I just found out yesterday that childhood pastor, Wiley I. Rutledge, had passed away on Tuesday. I know most of my readers probably won’t know Wiley, but I encourage you to read this post. He was a remarkable man, and I am sure his story will encourage you to think about the ways in which each of us can minister to those around us every day.
Wiley served at North Johnson City Baptist Church in Tennessee. This is the church of my earliest memories. My family attended this church until I was about thirteen years old. My mother was the director of day care and my now step-father was the minister of music. We left around the same time that Wiley moved to another church.
Wiley was a deeply committed Christian and an outstanding pastor. His pastoral skills were remarkable. He had a way of touching and inspiring everyone around him. The thing I remember most was his storytelling ability. He was a master at it, as is evidenced by his participation in the National Storytelling Festival. As a child, I loved his children’s sermons. He could make you feel like you were there, eating fish beside the Sea of Galilee with Jesus or handing a stone to David as Golath rushed upon him. I accepted Christ at a revival that Wiley preached, and he was the one who baptized me.
Just recently, I learned of a story that illustrates well the way that Wiley touched all those around him. In 1976, Wiley was travelling from Nashville back to Johnson City. He stopped at a restaurant on the way through Knoxville to grab some dinner. His waitress, a woman named Lynn Morgan, was an eighteen-year-old from Ohio who was struggling to get by. Wiley talked and joked with her while she waited on him. When he left, she found a poem that he had left for her. At the bottom, he had written, “Lynn, You are a pretty, pleasant, and efficient young lady. Have love, have joy, have peace. Wiley I. Rutledge 7/16/76.” The handwritten poem, entitled rent a car bulgaria“Through All These Years,” is available online.
Lynn kept the poem and treasured it. She would pull it out and read it from time to time. After the birth of her first child, the placed the poem in a baby book so that her daughter would someday read it. She didn’t know Wiley or where he was from, and she assumed she would never see him again. This past summer, however, she found a reference to his name in a column written by Wiley’s son, Mark Rutledge, who writes for The Daily Reflector in Greenville, NC. She contacted Mark, who arranged for Lynn to meet with Wiley on his farm in Gray, TN.
Wiley had Alzheimer’s during the last years of his life, so he didn’t remember Lynn. But it was a blessing to his family to hear this story for the first time. As his son writes:
For him, the ones he touched are lost in the fog of a disease that will eventually take his life.
For us closest to Wiley I. Rutledge, having one of those people step out of the fog and bring to light such meaningful moments with him is nothing short of a gift from God.
My sister, Sue Ellen, says the gift is God’s way of reassuring us that he remembers our father even if our father doesn’t remember him.
You can read the complete story, which Mark wrote for The Daily Reflector. It was published just two months before Wiley passed away. I don’t know about you, but the story has encouraged me to pay more attention to those around me every day.
To me and those who knew him, Wiley will always be a giant of the Christian faith. He was an incredible preacher, but the best sermon of all was the constant love of Christ he showed to those around him. As my step-father said in a letter he wrote to let us know of Wiley’s death, Wiley was “a tremendous preacher and storyteller, a song writer, a poet, a great father and husband, a beloved grandfather, and a champion for the cause of Christ in and outside the walls of the church. His legacy of quietly reaching the people of the ‘down and out’ of the community will never be equaled by any other in my opinion. . . . [O]ur loss, and certainly heaven’s gain. As my former pastor, I’ll miss him!”
Wiley’s obituary is available in the Johnson City Press Chronicle.
