The caller was direct: “Frank is dead.”
I hung up the phone numbed. He had looked less and less healthy every year I’d known him. And then last year he hadn’t planted a garden, and I’d known it wouldn’t be long.
I had always wondered what I would say at Frank’s funeral. Now I had until tomorrow at 3 o’clock to think of something that was both honest and honoring. The problem was that Frank had been a major vexation, a combination saint and sinner-extreme in both categories.
Frank was our head deacon. He had been a deacon at this church for nearly forty years before I arrived. Thirty years ago, when the church had needed a building, Frank had gotten the plans drawn up, had gotten approval and loans from the denomination, and had supervised the construction. For the next three decades, he was involved in every repair, improvement, and addition. He treated the building as if it were his own. When any maintenance problem popped up, Frank would be there, all night if necessary, to take care of it. It would take three people to replace the work he had done.
Frank’s wife, Ella, had taught Sunday school for forty-two consecutive years. When the church had been without a pastor for two years before my coming, Frank and Ella kept the church going. They worshiped, tithed, served, and attended all church functions. They visited the sick and shut-ins every Sunday afternoon. I had in my desk a letter from the relative of one such shut-in praising Frank and Ella and telling me how lucky I was to have them in my church.
And yet, I had to confess, many was the time I wished that Frank would soon be gone. Born in the first decade of this century, Frank had made it through hard times by hard work, and hard work was all he knew or respected. He snarled at children for their play. He hated anyone who received government aid. I heard him curse blacks and Asians and Hispanics for “stealing” what he had worked so hard to get. Eighty years of churchgoing had never interfered with his racism.
Many times in the church board room I had locked horns with Frank, and, quite honestly, many times I had lost. The issues themselves were relatively minor, but they reflected what the focus of the church would be. To Frank, the church was a place for like-minded, hard-working, white Americans to worship God. I saw the church as an open house for sinners and as a center of outreach to the community.
At one board meeting, I asked the deacons to consider some means of reaching the community. “You can count me out if it means helping those welfare people,” Frank said belligerently. Without the support of the head deacon, nothing ever resulted.
Frank also resisted our attempts to attract the youth of the community. “When I was their age, we didn’t have time to play; we had to work to eat,” Frank would say as he opposed the new basketball hoops, Ping-Pong tables, volleyball court, and other “worthless” youth activities. On this issue, the other deacons recognized children as the future of the church. They kindly but surely outvoted Frank.
Frank offered to resign right then, saying, “I guess you don’t need me anymore.” It was partly an offer to make sure I still wanted him around. But it was also a threat. In the eyes of his followers, to accept his resignation would have been the same as asking for it. I dared not accept.
Frank and the treasurer and one other deacon held church money in secret accounts and kept the amounts strictly to themselves. They didn’t want the money spent frivolously when there might be some real need in the future. The problem was, with them in control of the figures, they were the only ones to decide what “frivolous” and “real need” meant.
Once Frank proudly showed me his definition of “real need.” He took me to a small piece of land on the edge of the church property. “This land was going to be sold to that Kitterton bunch. They were going to build a trashy filling station here. But we managed to outbid them. Now you see why we need all this money saved up.”
All I could see was a lot of money spent for a questionable reason. And when I suggested we spend some money on evangelistic efforts, the treasury was suddenly dry.
I’d lost my patience over that and brought the issue to the board. I suggested we make financial figures available to all the deacons so we could make informed decisions on money issues. This neatly and hotly divided Frank’s followers and mine. They threatened to leave the church. The rest of the board didn’t want to split the church. I was forced to make a humiliating withdrawal.
So, at times, I found myself longing for the day Frank would be gone, not because I didn’t like him, because Frank was likable in an odd sort of way, but because he stood as an obstacle to our body’s functioning as I believed a Christian church should.
Frank and I both struggled to mold the church into what we each thought it should be. And yet, in our better moments, we also knew that the way we handled the struggle also said something about what the church was. Somehow, through it all we managed to remain brothers in Christ. When I wasn’t wishing Frank gone, I found myself loving him.
I ministered to him with care through his decline. And now I found myself about to stand before the congregation to say some words over this opponent, this enigma, this brother.
What was there to say-except that maybe Frank is each one of us in bold relief, each with our goodness, each with our sins, each with that unsanctified portion. I couldn’t in good faith stand up and laud Frank, but I could laud the God who shows grace to the Frank that each one of us is. I chose not to render judgment on Frank but rather to offer Frank up to the loving judgment of the God in whom he believed.
Reflecting on this experience, I realized I was often more infatuated with my grandiose plans than with being a caring shepherd to the flock. The church is neither a social club that exists solely for fellowship nor an agency aimed at changing the world (and pity the resistant individual who gets in our way). Rather we are a loving community with a God-given mission. That mission is to proclaim God’s love, and in our inner workings our community is to reflect God’s love. Even to Frank. And even to me.
-Name withheld
Copyright © 1989 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
