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It is unnerving to say that the most godly person I have ever known is my father, James "Buck" Hatch, who turns 80 this year—unnerving because he has never been a tower of strength. Those of us who have known him best saw his weaknesses as clearly as his strengths. Grace amid weakness is, I suppose, the theme of this birthday tribute, for it was through his brokenness, not his strength, that he brought healing attention to the shadowed interior rooms of people's lives. His life has much to say about the nature of Christian ministry.

A painfully shy person, always near the brink of depression, Buck has experienced life more as a vale of tears than as a vista of opportunities. I often remember Dad coming to dinner—a boisterous affair with four sons—and just sitting at the table, not uttering a word.

His life cannot be canonized as an all-American success story. It was his father who had been the Horatio Alger type, rising from poverty on a hard-scrabble North Carolina farm to ownership of a prosperous hosiery mill in Charlotte. My father had little use for the respectability my grandfather sought. Driving a Pierce Arrow, owning a fashionable home, joining the country club-these did nothing to fill the void of a soul not at home with itself.

Why his eldest son consistently forfeited opportunities for success was an enormous puzzle to my grandfather. An honors student at Duke University, Buck abandoned his pursuit of a career in medicine, much to his father's dismay, after a powerful conversion experience drew him toward the ministry. He served for a time as a Presbyterian minister in Mississippi and then did graduate work in psychology at the University of Chicago under the renowned Carl Rogers. Once again he refused to use his degree as a professional springboard. He went to work for what his father feared was an upstart, fundamentalist institution, Columbia Bible College. To my grandfather, a dyed-in-the-wool member of Charlotte's staid First Presbyterian Church, this made no sense.

Without fanfare, for over 40 years, my father has poured himself into people at Columbia Bible College and the surrounding community. Year after year he taught classes in Scripture, biblical hermeneutics, psychology, and family life. His office was open ten hours a week for counseling, a pattern he continues today without charging a fee.

My parents' relationship has been a model of gentleness and mutual respect. Dad was the most untypical Southern gentlemen I have known. He didn't wait around to be waited upon. From bathing the children to washing the dishes, he did whatever would be of most help to my mother. Mother, in turn, used our home and her warm hospitality to enhance Buck's calling. Their commitment to a common ministry cemented their beautiful relationship. Toward this end, they gladly submitted themselves to each other.

Dad has been no respecter of persons. He has naturally gravitated to "little" people, the ungifted, the unattractive, those often regarded as unlovely, or troublesome, or unuseful. One deeply wounded person whom he counseled for years wrote, "You have been Jesus in flesh and bone to me."

As an adolescent, I could never understand how the ministry of my shy and private father reverberated with such power in people's lives. When he taught, people listened, riveted. When he preached, people's views of God and themselves changed, often in dramatic ways. And when he counseled, broken people tasted healing.

No amount of analysis can explain the contagious quality of love he radiates: he is a vessel simply brimming with the powerful love of Christ. But it is instructive to think about the central characteristics of his life and ministry.

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November 14 1994, Vol. 38, No. 13