Pastor Nance

I, personally, have two pastors in my life. I have the pastor I had when I was a kid, who I still think of as my pastor. And I have my pastor/friend/mentor, appropriately named Paul, who has been helping me for years to find my way and be faithful in what I do. I love them both.

Unfortunately, we found out last night that the pastor of my youth, Willard Nance, has passed away. I have to admit it’s got me feeling pretty down. It’s sad to see him go, but he was very ill, very old, and it’s good to know his suffering is over. He had a stroke a few years ago, and he was incapacitated by it. I went to visit him a few times and he became frustrated and agitated because he couldn’t communicate clearly and we couldn’t understand him. It was miserable and it made me feel bad for him, but I couldn’t do anything about it.

I could write a book with memories of this pastor. We went to church a lot in those days. Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night. Plus, eventually, youth group things with our youth leader, a guy named Gary. It was a big part of my childhood and teen years. I remember standing in the baptismal pool and being dunked by Pastor Nance. I remember going to a Holloween party in the church basement, and finding a creepy person in a mask that all the kids were standing around, trying to figure out who it was. It was driving us crazy, and it ended up being the last person we would have guessed. It was our pastor.

A pastor who wears creepy Holloween masks to spook the kids. Or, just a pastor who will wear a Holloween mask in the first place. That’s my role model. And he was a great role model. We KNEW he loved us.

And there was never any doubt about how Pastor Nance loved Jesus. He loved the Gospel. He knew what the word “grace” means because he believed so much grace had been poured out on him. I don’t know the details, but we heard glimpses of stories over the years about how he had struggled with substance abuse in his younger years. We knew that when he presented the Gospel, he was sharing something that was very personal for him. It mattered to him, so it mattered to us.

He never had a mega-church. He wasn’t asked to speak at conferences. He didn’t do a lot of big, impressive things in the eyes of the world. He was a working class, working man’s pastor, and I loved him for it. He was a great man, but not for the usual reasons people might bring up. He was a great man because he had a great love for Christ and he acted on that love. He served faithfully for years until he literally couldn’t stand anymore.

He is one of my heroes, and he will be greatly missed.


Peace to the family and friends of Willard Nance.

© LW Publishing 2011

Christmas: Anno Domini 2010

The reason we have Christmas to celebrate, instead of something else, is because we have sin that needs to be dealt with.

Sometimes you hear that Christians “stole” the holiday from pagans, which isn’t really true. When Christmas traditions first developed, they shared the stage with several different pagan celebration days that people took part in. But honoring the birth of Jesus simply became more important to people as time went by. It didn’t really matter if Jesus was actually born on December 25th or not. The point was the honor people wanted to show him.

I’m sure there were also leaders in the church, and probably in governments too, hoping to steer people away from some of the pagan days of feasting that caused a lot of trouble due to excess partying and craziness. But it was a progressive thing: people began trading away empty pagan celebrations, that were an excuse for sin, for a holy day that reminded them of how God worked to meet their needs. It’s sad that the opposite seems to be happening now: meaningful things being abandoned for pointless, empty things.

Some complain about it, but it’s really no surprise that people carried some of the old symbols into the new celebrations. They simply tried to redeem them, make them useful for the faith. After all, God is in the redemption business, isn’t he? In their simple ways, they were celebrating the truth that Jesus is God’s unique, one and only, way of dealing with our sin, like the Bible says in John 3:18:

John 3: 18  Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.

“Condemned already.” Look around at the world we live in – the funeral homes and the police blotters, the history of war and violence we have lived – and try to deny it. We can try to blame God, but God knows we’re the problem. And, like it or not, no one here gets out alive. So we really NEED that baby in a manger. We really need what he did for us on the Cross. Because God loves us, he has done what it takes to meet our need:

John 3: 16  For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.  17  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

We didn’t deserve it, but God humbled himself to become one of us and die for us. We need Jesus to save us because we can’t save ourselves.

All glory be to his name.

Merry Christmas and...
Peace to you.



© LW Publishing 2010