by his wife, Biddy:

For they
So shadowed forth in every look and act
Our Lord, without Whose name they seldom spoke,
One could not live beside them and forget.