A PILLAR OF FIRE: RIP DICK HAMILTON [R, 2-25-21]

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

A PILLAR OF FIRE: RIP DICK HAMILTON  [R, 2-25-21]

 

Richard E. Hamilton died on Monday. He had a long and distinguished pastoral career, serving several of the largest and most influential congregations in Indiana Methodism. More importantly to me, Dick was my first mentor in ministry. Even more importantly, he officiated when Helen and I married, almost 62 years ago now, the first couple married at St. Mark’s Methodist in Bloomington, IN, a congregation he had started only five years before [and where we attend now in retirement].

I first met Dick as a fellow-pastor at clergy meetings of The Bloomington District. That was a great group of preachers, but I was only a 19 year old part-time student preacher and felt awkward in that distinguished assembly. Dick was the youngest of those full-time, fully-ordained colleagues, so I naturally gravitated to him. It wasn’t just his youth, though, that attracted me. He was so open, so available. He treated me like a full colleague. The other, older preachers, were kind to me, but they treated me like “a promising young man.” Dick treated me like I was his equal.

I wasn’t the only young pastor Dick attracted. I was one of only two student pastors in the Bloomington District, because most of “the preacher boys” went to the Methodist colleges, Depauw and Evansville, but there were several in other districts. We would all be in attendance at The School of the Prophets, the annual August continuing education event for Methodist clergy throughout the state. During School of the Prophets, all of us would hang around with Dick. One night, after the evening session, he led us down to the snack shop in the Depauw union and bought us ice cream. I had raspberry-nut sherbet. As a kid who grew up cranking an ice cream freezer unto fatigue just to get vanilla from Junket tables, I didn’t even know such a delicacy existed. It has been my favorite ice cream for 64 years.

My last semester in college, I was without a preaching job, because my campus ministry internship at The Wesley Foundation, where Helen and I met, had ended. Dick offered to let me “shadow” him that semester, until my next pastoral appointment, full-time, started in June, watching and talking about what a full-time pastor did, and why. I had grown up in a small country church that never had a full-time pastor, and I had not been one before, so it was necessary and valuable instruction.

I learned some stuff about how to do pastoring from Dick, but mostly I learned how to be a pastor from his example, for he was kind and respectful to everyone. He was courageous without being self-righteous, forgiving without being enabling, optimistic but realistic. He worked at loving God with heart, soul, strength, and mind. He loved people the same way.

He had no ambitions for higher office, for advanced degrees, for acclaim. He just wanted to be a good church leader. He was an excellent and thoughtful preacher, a compassionate pastor, a faithful colleague and friend. In Ed Friedman’s apt phrase [Generation to Generation], he was that most important attribute for any group, “a non-anxious presence.” Most importantly to me, his image, like a pillar of fire, went ahead of me through all the years of my ministry journey.

John Robert McFarland