GOT YOUR BACK, JACK [W, 5-27-20]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

GOT YOUR BACK, JACK   [W, 5-27-20]

Yesterday was Jack Newsome’s birthday. Joan, his wife, called us Saturday, May 23, to say he died that morning. He was 3 days short of 88.

There were a lot of bright young ministers in the Central IL Conference of the Methodist Church in 1966, when Jack and I first met. We were drawn to each other because we were odd balls. He was from Georgia. I was from southern Indiana. We had funny accents. We didn’t sound like we belonged on the flat Illinois prairie. And we weren’t “real” ministers. He was an associate minister, and I was a campus minister, so we were outsiders. Other ministers would ask us, in all seriousness, “When are you going to return to the ministry?”

Our colleagues were nice to us, though, and I was pleased to have so many smart, new friends. Jack, though, was different from all the others.

I would go to some friend with a problem. If I got worked up and jumped up and down on the table and yelled “That damned bishop,” since we’d all had Pastoral Counseling 101, they would fold their hands on their crossed knees and say, “Would you like to talk about it”?

If I went to Jack, though, he would get up on the table with me and jump up and down and yell, “That damned bishop,” having no idea why said bishop should be sent to Hades, but trusting me enough to know there was a good reason.

That kind of unquestioning support drew us to each other, and we entered into an unspoken pact of guarding each other’s back, for 54 years.

About 30 years ago, Bishop Leroy Hodapp named me to our conference’s Investigation Committee. I told the bishop that I thought it was a bad move. “I’ll be too sympathetic to whoever we’re investigating,” I said. “That’s why I want you on the committee,” he replied. “Every sinner should have one friend.”

At supper, I told Helen and our teen-aged daughters about my new committee assignment. Katie said, “What if Jack Newsome is accused of something, and you have to investigate? How will you handle that?” It was a good question, and I didn’t know how to answer.

The next time Jack and Joan and Helen and I were out together, I mentioned what Katie had said. “Don’t worry about it, John,” Joan said. “Just tell me, and I’ll take care of it.” That must have scared Jack as much as it did me, because I never had to investigate him.

Jack and I spent a lot of time together. Mostly it was sitting together at district or conference meetings, or just having lunch or coffee-- although Jack always had Pepsi since he didn’t drink coffee--or taking our wives to supper. We also went to continuing ed conferences together, all the way from Dubuque to Lake Junaluska. We went to the Holy Land together, including early morning runs through Amman and Tel Aviv, since we were both runners back then. There was never enough time, though, to get all our talking done.

When Jack became my District Superintendent, I was pastoring at Arcola, IL. We were trying to start a “Children’s Church,” because we had a whole lot of kids in worship, which was great, but they were understandably bored, and made a lot of noise, and many people were saying, “They really need their own church experience.” There was pushback, though, since some people would have to miss “adult” church to work with the children.

So Helen and I volunteered to be the children’s church leaders the first Sunday we had it. I conducted the first part of the service and called for the children to follow us to children’s church. “But, oh, I forgot. There’s nobody to preach. Who will volunteer to preach?” Well, you can imagine the shrinking down into the pews. “But,” I said, “there’s a stranger here. Stranger, can you preach?” “Well, I could give it a try,” said Jack Newsome.

No one knew who he was. It was his first Sunday in the District. So Helen and I had a great time with the kids, and the congregation marveled that there just happened to be someone that day who could preach.

He was only in his 60s when Jack got a disease of the Parkinson’s variety. It progressed. In the last few years, he couldn’t even get out of bed, and it was difficult to find the right words. He was in a long-term care facility in St. Louis, to be near his children.

There was a sweet quality of innocence about Jack. Because of geographical distance, the last time we saw the Newsomes in person was about five years ago. We went to Red Lobster for supper. Jack was in a wheelchair. When we left, as I pushed him through the aisles, he cheerily smiled and did a royal wave at the other folks we passed.

Since Jack had trouble talking on the phone, I tried to write to him each week. I imagine my birthday letter arrived the day he died.

Jack had his arguments with the church, and occasionally with God, but he always knew that it was God who really had his back, and he faced each declining day with his soft Georgia drawl and his sweet Georgia disposition.

Like any other pastor, husband, father, person, Jack had his disappointments, his depressed times and sad times and morose times, but in the midst of all that, he was always fun, always thoughtful, always helpful, always willing to jump and down on the table with me.

John Robert McFarland