Letter
Dear Joe,
One Sunday morning in 1969, when I was eleven years old, I came to you with a distressing dilemma. A year earlier, around the time you became pastor of Lombard Mennonite Church outside Chicago, I promised God that I would become a pastor when I grew up. But now, a year later, I no longer wanted to become a pastor—I wanted to become a spy. Weighed down with great concern, I asked you, “What would God do to me if I broke a promise to God? What if I promised God I would do something when I grew up—like, say, become a pastor—but now I don’t think that’s what I should do? What will God do to me?” You smiled a little bit and answered, “I think God will take your age into account.”
That was the beginning of my relationship with you, and through you, a relationship with a loving and merciful God. That relationship deepened in 1971 when I was thirteen, laid up in the hospital with a severely broken leg. You visited me and gave me a book, The Chosen, by Chaim Potok, about an injured boy who explores his Jewish faith and traditions. The meaning of the book was beyond my comprehension, but I remember how the boy studied the Talmud more intensely than all the other students in his class, arriving at an interpretation that challenged what was considered safe and acceptable.
As a teenager I became very active in the church’s youth group, and I turned to you with my questions about God and my own identity. I am embarrassed now by my immature behavior at the time, but you saw the future pastor in me before I did. During my sophomore year at Goshen College, after I had told you I was going to be a Bible major, you wrote me a surprising letter. “Don’t!” you advised. “As you go on to seminary, you’ll only have to repeat a lot of it.” You recommended a different direction: “Why not major in communications, speech, journalism, etc. You have real gifts in these areas. . . . You need to get a broad basis now while you can. I majored in Bible in college and I believe it was a mistake.” As a result of your letter, I chose to become an English major. Not only did I love it, but it proved to be a rich grounding and resource for future ministry.
Because of your advocacy, Lombard Mennonite Church hired me as its first youth minister after I graduated from college. During that year you taught me important lessons about how to be a pastor. One time you took me with you when you paid a hospital visit with a young woman dying of cancer. I was awed by the warmth of your presence with her and the comfort of your prayer. On another occasion, after everyone had left the church building following an event in your honor, you took out a carpet sweeper and began cleaning up the crumbs. You turned to me and said, “This too is ministry.”
In 1980, a couple months after I began my seminary education at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, you sent me a card responding to a letter in which I told you all about my new experiences. Noting the time (2:15am) at the top of the card, you wrote: “For some reason I was awakened at this early hour. I prayed for a person I have no idea who—but I felt my prayer was needed and I have peace. Does this happen to you? I find it happens occasionally.” Thank you for that image of a pastor whom God awakens to pray for strangers.
As I went through seminary, you continued to mentor and support me, despite the times of painful disagreement between us on personal issues and controversial churchwide questions. When I became pastor of my own congregation in Peoria, Illinois, you took great pride in me. I visited you as often as I could, and each time I did, you wanted to hear everything I was doing. I felt like I was your own son.
One of my most fortunate opportunities was when we were roommates on an educational tour in Israel and Egypt. Together we explored the Old City of Jerusalem and the sacred sites along the shore of the Sea of Galilee. One morning you were gazing at the hills surrounding Jerusalem and said, “Now I know what the psalmist was picturing when he said, ‘I lift up mine eyes to the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.’”
You passed away many years ago, but your gentleness is with me always, as well as your deep faith, sensitive prayer life, incredible generosity, and visionary leadership. I am the pastor I am because of you, always guided by the question, “What would Joe do?”
