As my church family already knows, we lost our pastor Jamie Gardner on Saturday night, of a massive heart attack. I haven't known him long, but we ended up at this church because he and his wife Kim struck up a conversation with my wife while the dance team was performing at the winter festival in Beaufort, Christmas 2019, and they hit it off. We loved his chutzpah, such as holding the parade of cars during church-in-the-parking-lot on Easter Sunday during Covid, with a triple echo coming from the loudspeaker, the radio, and YouTube. I don't know how much of the sermon we actually heard that day with all the car horns honking, but we had a grand time. I felt like community to me. The first church to feel that way for me in decades. If felt like we belonged.
Another great memory was the example of humility he showed when he made the hard decision to ask an invited guest speaker to leave the services. It was the right call, and there are so many ways it could have gone down. But he chose the way of humility and was "an example to the believers in word and deed." (I Timothy 4:12). We all learned from that. Thank you Pastor.
I appreciate the personal attention he paid to my welfare, when hospitalized with Covid and Cancer, and how he came down from the pulpit and personally prayed over my family individually, just one week ago-- right there in the middle of the service. I was watching from the hospital on LiveStream, and I cried my eyes out. And I appreciate his continual encouragement regarding my writings.
I am grateful to God that He allowed Pastor Jamie to go to Cuba and see what God was doing there, and to finish writing his book. I look forward to reading it someday. "So thank you God, for giving him that joy of Cuba, and giving us the benefit of his completion of his book-- both for the wisdom it contains and the permanent memory of the man."
Many of us are asking ourselves "Why?" "Why did you take him so young, God?" "What will we do without him, God?" "Why did you allow this great loss?" In my personal opinion, God took him because he had completed his mission. I think each of us has a mission from God. I do, and you do. It's our job to discover that mission, and to do it to the best of our ability. And I think that if we complete our mission early, we get to go home! And that's how I see it. Pastor Jamie completed his mission with excellence, and so he got to go home early. You could think of it as a successful performance evaluation! I shall miss him terribly, but I don't begrudge him his happiness and walking now with the King, and getting all his many questions answered- questions he has stored up in his heart for years. "Thank you, God."
As for the last question, whatever will we do without him, the answer is "God knows." And I believe God ALREADY has a plan- already has a person picked out to fill his giant shoes. Someone to bring us to the next place God has for us as a church body. And after them, it will be someone else. Because the church body is not about one man. It's not Pastor Jamie's church body. It's the body of Christ, and it's on the Lord Jesus Christ to provide for us. And He most certainly will do so.
So Pastor Jamie, I shall miss you terribly. Thanks for calling me friend.
Miss pastor Jamie so much