Winding Things Down in Shreveport

After meeting with the elders in Sheveport and agreeing to enter retirement, our children got together with us in a conference call and suggested that we probably needed to live close to one of them.  Gary was living in Cedar Rapids.  It had been our home for fifteen years, and we had many friends there, so it seemed logical for us to return to Iowa.

Our last several months in Sheveport were busy ones.  We had to get the house ready to sell, put it on the market, and try to find a buyer.  As things turned out our timing wasn’t the best in the world.  The economy went south in 2008, but we were blessed.  By the middle of 2009, we did find a buyer.  We hated to leave 320 Sage Hill Drive, but we thoroughly enjoyed living there for eleven years.

The Southern Hills people were wonderful to us in our last few months.  They honored us with a special celebration in downtown Shreveport.  In addition to Southern Hills members, friends from all over North Louisiana came.  Others, who had touched our lives from the past were also present, some coming for long distances.  

It was wonderful to be honored, but there’s always someone present at one of these events, who brings you back down to earth and puts things in perspective.  John Hawkins, the Southern Hills preacher, put up a PowerPoint slide with a map of the United States.   He posted markers at the various locations where we had lived, and spoke of our influence in various communities around the country.  One person, whom I consider, a really good friend spoke up in the middle of the presentation.  She said, “It shows he couldn't hold a job.”  There was another person present who grew up with me.   He told people the real truth, although I will always be grateful for the things he could have said but didn’t.  You have to be careful not to rise above your raising.

Centuries Funeral Home

Throughout my adult life I’ve felt that ministry is my calling, and I still do, but when I went into part time retirement, I began looking around for another part time job.  When you’re in ministry, you conduct a lot of funerals, and in the process you become somewhat familiar with the funeral home business. I had noticed that funeral homes sometimes employ part time workers to help with funeral services. I thought I could probably do that.

I began to call around, and one of the persons I called was Tom Omick, who managed the Centuries Funeral Home in Shreveport.   Tom asked me to come in for an interview, and he offered me a job on the spot.   I worked for Centuries for about a year and a half.  After I spent a long period of recovery following brain surgery, and made the subsequent decision to move to Iowa, I gave up that work. I was with Centuries for about a year and a half.  It was an extremely interesting experience, and I enjoyed a wonderful relationship with my co-workers.

If I thought I knew something about the funeral home business because of my association with funeral homes when conducting services, I was badly mistaken.  I was a rookie in every sense of the term.  I was not given special treatment because I was a “man of the cloth.”  I think they probably assumed that I was a naïve cross between a country bumpkin, and some kind of Holy Joe who doesn’t even bleed real blood when he’s cut.  As a matter of fact, the workers sometimes had a pretty good laugh at my expense. Our funeral home was owned by SCI in Houston.  They own more funeral homes than anyone else in the world.  Early on the extent of the corporate structure was impressed on my mind.

A few weeks after I started I reported to work one day, and after I clocked in I walked by the snack bar.  Tom was visiting with a gentleman whom I had never met.  I introduced myself and asked the gentleman what role he played in the funeral home.  With a completely straight face, Tom told me that he was the executive vice-president of SCI.  Up to that point, Tom had been totally serious with me in every conversation that took place. I was horrified.  I was a rookie funeral home worker, and here was a big dog from Houston.  As it turned out, he was a worker like me from the funeral home across town.  He was there because we needed extra help.   It didn’t take me long to figure out things were not always what they seem.

I wore lots of hats at Centuries.  I drove vehicles, greeted people at the door, worked visitations, served as an emergency pall bearers, ran errands, carried flowers.  I learned how to wash a funeral coach.  You soak a bed sheet and pull it over the top of the vehicle.  I had no specialty. My official title was “funeral home worker.”

It was an educational experience.  I learned a lot about the different ways people handle grief, and what does and what does not bring them comfort.   Two experiences stand out in my memory.

On one occasion we had just concluded a graveside service.  The minister had completed his remarks and shook hands with members of the family.  Normally people go their separate ways after that.   But on this occasion no one moved. Then I heard someone begin the song, “Until Then.”  Pretty soon everyone was joining in the song.  I even sang with them.  I thought it was a very healthy way to deal with grief.

On another occasion, I had driven the family car from a church building to the cemetery.  As we rode to the cemetery, occasional sobs broke the silence.  When we got to the cemetery everything seemed to go wrong.  The Marine Corps was supposed to come and fold the flag, but they got mixed up on the time. We offered to fold the flag, but the family said, “No we’ll wait for the Marines.  It was over a hundred degrees, and we waited for about thirty minutes.   Then we learned that there was some procedural matter that we had overlooked.  A document had to be generated at the office and brought to the grave site before the casket could be lowered.  We probably waited another thirty minutes.   The family would not leave until everything was done to their satisfaction.  I also remembered that I had not placed the flag on the casket in the proper manner before the start of the service.  One of my co-workers had to walk to the front, while a hundred people are so watched her correct my gaff.

I dreaded the trip back to the church location.  I was prepared to become to brunt a lot of angry frustration.  Instead, when they got in the car, they started laughing and joking.  The ride back was totally different that the ride we had taken an hour before. Because they waited to get everything right, they felt they had achieved closure (No one really achieves closure when they lose a love one, but I won’t quibble about that).   When I let them out of the family car, they were gracious in their expressions of gratitude and appreciation.  

People don’t always handle grief the same way, but I really admired the folks who were in these two situations.

2002 – 2008 HEALTH CHALLENGES

It has been said that old age is the metallic age.  You’ve got silver in your hair, gold in your teeth, and lead in your behind. One of the curses or blessings of aging is the fact that you sometimes end up on a first name basis with your doctor.  We got well acquainted with the Shreveport medical community during that six year span.

One day I was making a bereavement call and I got a call from Ann.  She asked me to come home as soon as I could because she thought she was having a heart attack.  Her tone of voice was so laid back that she might well have been asking me to stop by and pick up a loaf of bread on the way home.  Turns out it was another kind of problem, for which we are grateful.  The next year she severed her Achilles tendon.   Eyes created some problems, which involved a retinal tear and two cataract surgeries.

I had a couple of health episodes during that time.  I was hospitalized for several days with atrial fibrillation, but the attention getting episode sort of sneaked up on me.

The Bales’ have a family history of hereditary hemorrhagic telangictasia, a rare weakness in blood vessels that causes excessive bleeding and can be life threatening.  I’ve know I’ve had it since I was in my early forties, but I’ve always managed to cope with it.  A certain percentage of HHT patients have lesions in their brains that could precipitate a stroke.  I agreed to have brain MRI to determine if these lesions exist.

After I completed the MRI, my primary concern was getting breakfast.  While I used the restroom facilities, a lady came out from the imaging center and told Ann that I needed to see my doctor immediately.  His office was across the street, and he invited me to look at my MRI on his computer.  It’s never a good thing when your doctor invites you to look at his computer.  There were no HHT lesions, but there was a tumor at the base of my brain, and it was wrapped around my spinal chord.   I was referred to a neurosurgeon who didn’t want to touch it.

Jan Elkins was a member of the Southern Hills congregation and served for many years as a health reporter for a Shreveport television station.  She was a personal friend of Dr. Anil Nanda, one of the world’s finest brain surgeons, and his practice was located at LSU in Shreveport.  My family doctor could not get an appointment with him, but Jan had me an appointment within a week.

In September of 2007, Dr Nanda removed the brain tumor at LSU, and I did so well in recovery that I was out of the hospital within a week.  Around Thanksgiving things started going south.  I was admitted to the hospital with a severe infection. Actually there were several hospitalizations, one of which lasted 42 days.  At one point I told Ann that I thought I wasn’t going to make it.  She scolded me for even thinking that way, but she later admitted she was thinking the same thing.  It took about six months to get completely straightened out, but I have had no ill effects from the brain surgery since then.   Before they got me straightened out, I had so many doctors I couldn’t keep up with them all.  One day a doctor brought my medical records with him.  It was about as thick as an unabridged dictionary, but I’m still kickin’.  God has been good to me.

2002 -2008 Ministry Experiences

We spent those years working with the Southern Hills congregation in Shreveport.  In my previous post I mentioned my “utility infielder” approach to ministry, and I had plenty of opportunities to practice it during those years.  Mark Pugh had replaced Eddie Randolph in our pulpit.  Mark left and for a time Eric Petty, our youth minister, assumed the pulpit role.  After several months Eric decided he was better suited to serve as a youth minister, and accepted a position in Florida.  After Eric left, John Hawkins came from Harding and worked with us as a summer intern.  After John went back to school, he, Bob Brewer, and I served as a pulpit trio until John graduated the next spring.   During that period of time John was approached about becoming our pulpit minister and accepted the challenge.  In each case I had positive experiences and enjoyed being around my colleagues. 

We must have been hard on secretaries.  Mary Beth Touchstone had served the church for many years, and when I first came on the scene Susan Pelezo was a part of the administrative church staff.   They both decided to go on to other things, although Susan often came back to lend a hand when we were in a bind.  Over the next few years, we had three different secretaries.  Each one of them was congenial, cooperative and brought different skill sets to the ministry.  I regarded them all as my friends, and stay connected with most of them until this day.

Before Mark left I began serving as an elder but after Eric left, I started dealing with some health problems, and I thought it was probably a  little too much to handle full time ministry and eldership responsibilities at the same time, so I resigned as an elder.

I stayed on with the church on a full time basis until after John came on board full time.  I then took on a part time role, and for the first time since graduate school, I was no longer working full time in ministry.  Actually, it wasn’t that much of a change.  I just didn’t go to the office as often as I had gone before.  I wore blue jeans a lot more and rarely put on a tie.  Most of the time I didn’t attend business meetings, and I didn’t miss those at all.  I firmly believe that part of the eternal reward of elders and preachers will be exemption from having to attend business meetings.

As an elder, there was one experience that stood out above all the rest.  A young mother was facing a life threatening surgery.   She took James 5:14-15 quite literally.  She asked the elders of the church to visit her, to anoint her with oil, and pray for her healing.  We did exactly that.   I would have to say that was the high water mark of my time as an elder.  As I’ve already said, I don’t think I’m much of an administrator, but when we sat in her home that night and honored her request, I was absolutely sure I was doing what an elder is supposed to do.

In 2008, the elders asked to meet with me, and after a lengthy discussion we agreed that we had reached the point at which I needed to think about full time retirement.  A date was agreed upon, and by the end of August, the Shreveport chapter of our lives had come to an end.  I really have no regrets about that.  I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to serve for 11 years.   What a blessed privilege.  I was able to minister on a full time basis until I reached “three score and ten.”   I did not know there would be another opportunity after that, but I am deeply grateful to God for giving me such wonderful opportunities to contribute to the life of the church.

Utility Infielders

The late Elmer Little was a good friend of mine, who preached in Des Moines when we first moved to Iowa.  Elmer sometimes described well known preachers as “Brotherhood Somewhats.”   There is something of a pecking order among preachers, although I don’t know that I could actually name the “dirty dozen.”  The list keeps changing, and I probably wouldn’t know the names of today’s “Brotherhood Somewhats.”  I recently looked the schedule of a college lectureship event, and I barely knew the names of a third of the speakers.  I’ve never been a Brotherhood Somewhat and really have no desire to be one.  

However, as I look back at 50 plus years of ministry I think I could legitimately compare myself to utility infielders on baseball teams. Utility infielders don’t usually have high batting averages.  Their fielding is adequate but they don’t win golden glove awards.  They’ll never play in all star games, but they are valuable team members because they can play just about anywhere in the infield, and they’re even called on for pinch hitting duties on occasions.  Their play is good enough to keep them on the team, but their picture will never be enshrined at Cooperstown.

My ministry experiences have been something like that.  I started out as a pulpit minister for a small town church.  I’ve served in that capacity several different times, but at other times I’ve had different roles.  I was a youth minister before anybody ever decided to make that a job title.  I’ve been an educational minister, a personal evangelism minister, a bus evangelism minister, a church planter, a family minister, an elder, and an associate minister.  The term “associate” is a convenient term to describe duties that aren’t specifically labeled.  Perhaps the term “general flunky” would be applicable.  Maybe it would be more dignified if I had been given the title I had when I work in construction – “common laborer.”

In the process I’ve often worked with ministry teams.  I’ve been in some relatively large churches, and I helped start a church that began with 14 members. Most of my ministry experiences have involved serving churches with fewer than 200 members. Some might consider me a “jack of all trades and a master of none.”  From my viewpoint, I think I’ve had a wonderful variety of ministry experience.   I suppose being a “brotherhood somewhat” has its merits, but I know one thing for sure. Utility infielders don’t get bored.

Where Were You on 9/11/01?

Most people recall where they were and what they were doing that day.  I remember driving to work and listening to the news.  The reporter said that an airplane had just crashed into the Twin Towers in New York.  Having been to New York, and having flown out of La Guardia, I remembered the pilot guiding the plane into a steep climb in order to miss the tall buildings in Manhattan.  I assumed that the crash was caused by a lapse in judgment from a pilot who was just leaving La Guardia.

Moments later I arrived at the office, and I heard the news that another aircraft had crashed into the second tower.  It was not pilot error.  When I heard that, the first word that came out of my mouth was “terrorist.”  I called Ann. She hadn’t been watching the news, and she couldn’t believe I was serious.  Of course I would never joke about something like that.

By this time, we had hooked up a television set at the office, and we saw smoke coming from the Pentagon in Washington.  We watched the towers fall. We didn’t get a whole lot of work done that day.  Later, there was a report of another plane that went down in Pennsylvania.  We knew something was terribly wrong in our country.   Even so, Pennsylvania, Washington, and New York seemed a long way from Shreveport, Louisiana.   Then we learned that the president had been flown to Barksdale Air Force Base.  That was less than fifteen miles from our house.   Suddenly, we realized the disaster affected every one.

Later that day I received a call from a church secretary of a local church in a different faith community from my own.  She told me that their church was hosting an interfaith prayer service that evening, and asked if I would participate.   I felt honored to do so, and quickly accepted the invitation.

When I arrived I was immediately taken to the church office where the order of service was being hastily organized.  As I looked across at the ministers in that room, I realized they represented several different theological persuasions.  On another day, and in other circumstances, we probably would have felt some strong points of disagreement with each other.  I will never forget one thing that happened in that room.  The local minister’s wife was helping her husband put the program together.  She said, “Regardless of our differences, today we can agree on one thing.  What we saw today was evil.”

And so it was.   Because of that terrifying interruption in our daily lives, we forgot about social, cultural, political, economic, and even theological differences for a short period of time.  In the days ahead, the popularity of George W. Bush would soar.  By the time he left office, it would be at the bottom.   Why was it different on 9-11? Because something had happened that threatened the security of us all.

New Twists and Turns

It many ways we entered a new world in 2001.   Ann appeared to be struggling with pancreas issues, and our doctor advised us to have the specialists at the Mayo Clinic take another look at her situation.   We initially expected to be in Minnesota for a month, but once the doctors decided that her problem was idiopathic, which means they really didn’t know what was causing her discomfort, we went back to Louisiana.

We made our last trip (at least up to this point) to California in the same year.  We were invited to present our “Mending a Messed Up Marriage” material at Pepperdine, and I had the privilege of speaking for the Culver-Palms church.  We elected to take an extra day, and made a trip to the Hearst Castle.  

During the year, I was asked to serve as an elder for the Southern Hills church.  I had never aspired to become an elder.   I was not intimidated about the role of shepherding, at least not about the way I see that ministry laid out in the Bible.  Unfortunately, many people in the church see the eldership as the church equivalent of a corporate board of directors.  I am not gifted as an administrator. I’d make a terrible corporate executive.  I had absolutely no desire to do that kind of work, but some of the people tried to convince me that we could approach this avenue of service with shepherding as our chief aim.

I’ve always had a convenient way of getting out of it when my name was suggested.  Ann would remind me, “If they make you an elder, you’ll be a divorced elder.”  She had seen some of the unfair treatment elders’ wives sometimes experience, and she didn’t want any part of it.  After all she got enough criticism as a preacher’s wife. This time around, however, she let me down.  She said, “I’ve been thinking that maybe this is what God is leading you to do at the present time.”   One day I told our son, Jim, what was being proposed.  He said, “Dad, have you considered the fact that this may be God’s will?”  All of a sudden, it began to look like I might be taking a stand against God.  I agreed to it, and became an elder for three years.   In many ways it was a gratifying experience, but I didn’t get out of the administration role.  A friend was probably more honest with me than most people were. He said, “Norman, if you can be an elder anybody can.”   It wasn’t the most fulfilling thing I’ve ever done, but there were many wonderful opportunities to serve.

Of course there was a huge, life changing event on September 11, 2011.  I’ll write about that next.