When everything is going well in a pastor’s life, spiritual vitality isn’t immediately obvious. We expect joy in a leader whose family and ministry are healthy. It’s when circumstances start to disintegrate that character becomes most visible. As Paul, suffering from a painful affliction, learned from the Lord, “My grace is enough for you: for where there is weakness, my power is shown the more completely” (2 Cor. 12:9, Phillips).
One pastor who has shown vitality in weakness is Bob Davis. Sixteen years ago he came to Old Cutler Presbyterian Church, a splintered, 46-member congregation in Miami, and over time he helped it become the largest Protestant church in the city. But then he began to notice something was wrong-dreadfully wrong-with his mind.
Bob’s story is not the usual LEADERSHIP article. But we think it helps demonstrate the grace of Christ released within a minister who trusts him.
Bob had already preached twice this Christmas Eve, but he didn’t feel tired; in fact, he was getting stronger. As he sat in the heavy wood chair and looked out past the pulpit, where he would soon preach a third time, he felt a rush of joy. The candles flickered light off the deep-brown paneled walls, and as the children sang in their high soprano voices, it felt as if the sanctuary had been transformed into King Arthur’s Camelot.
Bob’s mind drifted back to his first Christmas Eve service at Old Cutler. He wasn’t even pastor then, just filling in. In October his predecessor had called the Christian school where Bob was an administrator. “The Session and church don’t know this,” he’d told Bob, “but my wife and children have already left, and I’m leaving right now. If you’re not there Sunday, there’s not going to be anyone. Frankly, I don’t care.” The last thing Bob wanted was to take a small, fractured mission that was ready to sell its building to pay off debts. He had served four pastorates and was nearing forty, and he was ready for a larger, smoother ship. He was bored, though, with school administration-figuring prices of half-pint boxes of milk and how to keep bus drivers content. Maybe God was calling him to a new assignment.
O Lord, he prayed, scanning the full sanctuary, Thanks for what you’ve done. I never could get an evangelism program going here, and yet look at the people you’ve brought to us. As Bob saw person after person who had come to Christ through Old Cutler, his irrepressible forward-looking nature kicked in. Lord, I pray we can double in size in the next five years and truly be a light for you here in dark Miami.
That week Bob again talked with the consultants who were helping the church chart a five-year plan for growth. It was hard to tell who was more excited about the church’s possibilities. For almost a year now, they had wrestled with the obstacles to their growth, a major one being the Dade County regulation that any new church construction be on at least five acres. Since virtually no five-acre parcels were available (or affordable), it was nearly impossible to build a new church in the county.
Old Cutler could have expanded on the existing site, but Bob and the staff and Session had a growing conviction the church should be taken closer to the people. So they had latched on to a daring concept of “chapels.” The church would rent space in shopping centers and have a pastor at each site to lead family activities, Bible studies, children’s clubs, and other outreach events. People in the neighborhood could easily get to them, and they would have to drive to the main sanctuary only on Sundays. They’d have the advantages of a large church-youth programs and specialized music-yet have a nearby center to bring neighbors to.
“I get charged just thinking about it,” Bob said. “This model could help every church that faces a real estate squeeze.”
That afternoon Bob headed home to lie down for a couple of hours. Several months ago, he had started feeling unusually tired. The doctor figured it was a liver dysfunction and ordered him to lie on his back two hours each afternoon. As Bob got ready to head back to the church, he told his wife, Betty, “With this chapel thing, I feel as if I’m standing on a mountain surveying the Promised Land. I’m ready to enter.”
Early in January, Bob and Betty packed up their cream-colored Pontiac and headed for the mountains of North Carolina, as they usually did. Bob used these three weeks each year to do long-range sermon planning and writing, and usually he would come home with fifteen or sixteen messages. He worked on them all at once moving from one to the other. Bob loved preparing sermons, but this year he felt a little bored with it. Or maybe tired was the word. He would get a thought, and by the time he found the message where it belonged and started writing, he had forgotten the idea.
“I just don’t have anything new this time,” he told Betty as they began the drive south to Miami. “It’s like there is a blank wall in front of me. I finished only eight sermons, and they’re just not good enough.”
As they got closer to Miami, though, Bob’s spirits lifted. He thought about when he had first decided to take the pastorate there. “Why would you want to go to that drug-infested, Godforsaken place?” someone had asked him.
“Well,” Bob had finally replied, “in order to keep running, every factory needs raw material; and as a church in Miami, we will never run out of it.”
Bob enjoyed the new-members’ brunch in February. Leading these was one of his favorite ministerial duties, because everyone who was ready to join the church would stand and tell the elders and their spouses how he or she had come to Christ. Bob broke the ice with a few remarks and then introduced each of the elders. When he got to the third one, he said, “And this is someone who’s been with us a long time, and over the past three years we’ve gotten to know each other as close friends. In fact, maybe he’s gotten to know me closer than he wanted to.” Everybody laughed, but then Bob realized he couldn’t think of the elder’s name. He looked blank for a few moments, his mind frantically rummaging for the name, but he couldn’t come up with it. The elder finally realized what was happening and volunteered, “Harland Hyde.”
Bob responded, “And one of the things Harland knows about me now is that I’m 53 and old enough to start forgetting names.” Everybody laughed again. Later, the stories from the new members lifted Bob.
Afterward, Bob felt embarrassed about losing the elder’s name, but nobody could remember everything. Take greeting people at the door after Sunday services: Maybe twenty-five of them would have specific requests to follow up, such as “My mother’s going in the hospital this week.” Until last year, he had been able to remember all those until he got home, but it was no big deal now to carry a mini-cassette recorder in his pocket to record the messages. The system had worked well the past few months, and that way, he was sure not to lose any messages.
“Honey,” Betty said to him one day late in March. Bob didn’t answer.
“Bob,” Betty said, a little louder, trying to get his attention. “Bob!”
“You don’t have to yell at me,” he said.
“But that was the third time I called you,” she protested. “If you’d answer the first time, I wouldn’t have to.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I must have a lot on my mind right now.”
“I was trying to tell you,” she continued, “that I think you should go see the doctor again. It’s been months now, and you still have that persistent cough, and you’re chronically tired.” She paused. “In fact, maybe you should have your hearing checked. You don’t realize it, but you don’t answer me till the second or third time an awful lot lately.”
“I can hear just fine,” Bob said, closing the subject.
That night, after Betty was asleep, he stayed up reading Louis L’Amour’s Dark Canyon. When he wanted to relax, there was nothing like a good Western. Tonight, though, when he got to chapter 6, he spread open the book and placed it like a tent over his leg. I wonder what’s wrong with me, he thought. I’ve never let anything slow me down before. Bob remembered the time back in ’85 when he’d had a kidney stone out, and he grinned. He had preached in the morning and then checked into the emergency room and had IVs running all afternoon. He was scheduled for surgery the next morning and half knocked out on Darvon, but he got the doctor to let him leave long enough to narrate the big cantata at 6:00. There’s a job to do, you do it, he thought. But with this cough . . . and I feel wiped out all the time. Maybe it’s my diabetes kicking up. And I used to be able to knock out all those budget figures in my head, but now it seems more and more I have to use the adding machine or I can’t hold on to them. Betty’s right. It’s time to take charge of whatever this problem is. Bob pulled out the drawer of the nightstand and grabbed a pad and a pen. He began writing a long letter to the doctor.
The next day he swung by the medical building and followed the familiar path to Dr. Yeh’s office. Billy, a renowned internist and cardiologist, was a member of the congregation and a friend.
“What is it, Bob?” he asked.
“I have been feeling tired for over a year, and especially since the fall. Some days I’m so weak I can hardly move. I know the reading on the liver isn’t right, but I’ve been resting like you told me to, and I’m still fatigued, and my mind is foggy. You have tried every medicine you know, and you have referred me to the best specialists in southern Florida. I am so grateful for the way you have taken on this illness as a personal challenge. But I have got to have some solution. Here, I wrote out the symptoms so you’d have them for the file.” Bob reached across the desk with the letter he had written. Dr. Yeh scanned it and then looked up. His eyes met Bob’s.
“I can tell you’re concerned, Bob, and you know I am, too. Why don’t we put you in the hospital for some tests?” Bob hated the thought of entering the hospital now, when the chapel concept needed his attention and the spring music program was spreading its wings, but if he got the problem taken care of, he could throw himself back into his work.
After days of nuclear scans, gaseous studies, allergy tests, and dozens of tests Bob had never heard of, the doctors could find nothing. Bob and Betty couldn’t hide their surprise. “We recommend a more thorough check for heart insufficiency,” the doctors said. “Perhaps something has been missed in previous studies.”
An angiogram showed one blood vessel was 95 percent plugged, and Bob was quickly transferred to South Miami Hospital for coronary angioplasty. Bob felt glad to be able to report something to everyone in the church who was praying for him.
With the type of anesthesia the doctors used, Bob was awake. He felt when they inserted the balloon-tipped catheter into his left leg and began threading it toward his heart. Bob tried to relax as much as he could with the glare of the operating room lights and the cluster of masked surgeons and nurses around him. Suddenly one of the doctors looked agitated. “Hit him with the paddles!” he yelled, somewhat muffled by his mask.
The other surgeon kept working and responded, “No, I think I’m going to get it.”
“You better hit him with the paddles-he’s a straight line!” the first one insisted.
“No,” said the other surgeon, “I’m getting it.”
I sure hope you’re right, Bob thought.
He must have been; several hours later Bob was in recovery. Three or four days after that, when Bob had been transferred from the CCU to a regular room, he felt well enough to read. He picked up the book he had brought to the hospital and plunged in. When he reached page 10, he stopped. That’s funny, he thought. I don’t even remember what these pages were about. I probably got too much of the anesthesia. He put the book away.
The next morning, Betty was with him when he decided to get back into his book. After five or ten minutes, he stopped reading and looked over at her. “Something’s wrong,” he said. “I can’t follow what I’m reading. I’ve read every Louis L’Amour there is, and I can follow a Robert Ludlum or Agatha Christie mystery without any trouble. But I can’t remember one bit of these first ten pages.”
“Well, try something other than reading,” Betty suggested. “How about those math problems you like to do in your head?” Bob’s high school teacher had said he was a genius in mathematics. He didn’t know whether it was true, but he did enjoy entertaining himself with mental mathematics. Right now, though, nothing would come. He asked Betty for a pad and pencil, and he jotted a few division problems. Maybe if he could see them, he could work on them. After a moment he looked up at Betty, eyes wide. “I can’t do them,” he said.
Late that afternoon, the doctor came by on his rounds. “How are you feeling today?” he asked with a smile.
“Something is wrong,” Bob replied and told him about his memory loss.
“Do you think something could have happened while he was on the operating table?” Betty asked.
“Absolutely not,” the doctor said. “The surgery was routine, and nothing of the sort could have happened.”
That night, when everyone was gone and the top of the bed was reclined to sleeping height, Bob looked up to the ceiling and felt alone. Utterly alone. Nobody understood what was happening to him. He didn’t either. But he knew that unless something changed, all his dreams and hopes for Old Cutler-everything he hat worked for-would be gone. How could he pastor if he couldn’t remember one page he had read? His chest began to shake gently with a slow sob. O Lord, he prayed, I need you.
Gradually Bob regained his strength, and the days leveled into a routine of monitoring oxygen levels in the blood, reading cards from people, eating hospital meals, thinking. One night he couldn’t sleep, so he decided to remember some of the places he and Betty had been. Bob never bothered to take camera or film when they traveled; he had a near-photographic memory and could recall scenes with detail. Remembering vistas always seemed to comfort him. Tonight, though, his mind went black. He couldn’t imagine the Smokies, or North Carolina, or Toccoa Falls. Nothing would come. He tried desperately to remember even one place, and when no scene appeared, he started breathing fast. Well, I’ll always remember what Mother looked like, he thought to himself. He tried to picture her face. Blackness.
Bob had always enjoyed tender moments of expressing his love to Christ in the drifting minutes before sleep, but since the surgery, the warmth and peace he had felt for thirty-five years were gone. He tried to pray yet felt orphaned. At this moment when I need you most, Lord, why would you abandon me? Bob prayed. Is there some sin I have committed? Why would you take away the sense of your presence?
He flicked on the reading lamp that swung out from the wall and reached for the Bible on his nightstand. But after reading two pages, he couldn’t remember any of it. He flung the Bible back on the nightstand. If he couldn’t read, at least he could recall the portions of Scripture he had memorized. “I am the good shepherd” came back to him, and he sighed with relief. “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they know me.” But when Bob tried to remember other verses, they started spitting into his mind at random, as if generated by some computer gone TILT. “Remember Lot’s wife,” “He that is not with me is against me,” “No man can enter into a strong man’s house, and spoil his goods, except he will first bind the strong man.” The unsorted barrage only made him feel worse. He had to close his eyes and breathe slowly and deeply to get calm again.
Bob left the hospital that week with a car trunk filled with flowers, potted plants, and cards, but with not a shred of diagnosis. And he still had the cough. He had kept saying, “There is something wrong with my mind,” but the hospital physicians told him, “Reverend Davis, we believe this is only temporary, though you do have to accept that you are getting older. You cannot expect to be as quick and sharp as you once were.” They told Dr. Yeh flatly, “There is not a thing wrong with him.”
Bob went into the church office the day he came home from the hospital, and he stayed longer and longer each succeeding day. It felt good to be back running meetings, talking with staff about the weekly reports, interviewing candidates for staff positions. The best part was seeing all the people again; after all these years, they were family. He knew the adults headed for chancel choir practice, the senior highers coming for Bible study, the little sprouts gathering for Sonseekers.
“How are you doing?” they asked him anxiously. “Are you feeling better?”
Bob would smile and say, “Every day I’m getting better and better. I know you’ve all been praying for me, and with more rest, I’ll be better than ever.”
Something, though, was still fuzzy in his brain. After a meeting about a staff problem, he did something he had never done: he pulled out a legal pad and jotted notes from the discussion. I can’t believe I’m doing this, Bob thought to himself disgustedly. A year ago I didn’t need a Day-Timer because I could remember a whole week’s appointments, and now I can’t remember what somebody said to me ten minutes ago.
“You know, Betty,” he said to her that evening over dinner, “the doctors keep saying I’m going to get over this. They think it’s psychological strain from all the stress I’m under. But I have searched my heart, and I know it’s not that. Even when we voted to take that big loan for the new sanctuary, I couldn’t sleep some nights, but I could always think clearly.”
Betty nodded.
“But maybe I do have some sort of mental illness. It’s not incomprehensible. Hey, if I need a psychologist or a psychiatrist, I don’t want to deny it; I want to fight it and get cured.”
The next week Bob and Betty were seated in front of a desk in a neuropsychologist’s office. “Now Reverend Davis,” the doctor began, “I know that being a minister, you may have some reservations about psychological care.”
“I don’t think you understand,” Bob cut in. “I’m the one who insisted upon my doctor finding you. I’ve referred people to psychologists for years. You have special skills. If I’m cracking up, if this is a breakdown, I want to know it.”
“Okay, okay,” the doctor said. “Then let’s begin some testing.” After conducting a thorough interview about Bob’s medical history, the doctor asked him to move to a table in the corner that had piles of Lego-like blocks on it. “Construct a pyramid for me, if you would please,” the doctor said when Bob was seated at the table. Bob started arranging blocks in front of him, and in fifteen seconds he had a pyramid suitable for any toy pharaoh.
“Good,” the doctor said. They continued this way through several other formations. Bob was beginning a house with a window and a door when he broke into a lengthy coughing spell. His face turned red, his eyes started to water, and by the time he was done, his throat hurt and he was breathing hard. He picked up a few blocks to finish building the house, but he wasn’t quite sure where to put them. He put a long one perpendicular to another long one he had on the foundation, but that didn’t look right. Bob placed a couple of more blocks, but then the house looked more jumbled.
“I’m not sure . . . I’m having trouble with this one now,” he said.
The doctor nodded. “I can see there is a definite dysfunction here, but we don’t know what’s causing it yet. Well,” he said to Bob, who was still catching his breath, “there is no use going on with this today. Go home and rest, and we’ll schedule more testing for another time.”
Bob worked hard to be cheerful during the Session meeting that evening, but inside he had never felt so heavy. I feel like a hypocrite, he thought. I’ve never felt so spiritually desolate. If somebody gives me an inspirational illustration of how God healed this leader or that, I’ll explode. The only thing that reassured him was knowing that Martin Luther, John Wesley, and other church leaders had also gone through long, dark nights of the soul. That phrase from the old hymn “Abide with Me” came back to him: “The darkness deepens; / Lord, with me abide.”
The next week on a steamy morning (as only Miami can be in May), Bob headed toward church in his black LeMans. He turned onto Old Cutler Road and looked at the bright red tropical flowers blooming on many trees and bushes. Then, suddenly, he didn’t know where he was. Cars were going by him in the other lane, he was approaching a light, but he didn’t know what to do then-Do I turn or go straight? He pulled right onto the shoulder, put the car in park, and tried to gather his thoughts. I’m heading to church, he told himself. But how do I get there? He felt as if he had just awakened in a hotel room, and he knew it wasn’t his bedroom, but he didn’t know where he was. He was breathing short, quick breaths when it came to him: This is Old Cutler Road. Our church is Old Cutler Church; it’s on this road. All I have to do is go straight down this road. Bob eased into traffic and headed north again.
By the time Bob got to the church, he was feeling tight, sharp pains in his chest. He didn’t stop to talk with anyone, but slid under his tongue the nitroglycerin he always carried with him. Then he went into his office and called Betty.
“Do you want me to come?” she asked.
“No, no,” Bob told her. “I want to stay and clear out a few things. I’ll see what happens.”
A half hour later, though, the pains were still intense. Bob drove home, Betty called the doctor, and before lunchtime he had been admitted to the intensive care unit at the hospital. Monitors showed the heart to be okay. But Bob still had a persistent cough, and the neuropsychologist needed to finish his testing, so a barrage of tests began. Bob was CAT-scanned and X-rayed. He had wires glued to his head for twenty-four hours for an EEG. His spine was tapped so the fluid could be checked for fungus. Every two days, doctors had him try a different inhaler, and soon he was so weak he could hardly make it to the bathroom. The only comfort was when the elders came, as they had before, to pray for him.
The doctors scheduled Bob for an MRI scan, and Betty helped Bob walk down to the large, white trailer in the hospital parking lot that held the expensive MRI equipment. Inside, there weren’t enough orange plastic chairs for them both to sit, so Betty stood and leaned against the wall. While they waited to be called, Bob idly looked over the card ordering the test. In the lower corner was a line labeled REASON FOR TEST. Beneath it someone had typed PRE-SENILE DEMENTIA. Bob looked up at Betty. He wanted to say something, but he couldn’t. He just passed her the card. She looked at it, and then looked down at Bob, and their eyes locked in a pained embrace. I’m done for, Bob thought. I’m a psych major, and I’ve seen those brains with dementia at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. They look like a sponge with all the juice wrung out.
But the MRI scan came back negative. Bob left the hospital, ten days after he had entered, so weak he had trouble getting into the car. The psychologist knew something was wrong-Bob couldn’t read with comprehension more than a page of material-but still there was no diagnosis.
At home the phone began to ring with calls from concerned parishioners. Bob felt grateful for their support, but invariably each conversation went this way: “So, what’s your diagnosis? What do they think is the problem?”
“They still don’t know,” Bob would say.
“Why not?” would be the answer. Bob would wince. He knew he didn’t look sick. And he wanted desperately to get well; he had tried everything he and the area’s best doctors knew.
“Why should there not be a diagnosis?” he burst out to Betty two days later. “This is the age of miracle medicine! After spending weeks in the hospital and almost forty thousand dollars, I think the least they could do is tell me what’s wrong.”
“Now, Bob, it takes time,” Betty said.
Bob shouted, “I have had enough! If they do not I have a diagnosis, why am I using these inhalers and medicines that are about killing me? If I am going to die, I would just as soon die natural and comfortable. Let’s leave all the doctors and hospitals and telephones and unanswerable questions behind, and just get in the car and head west.”
Betty did a double take, but when she could see he meant it, she said, “Okay,” and headed for the closet to pull out the suitcases.
As Bob lay in bed, not moving, the prayer he had prayed at his ordination drifted into his mind. An old district superintendent, one of the most godly men Bob had ever known, gathered the young men before the ceremony for a final challenge. “Yours is the task that has to be more true and trustworthy than a president’s or a king’s, because you will be representing the King of kings,” he said. “Let me give you the challenge that someone gave me many years ago on my ordination day: If you dare, ask God that he would strike you dead before you would do anything to dishonor Christ and the high calling of the gospel ministry that he is now placing upon you.” Bob had given the prayer considerable thought, and, trembling, he had prayed it. He looked over at the phone and then reached for it and began calling the administrative committee, the key leaders from the Session.
Later that evening they gathered in Bob’s living room: Bob in the recliner, Betty in the chair next to him, and the five men seated around facing them. “The reason I’ve called you here tonight,” Bob began, “is that I know something is going terribly wrong in my mind, but I don’t know what it is. I don’t know whether I’m having a breakdown or whether I’m physically ill.”
“The whole church is thinking about you and praying for you,” said one man quickly.
“And so,” Bob continued, looking at each man, “I can continue to minister only if you will promise me tonight you will be my watchdogs. My mind and personality may change; I may become power hungry, decide that I’m going to take over this place-there’s no telling what I might do. You men know my heart, and you know my philosophy. Old Cutler isn’t Bob Davis’s church; it is Jesus Christ’s church.
“I need your promise-the word of every one of you-that if I suddenly refuse to turn loose of the reins, or if I’m not carrying out the work properly, or if anything goes haywire in me that will bring disrepute to this church or the name of Christ, you will immediately go to the Session and remove me.”
The men shook their heads, half in disbelief and half in disagreement. “We can’t do that,” one said.
“There’s no way you would do something like that, Bob. We know you,” said another.
“You know who I am today,” Bob said, “but I have no guarantees who I will be tomorrow. And I’ve seen too many people, when they get incapable, grasp for power. I’ve got to have your word that you will remove me if necessary, or I will quit tonight.”
Someone suggested a time of prayer, and after much more talking and praying, the men agreed.
“Right now,” Bob finally said, “I am so weak I can’t walk from here to the door. I’d like to take a month off to go away and see if any of my strength will come back. Then I’d like to come back and preach these four sermons, and then we’ll see whether I can stay, or whether it will be farewell.”
The first few days, Bob and Betty didn’t travel much over a hundred miles each day. Gradually, Bob began to get stronger, and soon he was able to walk to roadside points of interest.
The worst time was at night. One night in a hotel room in Colorado, he woke up Betty with his screaming. “Are you all right?” she asked, rolling over. Bob didn’t answer. He was sitting straight up in bed, moaning, and his eyes were wide and his jaw clenched. Betty realized he must be having a nightmare. She quickly sat up, grabbed his arm with both hands, and began shaking him. “Bob! Bob! Wake up! It’s just a dream.” It took a couple of minutes before he finally looked around. Betty put her arm around his back and held him tight.
“The tiger. I wanted to get away, but I couldn’t,” Bob said. His pajamas were drenched with sweat.
“You were dreaming about a tiger?” Betty asked.
“No, it was like a trance, because nothing was moving. The tiger was close, with its fangs bared.”
“Didn’t you hear me calling you?”
“Yeah. I wanted to wake up, and I wanted to talk to you, but I couldn’t.”
The next day, as they drove north on I-25 toward Casper, Bob vocalized to Betty some of the prayers he had been silently screaming at God for weeks. “Why am I kidding myself, Betty? I can’t function in ministry any more. I can’t read the Bible. I forget appointments. I can’t remember what people said to me. All my life I’ve had a Plan B in case something happened, and now all my alternate plans are gone. Why? Why would God do that?”
Betty began to cry, so Bob quit talking. A memory came into his mind from his first church, a small, country parish in Williamsburg, Indiana. The pressure of pastoral work had driven his blood pressure sky high. The doctor tried various medicines, but nothing could bring it down. Finally the doctor had called in Bob and said, “The ministry is killing you. You can either leave it, or I can guarantee you will be dead by 35. It’s your choice. Don’t be a fool: get out of the ministry and save yourself.”
Bob and Betty had just had their first baby then, and Bob didn’t want to leave Betty a widow with a child to raise. He knew how tough that had been on his mom. But finally Bob and Betty decided, “The ministry is God’s will for us, and it’s better to be a dead man doing God’s will than to be a live man outside of it. Let’s trust God and keep going.”
That was twenty-eight years ago, and God had indeed kept him going. Somehow it will work out, Bob thought. I don’t know how, but it will work out.
That night, in a hotel in Thermopolis, Wyoming, Bob lay wide awake, unable to sleep. He longed for the presence of Christ, but he could no longer reach up to him through prayer, bull-headed faith, or the claiming of scriptural promises. I’m just a wounded lamb, he thought. I don’t have enough strength to find you anymore, God. Then, in a way Bob had never experienced, the Voice he had tried to follow for thirty-five years spoke clearly to him. “Take my peace and stop struggling. It’s all right; this is all in keeping with my will for your life. I now release you from the heavy yoke of pastoring that I placed upon you. Lie back in your Shepherd’s arms. Take my peace.” Bob began to cry.
He awoke the next morning ready to head back to Miami. “I have to go back and resign,” he told Betty. “The Session has to begin a search for another minister, and I have to start preparing the congregation for that while I still can do it.”
“No, Bob!” Betty said. “You don’t have to step down. We’ll go to Mayo or somewhere; there are experimental medications that might help you.”
“No, Betty,” Bob said, “it’s time. We need to go back and tell the people. Little Sunday school kids have sent cards saying they are praying for me to get well, and I’ve got to handle this so I don’t destroy their faith. Finally I can tell the people it’s all true. Everything I’ve preached about the peace of Christ passing all understanding-it’s true. I can go back and tell them that now without being a hypocrite.”
That week the Session met. Bob stood in front of the officers and took a deep breath. These were his friends, his co-workers, his family. “Tonight I have to do the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Bob began. “You all know my struggles with illness these past months, and you’ve prayed valiantly for me. But I’ve had to come to grips with the fact that I am no longer able to pastor this type of church. I am unable to read more than a page of material with comprehension. I am extremely weak and no longer have full control over my emotions. There is nothing else for me to do but to resign as pastor of Old Cutler Presbyterian Church.” The room was frozen.
“I know this must be very hard for some of you to understand,” he continued, “because you see me standing here, able to speak and apparently as strong as ever. But I can no longer be sure I will handle services, weddings, funerals, anything, without making an embarrassing mistake, both for me and for the church.”
“But Bob,” one finally managed to say, “we’ve worked together from the foundation. We are ready to go on this chapel thing, the most adventuresome thing we could ever do. We need you now.”
“We’ve all been praying,” said another man. “Everything we’ve believed about prayer … ”
Several other elders spoke, and then Bob said, “I want you and the entire church to know this is all in the will of God. Unless I can share the peace I have received from Christ, I fear you might think your prayers have been in vain and that God has failed. I would like to take four sermons to explain to the people why these kinds of things happen in our lives. They’ll be more personal than any sermons I’ve preached, but I need to tell them, to reassure them, that whatever God is doing in my life, it’s all right. I would like to preach this last Sunday in June through August 2. That will be my final sermon.”
The words hit too hard; a couple of men began to cry and quickly got up and left the room.
Lord, Bob prayed silently, please give me the strength to conclude my ministry with a triumphant spirit.
On July 7, Bob and Betty were at Miami’s Mt. Sinai Medical Center for the only test he hadn’t had, an experimental procedure called a PET scan. The technicians injected into a vein in Bob’s arm a radioactive glucose solution, and while he lay flat on the table, a machine monitored the radioactivity in the brain and converted it into a computer image. Dark spots would indicate no glucose metabolism in those portions of the brain, and thus, no activity. Betty wasn’t worried about the test; the doctor felt certain whatever disease Bob had was treatable. Yes, Bob’s IQ had dropped from 180 to 125, but at least the problem was one they could treat.
The following week Bob and Betty followed Dr. Hochman into his office to receive the results of the PET scan. Once they were all seated, Dr. Hochman began, “I wish I could tell you that you have cancer. I’m sorry to have to tell you instead that you have the Alzheimer’s pattern. As you know, this is an irreversible, incurable disease.”
“At least we know,” Bob said. Dr. Hochman stared at him. “When you’ve been through the uncertainty I’ve been through for so long,” Bob explained, “any definite answer is better than not knowing.”
The next four weeks, Bob ran the Session meetings and staff meetings, trying to make sure the transition would be as smooth as possible. But he delegated everything else because he needed every spare moment to prepare the messages. A sermon used to take him twenty hours to prepare. Now it took an entire week, and he would come home so mentally exhausted he would sleep for five hours. But he still had time to be the practical joker he had always been. One day, a parishioner asked him how he was doing with the disease. “Well,” Bob said seriously, “I’ve learned some good news and some bad news. The bad news is they have found out Alzheimer’s is contagious.”
The parishioner immediately said, “Uh-oh.”
Bob continued, “But the good news is, I’ve got a list of all the enemies of the church, and I’m going to go bite them.” They both laughed.
As Bob worked the next day on his final sermon, he knew the painful facts he and Betty were dealing with: because he was young, the disease would kill him quickly; in four to seven years, he would be a vegetable; Medicare does not pay a cent toward the average $32,000 it takes each year to care for someone with Alzheimer’s; the disease makes you ugly, obscene, and paranoid. But he prayed that others would know the comfort he had experienced.
Bob had chosen as his text 2 Timothy 4: 6-7: “For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” The day of his ordination, as he knelt and silently prayed, he had asked the Lord that this verse might describe his ministry on its last day.
The memory took him back to when he had begun preaching, back in Indiana. Boy, I couldn’t preach worth a hoot, he thought. The first four years, I think it was every Sunday I had diarrhea or I threw from the fear of getting up there. He had always had to use a manuscript because otherwise the stage fright would make him blank out. It had made him question his call to ministry. But finally he had settled on the idea that the call was in the heart, that deep desire that said he could do nothing else.
About 11:30 the next morning, Bob stood and moved to the pulpit, his long, black academic gown rustling around him. He looked out at the mass of faces looking up at him; there were people standing in the aisles. “As I end almost fifteen years of ministry at Old Cutler Presbyterian Church,” he began, “I started to compose a list of people I should personally thank. The more I thought, the more I realized the list of names would be almost like the list of names on the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington. … All I can say to all of you is thank you. This has been the best life possible, and the best time of my life. God has been so good.
“You have no idea of the fear and weakness I have inside me,” Bob continued, his voice breaking. “But you prayed me through the last few sermons, and now I ask you to bow in prayer and ask the Holy Spirit to give me his power and Christ to cause his name to be praised even through my perhaps stumbling words.
“There is nothing greater or higher that a Christian can do than surrender himself totally to his Savior and say without reservation, ‘It is the goal of my life to be a servant, a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ,’ ” Bob continued. “. . . This is not a morning to express regrets; this is a morning to express praise and thanksgiving. I praise God that now, as my ordained ministry draws to a close, I can say, as did the apostle Paul, ‘I have fought a good fight, I have kept the faith, and I have finished the course.’ “
Some fifteen minutes later, Bob closed the message: “The word departure in the verse before this one has several meanings, and one of them is especially meaningful to me. The Greek word analusis can mean the ‘unloosing of an animal from the yoke of its plow.’ Here is an ox that has been working hard. He has been laboring as hard as he can from the bright rays of the morning sunrise until now, when the sunset starts to paint the skies with its beautiful glow. The old ox has worked hard because it’s planting time, and the time for planting is limited. Now that old ox is exhausted, going on with sheer willpower, even stumbling a little bit as he finishes his last furrow. Finally his master drives him up to the barn, pats his shoulder, and says, ‘Good job, old friend.’ He then removes that heavy yoke, throws down some hay in front of him, and says, ‘You can quit now. Take it easy and enjoy your rest. You’ve earned it.’
“And so, like that tired old ox, this is how I stand on the day of my departure for the unhooking of the yoke, the burden of the full-time gospel ministry, which I cannot bear any longer because of sickness.
“And now for my unhooking. As I stand before you now, my full title is the Reverend Dr. Robert Davis. Now, let’s get rid of that one thing, that doctor title.” Bob detached the doctoral hood from his robe. “I am no longer capable, and thus I am unqualified to go by this title. By reason of disease my mind sometimes becomes confused, my thinking unclear, the facts uncertain, and thus, knowledge loses itself somewhere. Because of this failure in my thinking system, I lay aside this yoke, this doctoral hood, and I request that you never again require of me all that this demands.” He handed the hood to Betty, who was now standing next to him.
“This leaves me with the title of Reverend Robert Davis,” Bob continued, “but now it’s time for me to get rid of this title. A minister must deal in truth, but yet, because my brain cannot catch and remember everything, I might be guilty of saying something untrue, or false-not deliberately, but just because I cannot comprehend. A minister must deal with pressure situations, but because of the nature of my illness, my mind often becomes blank in the pressure of situations. A minister must be always available. I cannot, because sometimes my mind becomes foggy and I have to relax to clear my mind. A minister has to instantly give scriptural answers, and I cannot. All the Scripture I have memorized lies somewhere in the back of my brain, unable to be called forth on demand. A minister must be ready to burn out, and right now, I’m afraid I do better at tiring out. A minister must be a caregiver, but now I’m just simply too weak. Instead I must be a care receiver, greatly in need of love and help. Thus, I am no longer qualified to be a minister. I am not disqualified by my actions, but rather unqualified because of my health.
“Now this is all in God’s plan of setting the distance of the race that I was to run. He has given me permission to take this heavy yoke off me at this time and to rest from my labors. This is one of the reasons for the peace I feel at this moment. I now remove the pulpit robe and thus am relieved of the yoke of the title Reverend. I do this with dignity, honor, relief, and a great deal of thanksgiving to God that I have finished this part of the race that he has set before me and I’m ready to enter phase two, whatever that may be.”
Bob unzipped his pulpit robe, slipped it off his arms, and handed it to Betty, who took it, carefully folded it, and laid it on the altar.
Epilogue: Robert and Betty Davis continue to live in Miami and attend the services of Old Cutler Presbyterian Church, although Bob can no longer sing the hymns or follow the responsive readings. Bob is unable to speak before groups, but on his “good days” he sometimes ministers to individuals with counsel and prayer.
Bob and Betty’s book, My Journey into Alzheimer’s Disease, written shortly after his resignation, will be published next year by Tyndale House.
Copyright © 1988 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.