CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter: The Perfect Model of a Methodist Preacher [W, 12-7-22]
Dr. Wilkey died yesterday, Tuesday, Dec. 6, exactly one month after his 87th birthday. I emailed him on that birthday. He replied. We exchanged ideas on what will be the future of the UMC that we have served so long. He said that a note from me always cheers him up. I realized then that I would never see him again in person, so in a way, I have already done my grieving.
We were ordained about the same time, served 30 years or so as pastors together in the Central IL Conference of the UMC. He was the most scholarly pastor I ever knew. Even read all four volumes of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics when he didn’t have to, when he was already out of seminary and ordained and pastoring a congregation fulltime. He told me that he read them standing up to keep from falling asleep. But that was the kind of scholar he was. Barth was one of the 2 or 3 major systematic theologians of our day, and Dr. Wilkey was determined to know and understand what he was saying. [Don’t ask me; I read only one volume, and I did fall asleep!]
For our early years of friendship and colleagueship, he was just John. But then we did our doctorates together, traveling back and forth from Illinois to Iowa. You get to know a person much better when you spend a lot of time together in a car. We loved being together, sharing ideas, but we were so relieved when it was over. So we started calling each other “Doctor,” as in Dr. Wilkey and Dr. McFarland, even in the most casual of conversations. It was our way of sharing a victory, and still not taking it too seriously.
Dr. Wilkey wasn’t just a scholar, though. He was an excellent bluegrass musician, playing mandolin and singing in several string bands, and then after Eileen died, with his second wife, Stephanie, as a duo.
As befits a scholar, he was a teacher. He taught Religion in community colleges in the areas where he pastored, and was the regular instructor in preaching for many years in the License to Preach School, that first step toward ministry and ordination.
He was an important leader in the Conference. He was patient and disciplined. He was the Chair of The Conference Committee on Finance and Administration [CCFA] during some of our most difficult and challenging times. His clear thinking, tough patience, disciplined focus, and methodical approach brought us through. He got me onto the CCFA, even though the work of that group was way beyond my skills and abilities. I think he just wanted a friendly face at which he could roll his eyes when the meetings got ridiculous.
Most of all he was a preacher/pastor. It was only a year or two ago that he finally gave up every-Sunday preaching, and the pastoring that goes with that, at the little Laws Chapel, near Atlanta, TX, where he and Stephanie retired. He started preaching when he was still a student at Illinois College in Jacksonville. Almost 70 years of preaching!
Due to the livestreaming of worship necessary because of covid19, I got to see him preach even though neither of us was in central IL anymore. Being two old preachers who had listened to each other and supported each other through 54 years, and knowing we would not see each other again in this world, that was a source of comfort to me.
In his last email to me he said that he had just seen his doctor and so was “…good for another day or two.” I assumed he was joking, but perhaps he intuited something.
But it made no difference, a day or two or a decade or two. He was the perfect example of a Methodist preacher. John Wesley said that he required only three things of his preachers, to be ready at any moment to preach, pray, or die.
Dr. Wilkey was always ready.
John Robert McFarland
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