A Good Day Until...

Sunday was a good day. The song service was particularly uplifting. The “trip through the universe” video clip background to “How Great Thou Art” functioned properly (I always hold my breath during those). The “tag-team” scripture reading of Psalm 96 worked, and Marshall has some good comments before the communion. And I don’t think I messed things up too badly with the sermon. Everything was going great… until Randall had to go and mess it all up with his bombshell. I had known about it for a month, and still it hit me hard. It hit others hard too—several were crying. Someone told me, “I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut.” Randall announced that after 42 years on the Peninsula and 26 years as an elder here at Denbigh, he and Bobby are moving back to Indiana.

Randall has been my elder, friend, co-worker, confidant and counselor ever since I moved back to Virginia to work with the Denbigh church family. In fact, Randall and Bobby have been for Lynn and me one of the few constants in a church whose only constant has been constant change. They have been constant hard workers and constant sources of encouragement. They have been here to minister to people and to people ministries in so many ways that it is pointless to try to enumerate them. We will not realize how much they do until they are gone and all of the little things that just seemed to happen don’t happen anymore.

But my sense of loss goes far beyond the jobs that will need replacements. Through the last quarter century, Randall has been much more than my elder-- he has been my compatriot in the pursuit of God grace and my traveling companion on a pilgrimage to restudy and revision my heritage. I have always had good relationships with my elders, but Randall and I have been on the same trajectory and the same page. Both Randall and Bobby have been my sounding boards and support system… and I trust that they will remain so.

God bless Randall and Bobby as they look to make a new life in Indiana. They will enrich the church there just as they have enriched it here. There will always be something of a hole that they have left here.