This past summer I participated in two funerals: one for a gentleman in his eighties whom God allowed me to lead to Christ in the month he died, and one for a pastor in his sixties who taught me how to lead dying people to Christ

The pastor was my friend and mentor, Bob Cahill

Bob learned care for the dying from his own dying-in his short life he endured ten surgeries and two life-threatening cancers. He outlived his cancer fifteen years and died of something else. I served as his associate during his years of radiation and chemotherapy and learned from him as his cancer sharpened his pastoral work

"Since my cancer I preach as a dying man to dying men," he told me. "When I look out at the congregation I see people whose lives are passing away and who need Christ. You can't imagine what this does to your sense of unction.

Another time he said, "I have learned through my own cancer that in working with the dying we must be bold. As I lay there nauseated from my treatment, wondering if I ...