PHOTO by TED KYSTERAbout Me
Growing up in the 1950s in Central Illinois, heart of the Land of Lincoln, I had two heroes: Honest Abe and Davy Crockett. Both embodied the Crockett motto: “Be always sure you’re right, then go ahead.”
I was also increasingly enamored with Jesus, though I became more and more aware that the fundamentalist church I attended followed a thin caricature of Jesus rather than the robust figure portrayed in the Gospels.
Then I met and married Linda, whose grandfather was a Methodist minister from Ireland. Through her, I met John Wesley, founder of the Methodist movement, and I found my spiritual home.
My newspaper career took me from Illinois to Michigan and then to Kansas City, where I worked at The Kansas City Star for 15 years. Though I was a committed layperson, I had no thought of entering the ministry until a wise pastor gently suggested it.
It seemed like a fantastical notion at first. Then I understood the truth in the stories I had often heard about God’s call; only now God was calling me. So I became a United Methodist pastor.
After serving churches in four counties in northeast Kansas, I retired from active ministry a few years ago. Lately, I have devoted myself to discovering what I’ve missed in life while I was pursuing two careers and raising a family.
I’ve long had the ambition to write books, and I’ve been doing some of that. But it’s a lot easier to write books than to sell them to a publisher, and I’m a better writer than a book seller.
Linda and I are approaching our 50th wedding anniversary. What other woman could have stood with me all these years! We have two lovely daughters and two lively grandsons, and we are amazed by how God’s grace to us shines through them all.
We live in Spring Hill, a small suburb south of Kansas City that’s one of the fastest growing places in Kansas. Change is afoot!
My purpose statement has evolved from Crockett’s “Go ahead.” Now it’s a verse from scripture: “For we are God’s masterpiece, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life” (Ephesians 2:10). May it ever be so.
About the Blog
“The Rev. James” seems pretentious for a blog title.
A few friends call me “the Rev. Jim.”
Of course, they’re thinking of the character from the TV series “Taxi” — Jim Ignatowski, the spaced-out dude played by Christopher Lloyd.
“I was finding God all over the place,” he said, “and he kept ditching me.”
As fond as I am of the character, and as off-the-wall as I can be (though rarely in public), my identity is more sedate.
Perhaps it better fits “The Rev. James.” That’s the Rev. James Buckley, a Methodist priest who lived 1770-1839 and founded Buckley’s Brewery in West Wales. There’s a fine ale named after him that I first encountered in a Welsh pub. It’s called “a taste of the good life.”
It’s my hope that in these musings you find a taste of the faithful life and keep finding God all over the place, knowing that God will never really ditch you.
