With numerous public speaking honors under my belt, I arrived at a small-town church in Oklahoma and began giving sermons as sparkling as my resume.
The congregation's response was gracious, but not all of them caught fire with the fervency I had in mind. Especially the deacons. Most of them were young, and I decided they lacked the maturity to appreciate my sermons.
There was one exception: Vilas Copple. Vilas was older, around 50. An oil worker, he also sang in the choir and supported my efforts to light a fire under the deacons.
We discussed this for an hour after the deacons' meeting one Monday evening. Then we parted to go home. As soon as I walked in the door, the phone rang. It was Vilas. He'd arrived home to find his wife collapsed, dead on the floor. They'd eaten together that evening and she had seemed in perfect health. Would I come over? Of course. It was my job.
On the way, I wondered what I was going to say. This wasn't like preparing a sermon, where I had time and books to consult. This was the real thing. A man's wife, his loving companion, was dead. This was as real as it gets. Although it was my job, I could think of nothing to say. After the coroner had come and gone and the body was taken away, Vilas and I sat in his living room for hours, mostly in silence. There were a few barely audible prayers that were mostly whispered. Confronted for the first time with a human being in critical need, I had nothing to say.
Dawn was breaking when I returned home. One of the clearest memories of that entire night was looking at myself in the mirror as I brushed my teeth and wondering, What are you doing in this business? I went to bed thinking about what other lines of work I could get into. Nothing came to mind.
Two years later I received a call to another church. I was excited to go, but it was also a time of sadness, parting with a congregation that had been so understanding and supportive of their young pastor. They had taught me a lot and assured me I'd done the same for them. In looking back, I got the better deal.
It was the last Sunday, the last sermon. Even some of the choir, who usually went directly to the choir room to hang up their robes after the service, were in line to shake hands and share a hug with their pastor. I looked up and there was Vilas, big tears rolling down his rugged red face. Vilas took my hand in both of his, looked me straight in the eye and said, "Bob, I could never have made it through that night without you."
There was no need to explain what he meant by "that night," but it was by no means apparent why he couldn't have made it through without me. That was the night I'd felt totally unworthy and incapable of doing anything helpful, the night I was painfully aware I lacked the words and power to function in a catastrophe, to penetrate the trauma with at least a glimmering of hope.
But for Vilas, that was the night he couldn't have made it through without me.
