A Tribute to My First Pastor

You won't find a clip of one of his sermons on a YouTube short.  You never heard him on the radio.  You can't purchase a book he's written.  Yet, for about 40 years at four different churches he was a lead pastor, or as they call them in small churches... pastor.

Whether it was in an old country church building, former Lutheran church building, building with a gym attached, community center, school, library or park pavilion he preached a few thousand sermons on Sunday mornings and Sunday evenings.

This pastor is the one I learned the Truth of God under.  He is the one who baptized me.  He was the one that I watched deliver the Word, visit the stragglers, pray with the hurting, get blamed for the lows and give credit to others for the highs.  

This pastor is my Dad.

After about 40 years serving as a pastor and more than half of that time as a bi-vocational pastor, he retired.  Dad retired not to find leisure but because he believes it the right time for someone else to lead Faith Christian Fellowship, his home for more than half his professional ministry.  He retired for the benefit of the church.  As he said on Facebook, "I am retiring from being the pastor of a church but I am not retired from living for Jesus!"

I was trying to think of how to best summarize what Dad did best as pastor.  There are better organizers than my dad.  There are better speakers than him.  There are better leaders than my dad.  Not that Dad did those things poorly, but that won't be his legacy, in my mind.  

In my mind, Dr. Jack W. Ray's pastoral legacy is that he loved the church.

If you went to Faith Christian Fellowship, Enon Baptist, 9th Street Baptist or Fairview Baptist you were loved by my dad.  Dad cared deeply about the people of those congregations while he was pastor there and after he left those local churches.  Dad enjoyed the people and cared for the people, even if they left the church unhappily.

He loves church.  I can't recall more than a couple times that we ever missed going to Sunday Service.  If we were on the road for vacation we went to a church in that town.  Dad had to go to church and it wasn't legalism.  He never thought of attending church as work.  Attending church was a privilege and necessity.  His tank needed gas.  He worshipped and fellowshipped with his brothers and sisters-in-Christ with joy and he passed that joy on to me.  And when there was at times disunity in his local church it crushed him.  

You won't find his preaching on TV, you purchase his Sunday School materials, you won't listen to his podcasts... but if you were in one of his churches you were deeply loved.  We Americans have many indicators for success that you won't find in the Bible.  Steadfast love and faithfulness are the chief markers of success.  Keeping "a close watch on your life and doctrine" (1 Timothy 4:16) is a much greater emphasis than Sunday attendance or internet reach.

"Well done, good and faithful servant." Matthew 25:23

The race isn't over and the cross can't be put down yet (Hebrews 12:1; Matthew 16:24) but I hope my dad and the millions of small church pastors around the globe like him know their worth to the kingdom today.