Alice and I with Dr. Fred and Dinah Huff.
The denomination where I pastored, the Church of the Nazarene, has district superintendents.
District superintendents (DS’s) are kind of like bishops, though without as much power.
At best they are ‘pastors to pastors’. Good ones can make your life easier. Not-so-good ones can cause headaches.
As with all human relationships, there are some personalities that you gel with better than others.
I’ve had five DS’s over my time. My favorite among the five was Dr. Fred Huff, who I knew from my time in New Mexico. He passed away recently and his funeral is today.
Why was he special?
Because he treated me like an individual.
I tend to think about all kinds of things, maybe too much, including things that don’t affect me directly. It’s just how I am, for better or worse. I notice trends. I care about decisions that are made in high places, including church high places.
At the time when I encountered Dr. Huff, I was getting quite frustrated with some things going on at the general church level, things that most other people would probably just overlook.
I had no shortage of opinions about all this. Dr. Huff let me vent my complaints without recrimination. He actually seemed to agree with some of them. He let me be me.
He had just the temperament I needed in a leader. He was the listening ear that I needed at that time. It helped to lower the steam down to make my frustration more tolerable.
He not only endured my venting but seemed to really believe in my ministry. He allowed for my nomination to various district-level boards and committees.
Proverbs 15:23, “A man finds joy in giving an apt reply—and how good is a timely word!” He embodied that for me. I’m grateful. I’ll never forget it.
Alice and I sought to visit with him, and his wife, Dinah, twice while we were on trips home from our assignment in Vietnam. The last time was in Georgia, his home state, where he had moved after New Mexico. He even suggested that I seek a church to pastor in Georgia.
I’d like to think that I passed on that same kind of grace to others. To let people be themselves–quirks and all. It is liberating. I’m not saying tolerate sin or rebellion. I’m saying leave room for allowing people to be who they are, the people God made them, rather than treat them like a number, or an irritation, or needing to force them to conform to a system.
Today, there are constant efforts to dehumanize us. Businesses seek consumers to improve the bottom line and meet sales targets. Corporations say they care about what we think, but route us into self-serving screening processes (maybe to answer us with an AI generated response!). Political campaigns treat you as just a vote, and political ads are insulting to the intelligence.
Dehumanization is the name of the game.
But what a joy it is to find people who value us as individuals, even despite our quirks and opinions.
While it’s true that “there’s no ‘I’ in the word team,” there is an ‘I’ in the word ‘image’–as in the image of God that he made us in. In this soul-crushing world that always seeks conformity to its systems, God made us each special and knows us. Even the very hairs of our head are numbered (Matthew 10:30).
Jesus appreciated each individual he encountered. How many times did he stop doing something just to care for one person, maybe a person who society didn’t think was very important?
If Jesus did it, and he was Lord of heaven and earth, how can we not do it?
I think of how he dealt with Nathanael, a man who had just made a cynical remark about Jesus’ hometown. But Jesus, seeing him as an individual and seeing his potential, said something nice about him: “’Here is a true Israelite, in whom there is nothing false’. ‘How do you know me?’ Nathanael asked. Jesus answered, “I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you’. Then Nathanael declared, ‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel’,” (John 1:47-49).
Jesus saw Nathanael and knew him even before meeting him. He treated him as an individual despite his faults.
God’s interest is not in systems, philosophies or organizations. Those things don’t have souls. But individuals do.
Collaboration and teamwork have their place, but I wonder if we make too much of that. We need to care for the individual. We need to stop and pay attention and do the inefficient thing and have one-on-one conversations, treating people like they matter, with us being present and interested. There are two reasons for this: 1) individuals are made in God’s image and therefore important, and 2) we might just be helping the person in ways we will never know.
Thank you, Dr. Fred Huff, for modeling that.