This is Pastor Tim’s Article which appeared in the Evening Leader on Tuesday, Jan 23, 2024
If there are any two people in this town whom nobody wants talking to each other, it is the pastor and the funeral director. Unfortunately, this pastor speaks to funeral directors almost weekly. We are very blessed in this town with two wonderful funeral directors: Millers and Cisco. Both of them do a very professional job, and they are great to work with when you need them. Thanks to these two funeral homes, I get the chance to interact with many families here in St. Marys during some of their most terrible moments. While I am certainly sorry for the reason why I am interacting with these families; I do appreciate the chance to do some pastoral work with them. It is a very strange thing to be the pastor of a church like Wayne Street. I could easily be bogged down in the administration and overseeing the staff because there is plenty of that to do. However, as any staff person at Wayne Street will tell you as well as any person involved in the administration structure of Wayne Street, I am terrible at that. It is only by the Grace of God who sends me so many good people to work with that holds the system together. There is a paraphrase of John 3:16 that I heard years ago and it sums up how I feel perfectly. It is “For God so Loved the World that He did not send a committee.” I very much dislike discussing things because I prefer doing things. I have plenty of people who get upset with me because of this mindset, but that is how I am wired. For that, I owe a plethora of apologies to many people. It is just that talking about things seems to always take the place of actually doing them, and that drives me crazy.
That is why I appreciate the chance to come alongside so many of you during times when you have lost someone. The funeral home does not contact a committee, they ask me to step in and actually do something I am trained to do: help a family come to terms with a tremendous loss. Thanks be to God, I go into these situations armed with an empty tomb found on a certain Easter morning and a message of grace and forgiveness that is literally God-sized. With that, I get the chance to celebrate the lives of people as well as being thankful for their continued life in the world to come. To do that, I do not need a committee or a vote, I just need Jesus and I do not leave home without Him.
The purpose of this article is to first, thank Millers and Cisco funeral homes for their trust in me. They keep calling me back and I appreciate that vote of confidence. As I said before, no one likes it when we have to talk, but I feel that over the past few years, we have done some good work for some very deserving situations. I also want to thank the hundreds of families I have interacted with over these past 5 ½ years. I know that there could not have been anything happy about the experience, but I pray that in some small way, the funeral service we put together brought some form of comfort. Please remember, I meant what I said, the story of your loved one is not over.
It is something that absolutely none of us want to face, but there will come a time when the funeral director and the pastor are going to talk about someone that you love and care about. It is an uncomfortable reality, but death is something that will eventually affect all of us either directly or indirectly. What you have here in St. Marys is comfort in knowing that there are good people who are willing to pitch in together for the sole purpose of making sure that you and your family will be supported when that terrible time comes. It does not automatically make everything better, but it is reassuring that there are people who are well prepared to help in any way possible.