Remembering a Friend

I have thought for awhile that, since many of my chief influencers in ministry are older, I was in for some painful goodbyes in the coming days. Today, God called my friend and former senior pastor Cortez Cooper to be with himself. Corty was eighty years old, and always the portrait of robust health. He modeled that stanza in "How Firm a Foundation,"

E'en down to old age all your people shall prove,

Your sovereign, eternal unchangeable love.

Corty was a modest man, not given to talk much about himself, but every once in awhile, you'd find out interesting tidbits about him. Ronald Reagan used to come hear him preach during his days as pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Nashville. God used him to bring NASCAR legend Daryl Waltrip to faith, and Corty is the reason Daryl began to drive for Tide. He had pastored First Nashville for ten years. The declining fidelity of the Southern Presbyterian Church, and its impending merger with the far more liberal and larger PCUSA led the church to vote as to whether or not to leave. Though the congregation voted in the majority to leave the old denomination, the session (at Corty's suggestion) had insisted on a super-majority, which they did not give.

Corty resigned, and went to plant a church. First Church wanted to provide finances, and Corty refused their offer. He and several hundred (out of a church of several thousand) went and started Christ Presbyterian, which grew huge under his leadership.

Yet, for all of this, the size of a church mattered not at all to Corty. We first met Corty when I interviewed to become his assistant pastor at Draper's Valley Presbyterian in rural Southwestern Virginia. His wife, Pat, had deep roots in that church. Her father, Preston Sartelle, Sr., and her brother, Preston, Jr., had been pastors of the church. Corty retired from his position as coordinator for Mission to North America. He and Pat now occupied full-time the lovely antebellum home they had purchased while he worked in Atlanta.

When we visited, the Coopers insisted that we stay with them. At first, it might seem strange to spend several days living with the man who was evaluating you for a position, but he and his wife literally met us at the car door, hugging us both. We felt at home immediately.

Corty was planning to retire (again). He wanted a faithful assistant that might succeed him as the pastor of Draper's Valley. This is, in fact, what happened. Though he and I were wired very differently, there was never a moment's friction between us. We went through some very rough times together. He was like a patient grandfather, and I learned a lot from him about how to be a pastor.

His wife, Pat, was a true mentor to my wife. She was strong, and very firm in her opinions, and yet modeled a quiet graciousness. She did not speak much, but when she did, she could cut through a fog of opinion with a simple, poignant question. She was a true help meet to her husband. She is a model of comfortable hospitality --she taught my wife that the house did not need to be perfect in order for it to be welcoming (though hers was both!). She often told the story of phoning her pastor-father from Davidson College saying, "Daddy, I met a boy, but he's a Baptist!!" Well, in God's good providence, he did not stay a Baptist. She is very much in our thoughts today. It is hard for us to think about Pat without Corty, so joined were they.

That said, it would be impossible to measure up for him. He had such a zest for life and a zest for people. He could make you feel loved and at home in an instant --he was a people magnet. When Corty retired and the church called me, he immediately began a string of interim pastorates so that he would be "out of the way" (though I always wished he had stayed "in the way!" We missed them terribly when they left). He served churches in transition. Some of these churches were very small. One was a remnant group of just a few dozen. Others were some of the leading churches of our denomination (Kirk of the Hills St. Louis and Chapelgate Baltimore). He was still doing this when he died.

God brings people like this into our lives as a precious, fragile gift. I do not have a whole host of friends, but the friends I do have are deep wells. I praise God for the elder brothers he has given me along the journey. Part of friendship is pain --deep grief when a friend is called to glory. I lost a friend my age a few years ago --that was painful. I have now lost a friend 40 years my senior --this is painful too. Lord, in your grace let me be just a little like my friend Corty Cooper.

The Power of a Living Voice

We had an incredible time on Broadway. Ever since I can remember, I have been a huge fan of the live theater. For a small city, Grand Rapids had a fairly live theater scene, and I was privileged, growing up, to see quite a few shows. Since then, Pittsburgh and its grand theaters have filled the bill on our visits there.

Though I had been to Broadway once before (in its seedy days), I had never gotten to see a show. Through the generosity of some friends, we were able to see not just one show, but three. It was an awesome experience. At one, somehow I managed to get front-row center seats --nothing quite like that. At another, I got to be in the same room with Brooke Shields --Brooke Shields! The third was a lark --we had finished dinner on Monday night, and decided to go to the TKTS booth to see what was available. Most shows are dark on Monday, and we got there about 7:35 (most curtains are at 8). Nonetheless, at that time, the tickets are cheap, and the seats were grand --just one look and I can hear a bell ring, one more look and I forget everything... Pretty fun show.

What is it about live performance that makes it so compelling? Yes, movies can be awesome and profound, but there is something magical about live actors on the stage. Actors develop a dynamic between them and their audience, something that is missing from a screen (and perhaps in acting in front of a camera). Feedback is instantaneous. There is laughter and applause. There is a sense that they are with you or they aren't.

Some have hypothesized that the great revivalist orator George Whitefield was a frustrated actor. There are some similarities between acting and preaching --the great allure of being the center of attention of a crowd. The feeling can be very much like this:

The costumes, the scenery, the makeup, the props
The audience that lifts you when you're down
The headaches, the heartaches, the backaches, the flops
The sheriff who escorts you out of town
The opening when your heart beats like a drum
The closing when the customers won't come...

There is a drama to good preaching, to be sure, and preachers are human and like some measure of notice and acclaim --though of course we shouldn't be in preaching for notice or acclaim.

God puts his word on a printed page for a reason --so it might be a fixed verity, a point of truth, a standard, like the official weights and measures kept under lock and key by the government so they will not be altered.

But, he gives his word a living human voice, in part because he wired us to find this compelling. Ours is not a day of great orators. There are no Bryans on the Platte or FDRs or Churchills on the wireless. Still and all, we love a living voice. Like Nipper sitting on the coffin listening to the phonograph, we recognize our master's voice. "My sheep know my voice and they follow me...another they will not follow."

God spoke through the prophets, and through his son. Now, he speaks through fallible, human spokesmen who are faithful to his word, who can embrace and be embraced, who bleed, who empathize, who fail and make mistakes just like their hearers. On the one hand, it seems so very foolish (1 Cor 1) --but on the other hand, it seems so very wise.

Let's Try This Again --NYC living redux.

As we wandered around New York over those four glorious days, I pondered a bit what New York must be like for New Yorkers --not those going from one site to another, but rather those who spend their workaday lives there. We saw New York from the Circle Line boat (a fascinating tour, even though Irene kept us from circumnavigating the island), and from the Top of the Rock (with 8000 of our closest friends). But, what about the person who drops into a hole in the ground a few blocks from his apartment, and emerges a few blocks from his office, day in and day out, in blowing snow and soaking rain?

Our view of New York is one of a holiday weekend, with lovely weather, and diminished busyness (except, of course, for Times Square). Is New York as fascinating for New Yorkers as it is for out-of-towners? Is it as fun in January as September?

I have never lived in a big city, though I love them. I have remarked often to my wife that, if we lived in Pittsburgh, I would go to the Strip District (a wholesale multi-ethnic food extravaganza) every week to buy my groceries at the Italian grocers. But would I really? Wouldn't I just go to the local corner supermarket and the big box retailer? It’s hard to say. Big cities are fun places to visit, but then again, I don’t have the three hour round-trip commute our boat tour guide has.

I think I would like to try living in a big city someday. The mix of ethnicities, the wonderful food, the atmosphere of life, the arts scene, the neighborhood feel would be all very enjoyable. If I never get to do that in this life, I know that I shall in the next. One of the great comforts for me about Heaven is knowing that the believer will never miss out. If I don’t make it to Salzburg or St. Petersburg or Paris in this life, I know that what awaits me is far more glorious. If I never complete my bucket list of places to visit and experiences to have, I will have an eternity of endless fascination to enjoy. I long for that day.

What Would It Be Like to Live in NYC?

As we wandered around New York over those four glorious days, I pondered a bit what New York must be like for New Yorkers --not those going from one site to another, but rather those who spend their workaday lives there. We saw New York from the Circle Line boat (a fascinating tour, even though Irene kept us from circumnavigating the island), and from the Top of the Rock (with 8000 of our closest friends). But, what about the person who drops into a hole in the ground a few blocks from his apartment, and emerges a few blocks from his office, day in and day out, in blowing snow and soaking rain?

Our view of New York is one of tourists on a holiday weekend, with lovely weather, and diminished busyness (except, of course, for Times Square). Is New York as fascinating for New Yorkers as it is for out-of-towners? Is it as fun in January as September?

I have never lived in a big city, though I love them. I have remarked often to my wife that, if we lived in Pittsburgh, I would go to the Strip District (a wholesale multi-ethnic food extravaganza) every week to buy my groceries at the Italian grocers. But would I really? Wouldn't I just go to the local corner supermarket and the big box retailer? It’s hard to say. Big cities are fun places to visit, but then again, I don’t have the three hour round-trip commute our boat tour guide has.
I think I would like to try living in a big city someday. The mix of ethnicities, the wonderful food, the atmosphere of life, the arts scene, the neighborhood feel would be all very enjoyable. If I never get to do that in this life, I know that I shall in the next. One of the great comforts for me about Heaven is knowing that the believer will never miss out. If I don’t make it to Salzburg or St. Petersburg or Paris in this life, I know that what awaits me is far more glorious. If I never complete my bucket list of places to visit and experiences to have, I will have an eternity of endless fascination to enjoy. I long for that day.

Lunching on the Cathedral Steps...

The Cathedral of St. John the Divine sits in a lovely neighborhood not far from Central Park. By happy accident on our way there we happened upon the famous Tom's Diner, known to the world as "Monk's," where Jerry and George often held court. Having heard my wife's plea not to plan our entire trip around eating, we found a wonderful Italian grocery, and got a roast beef sandwich to go.

We had the loveliest lunch resting on the capacious steps of St. John the Divine (hearafter SJD). SJD began its life as the world's largest vanity project --it remains the world's largest cathedral, unfinished and with no immediate plans to finish. I say it was a vanity project because New York's Episcopalians wanted a rival to Midtown's famous St. Patrick's. Now it stands there, in its awkward unfinished state, still massively impressive. Its North Transept was destroyed by fire, filling the rest of the sanctuary with soot and smoke. The main sanctuary was cleaned and reopened; the North transept was never re-built.

The Cathedral is impressive because of its tapestries, its landmark Aeolian-Skinner organ (the gold standard in church organs and one of two grand organs in New York I had the misfortune of not hearing played!), its art and its bizarre multi-culturalism. It is here that a woman performed an "Aids Mass" by drenching herself in cattle blood (where is PETA when you need them?). It is here that a female Christ figure is displayed, with jetliners crashing through her hands. The temporary exhibit was a circle of some sort of deer skulls from the West on poles. This is not something one would see in the average Presbyterian sanctuary.

New York is filled with grand edifices. I would have loved to see the famous Riverside Church, which John D. Rockefeller, liberal Christian philanthropist, built as a cathedral to progressivism, for his favorite pastor, Harry E. Fosdick, and where the famous organist Virgil Fox warred with a subsequent Mrs. Rockefeller for the right to play his magnificent Skinner at full volume for church preludes. The gospel is still heard in some of these grand edifices (Doug Webster, an evangelical PCUSA minister who now pastors Central Presbyterian in New York, was a guest at my church this last Sunday --his brother-in-law is my assistant). I doubt it is heard at SJD, at least not part of the regular diet.

I love beauty. I love cathedrals. Our current age finds them prohibitively expensive to build, and a misappropriation of resources that might be better directed at missions and mercy. I wonder, though, why so many massive, formerly faithful churches sit vacant or, alternately, those that remain don't tell men and women of the good news of the free grace of God abounding in Jesus Christ to the penitent sinner. I wonder why so many (or the few) go in for the poor substite of deer skulls or female Jesuses or cow's blood masses.

And then I rejoice that the gospel goes forth. Manhattan houses some fine church edifices, but it houses many fine churches that don't meet in those fine edifices --thou art within no walls confined, as an old hymn has it. I am glad the gospel is going forth in New York. I am glad it is finding stock brokers and homeless people. I am glad for Jim Cymbala in Brooklyn and the late David Wilkerson in Times Square and for Tim Keller and for a host of faithful others. God has his people in that great city and he doesn't need cathedrals, as beautiful as they are, to accomplish his work.

Brokenness Is No Fun

It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply... A. W. Tozer

I refer to the last year or so of life around our house as "The Year of Things Breaking." The list is too long to recount: dishwasher, new dryer, freezer, coffee maker, computer, printer and my wife's engagement ring --I am sure there are other things too! Brokenness is no fun.

Though it is aggravating when it comes to our material possessions, it is far more painful when it happens to our selves. Those who would serve the Lord will, without exception, find themselves being broken --and it is no fun.

There are various ways that God does this. In my own experience, it has been through health issues for my wife and eldest daughter. God can do it through the stubborn resistance of a much-detested indwelling pet sin. He can do it with business reversals, rebellious children, or a challenging church situation. He does it, the Westminster Confession says, for his own good purposes, a reason that sounded hollow to Job and often sounds the same to us. It is no mystery that the Psalms are filled with the "Why me?" question.

Yet, there are reasons. First, if we are to be used of God, we need to be broken. To be broken means to be disabused of our neat and tidy view of life. We begin Christian adulthood with hopes and dreams --grand aspirations for our families, for our careers, for our ministries. We soon encounter cold, hard realities. The child we groomed to be a star student struggles and needs remedial help. The son upon whom we pinned athletic glory doesn't show much interest in anything. The church on which we pinned great hopes for ministry success struggles along a bumpy road. Our own bodies are felled and hindered by unexpected illness.

People who are not broken are insufferable. People with all the answers --with perfect families as the result of perfect methods, and perfect outcomes. People with perfect churches that go according to perfect plans, and attract perfect people. Such, really, do not exist. It is an illusion --a facade constructed for public show, a path to glory without pain. It is a false path; it does not exist.

God's strength is perfected in weakness. How slow we are to learn that. The treasure of the gospel is put in jars of clay so that we can claim no credit for helping it succeed. Speaking of my own experience, the paltry little bit of suffering I have experienced has made me far more empathetic with others than I would be otherwise.

You cannot be a minister or an elder without empathy, I don't think. You can't remain cold, distant and clinical and really minister to people. You have to hurt for them and with them. That means you have to open yourself up to hurt. This, in itself, is not pleasant. You cannot proceed with the "I have no need of friendship, friendship causes pain..." self-protection mentality. You have to open yourself up to public shame. You cannot love your own reputation. You have to be willing to empty yourself as Jesus did. You cannot hire others to do your dirty work; you are called to be a servant, and there is nothing beneath your doing. You have not risen too high to change a bedpan.

I have often felt very broken. It is perhaps the worst feeling in the world. It can feel like life is unraveling without much hope. As Psalm 42 says, our experience can be like that of drowning under all God's waves and breakers rolling over us. This hurts. We have two options: it can make us withdrawn, private, chilly individuals for whom self-protection trumps being useful to God or we can allow ourselves to be broken.

Christ was broken. He was not only crushed physically, but spiritually. He emptied himself of reputation. There was no grandeur and earthly glory in what he did. He was despised and rejected by men and, for a time, by his own Father. He did this, though, for the greater good of bringing many sons to glory. The pathway to glory is through suffering --there is simply no other way. If our chief goal in life is to serve God, then we have already made our choice. We have chosen to be broken and to bleed --but not for no purpose. We have chosen it so that we might be useful to God, and humble before others.

But It's My Opinion --How Do We Know When We're Right or Wrong?

One of the hardest things in the life of the church is a difference of opinion. Far too often, minds are made up with few facts, and assessments are skewed by our life experiences, emotion and subjectivity. The clash results when opinions are closed to reason, or any thought that I might be wrong. Healthy self-doubt is good for the Christian --we can pretend we are as fair and objective, and really believe we are (far so than the other guy), and yet be miles away from God's will on any given subject.

Scripture, however, gives us some guidance in this. How do we know that we are rendering a wise, godly opinion? James tells us:


James 3:13-18 Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

First, it is held in meekness. The anger of men generally does not serve the purposes of God. Yes, there are occasions for righteous anger, but they are few and far between, and usually not on matters of difference between believers. In matters where truth and righteousness are not at stake, being tentative is a virtue.

Second, it is pure. It does not act from selfish motive, concern about the opinions of others, or one's own standing or selfish advantage. It seeks the welfare of God and others above its own.

Third, it is peaceable It does not provoke or seek quarrels. It ratchets down the temperature of discussions. This is one reasons elders are to be men without hot tempers --a hot temper usually equals foolish decisions.

Fourth, it is gentle. The wisdom of God is not harsh, unyielding, demanding and performance-driven. These are not godly qualities.

Fifth, it is open to reason. How often have I seen in church debates where men have said "I have made up my mind and you aren't going to change it." That is an inherently godless position; it goes against what Scripture here says. God hears us out; he considers our cause; he even "changes his mind" (I know, that's anthropopathic language, but it proves my point. To our appearances, God changes his mind). God is reasonable and open to entreaty and his servants ought to be too.

Sixth, it is fraught with mercy. A Christian should be quick to forgive and quick to seek forgiveness. He cannot live comfortably at odds with another Christian. He needs to put himself in the position of his opponent, to try to see things from his perspective, to understand him.

Seventh it is impartial. It does not regard persons, does not favor anyone, but considers all facts. It is not done out of malice or prejudice against a person.

Eighth, it is sincere This is difficult. We may sometimes know when we are being insincere, but we are capable of being sincerely wrong and heinously so. Sincerity by itself is nothing; it must be joined to these other fruits, if we are to find assurance we are in the right.

Ninth, the result is peace. I have seen torn session rooms come together by wise counsel. Men who were greatly at odds calm down, reason through, and someone proposes a solution. It satisfies everyone, and everyone leaves smiling.

I reiterate: these things must hang together. Separately, each can delude and become dangerous. A smattering of them is not enough --they must hang together. They are qualities of character and they can only come from the Spirit. Without him, is no wisdom at all.