Death of THE Mentor
Mentors are hard to find. My experience has taught me that in this world there are a lot of people who would make great mentors, but very few actually want the responsibility of mentoring. They may say yes in the beginning, but a month in, their time, capacity, and availability are so limited they do not have room for raising up a new generation of leaders.
This paradigm was the exact opposite for MY grandfather. He was the kind of man young leaders would love to have for a mentor. Jack was faithful, cutting edge, creative, highly intelligent, and innovative. In his lifetime he mentored hundreds of young church leaders. They didn’t even have to ask, if he was around, they left mentored and better people for it. You would be hard pressed to find a Native American pastor anywhere in the state of Oklahoma or New Mexico (he was a missionary to Navajo, Cherokee, & Choctaw) who didn't have a direct relationship with my grandpa, and most would say that my grandfather was influential in their journey.
Jack, or “Jacket”, as we called him, was my greatest mentor. He taught me to preach and to embody a missional frame of ministry, but the greatest gift he gave me was to question everything.
We don't joke about preaching.
When I was 16 I traveled with Jack and my grandmother (BettyMimi) to a Seminole reservation in Florida. Midway through the trip, Jacket, who was scheduled to preach that evening,got sick. I jokingly said I would preach for him. He said "Ok. You better start getting ready for what you're going to say." "Jacket, I was just joking," I replied. "We don't joke about preaching. You better get ready," he said. So, at 16, I preached my first sermon. But that lesson wasn't over with my last words from the lectern in the tiny seminole church. On our ride home and over a bowl of ice cream, he gave me a loving critique. He shared pointers on how to get better and how to dig deep in the Word and bring meaning to the text. He frequently would joke that you can always tell a weak preacher, “Pastors get loud, because weak points mean loud sermons.”
If I'm honest, my first ministry job had more to do with my last name than it did with who I was. I was helping a friend at a Quail Springs Chinese Baptist Church in OKC. We were doing very exciting work with 2nd generation Asian students. As my friend left to return to the military, I was offered the job without even an interview. The backstory: by this point in my life, my grandfather was the Director of Language Missions for the State of Oklahoma. They knew him, they knew my last name, so they believed they knew me.
It was in this position where the power of proclamation was placed deep within my being. Alongside these amazing students, I preached really long, really messy sermons for two years. With the students’ critique, and the nightly questioning conversations with Jacket, I became a preacher. Some pastors rail against being called a "Preacher," Jacket taught me, “it is an honor, wear it proudly, speak boldly, and never stop honing your craft.” He would frequently say there are a lot of good pastors who make really bad preachers.
Missional is a Word
Even though most word processors are unwilling to admit it, Missional is a word. For me missional represents the opposite of colonialism. While many missionaries from my grandfather’s era furthered colonial expansion, he stood boldly against it. Jacket gave me my first David Bosch book (Transforming Mission). As we traveled together while I was in college, he and I would debate the destructive constructs of mission and how to engage in missional activity without destructing the other. One of the constant arguments we entered into was on the value of missions, he would quote Bosch:
“Mission [is] understood as being derived from the very nature of God. It [is] thus put in the context of the doctrine of the Trinity, not of ecclesiology or soteriology. The classical doctrine of the missio Dei as God the Father sending the Son, and God the Father and the Son sending the Spirit [is] expanded to include yet another "movement": Father, Son, and Holy Spirit sending the church into the world.”
For my grandfather mission & living missionally is who we are. The Imago Dei and Missio Dei are inseparable. Before studying with Marjorie Suchocki and reading any of her works, Jacket was embedding the principles of her book "Divinity and Diversity" in his daily life. He believed that listening mattered. The act of listening to another transforms both the listener and the one sharing. Missional living is the embodiment of the value of the other, as fully equal children of God. Another gift from this line of thinking is that anytime someone is being unjustly treated as a fellow child of God, he taught me, we must act. To be silent, to not act, is to be complicit.
Question everything, hold on to what is true.
If you ever walked into Jacket’s office, you know that he had a quote directly behind his desk.
"Don't let anyone tell you NO who doesn't have the power to tell you YES" - Jack Comer.
Some might think it odd to have your own quote behind you in your office, I think it was a warning to all who entered. Power and hierarchy were things my grandfather had to consistently fight against in his career. There were always people telling my grandmother and him “NO”. Thus even when he rose to the position of Director of Language Missions, I would regularly hear him tell young pastors, "They can't tell you that, do what the Word and Spirit guide you. Don't let anyone tell you ‘no’ who can't tell you ‘yes’."
On one of our journeys across the panhandle of Oklahoma I was deep in philosophical studies in my undergrad work. It was across the desolate panhandle where I wrote my first 20 page paper on the philosophy of William James. All across the flat, arid panhandle we debated and dug deep into the Varieties of Religious Experience by James. I learned more from the thoughts of my grandfather on William James in a week then I did in a semester of class. This was what life was like with Jacket. Most weekends of my undergrad I spent in their little home in Southwest Oklahoma City. Each night when I got home, no matter how late, he would get up for a glass of milk and start the questions. He would ask what I was learning, what I believed about what I was learning, and then push me to challenge those beliefs even more. We would debate music, art, theology, social justice, politics, faith, core ideas of Baptist polity, language, ethics, environment. Everything was up for grabs.
Many years later, when I switched my ordination from Baptist to Lutheran (ELCA), after much conversation, Jacket reaffirmed me and said, “Rustin you didn't leave the Southern Baptists, they left you. Go in peace.”
When the ELCA was debating LBGT freedom, my grandfather spoke with me on a visit. We went back and forth, like we did in the old days. Even though I was worried that his thoughts would disappoint me, it felt good to be in the trenches with him again. But surprises with Jacket never ceased, as we finished the conversation he said "your church is making an important decision, a good and important decision, I'm proud of you." “Question everything, hold on to that which is true” was a mantra which Jacket spoke frequently, but even more, it was his way of life.
On Holy Saturday, April 15th, 2017 Jacket (Jack Comer) entered into life eternal. He lived an incredible life. One we can all be proud of. Thank you for mentoring me, and thank you for loving me. I will thank God for you every day in the life of my son, your namesake. May I mentor others with the same grace you mentored me.
