I was gripping the handle of a hand truck, balancing a washing machine, when my mother-in-law called out from the house, “Bob, you have a phone call. It’s Don Ingle.”
My wife and I had just departed Texas and returned to North Carolina. Except for some remote work, seminary was finished, so we were seeking God’s open door for ministry, hoping to serve a church as its Pastor. In the thick humidity of August 1992, we were stuffing everything we owned into any basement with space while we waited for God’s next move. At the time, I had no idea that God was, in fact, about to show His hand.
Rev. Don Ingle, “Preacher Don” to the community and the congregation he served, had joined the network of friends in ministry helping me and my wife seek opportunities. But on this day Don called to ask a question. It turned out that at the same time I had been looking for a church to serve as Pastor, their church had been seeking an associate pastor, or, as it was titled, a Director of Ministry. What he said next was staggering and revealed God’s extraordinary timing. “We’ve had your resume all along,” he said, “but you were in Texas. And then a candidate pulled out this week, so the committee wondered if you would be interested in talking to us?”
Yes. Yes I would. And four months later I unboxed my books in my office at Dudley Shoals Baptist Church in a sprawling rural community and began a tutorial inside the orbit of Don Ingle’s tireless, feverish, generous pastoral ministry.
Frankly, it was a tutorial I wasn’t even aware I needed in an area of ministry I wasn’t aware was lacking. But I needed mentoring in pastoral care, and God knew where I could get it.
Don departed to be with his Savior in the earliest hours of Christmas Eve, 2020, yet another casualty of the Covid-19 virus. His legacy is etched into the countless lives he impacted as a pastor. Mine included.
Lately pastoral ministry has become associated with management, leadership, and visioning. We get caught up in budgets, buildings, and programs. Those are crucial components of ministry, but must be kept in perspective. And keeping the right perspective requires pastors like Don Ingle to go before us and make sure we never forget what truly matters most in ministry.
It’s people. People matter most.
See, for Don, being a pastor was defined by a singular, stark characteristic that wasn’t just a part of ministry, it was ministry. Everything else circulated around this one essential. Sure, other things had to be done and other things were important, and he knew that. So he delegated a lot of those things to people like me. Administration, planning, day-by-day church-running. But for Don, ministry was pastoral care. It meant loving people, and nothing could, or should, distract from the people.
Pastoral care wasn’t his job. It was his joy, his heartbeat. And he didn’t just love people. He liked people. Really, really liked people. He embraced each pastoral visit as an exciting chance to see God do something in someone’s life. He was the consummate shepherd, dashing out to help and celebrate and love his flock.
But as every pastor knows, that’s not easy. People are messy. Human struggles are unyielding and adhere to no schedule. But Don gave himself fully to the dictates of human crises, and he surrendered his right to require people to be on his time or to follow a schedule.
Of course, the side effect of being so devoted to helping and loving people is the difficulty of drawing boundaries. Every pastor often faces this complicated dilemma. It is the tension between priorities and purpose, between doing and delegating, between being there and sending someone else, between jumping into action or resisting because that’s more loving than enabling someone’s persistent dependence on others.
Don wrestled with these dilemmas, but he found the balance, and his ministry thrived. My time in the office gave him liberty in the field. I had standard days I visited, and yet, as if to remind me that my tutorial was still underway, frequently Don would suddenly appear at my office door and say something like, “Let’s take a ride.” It wasn’t an order. It was an invitation. An invitation to ministry. Because, for Don, the exciting unpredictability of ministry was where the people were. Out there. In the field.
So off we would go. Almost daily we darted around the rural sideroads, his coffee swirling around in a tiny Styrofoam cup, miraculously never cresting the edges. And samples of his pastoral care are carved into my experience.
In a nursing home I met a man whose family’s faces had receded into the darkness of dementia but who shouted “Preacher Don” with astonishing clarity when his Pastor walked into the room. And I saw the shut-in cry quiet tears from her window when we showed up unannounced and mowed her grass. And I watched the young dad, soon to be evicted from his deteriorating double-wide, struggle to express his gratitude when Don told him the church would cover his rent. And I was there the day a young woman’s husband was snatched away in a head-on collision and Don sat and held her hand but all he could say was “Oh my.” She understood. That was just what she needed.
And while dashing through the countryside we forged our friendship. We laughed together, had mini-staff meetings, and talked about ministry. Of course, we differed on some things and disagreed on others, but I respected his authority, and he respected my perspective, so we would shake it off. Because we both knew that quite likely, maybe around the next corner, the inevitable unpredictability of pastoral ministry would once again make everything else seem trivial.
In 1996, God decided my tutorial was over, and I was called away from Dudley Shoals Baptist Church to other places. Over the years, Don and I talked often on the phone, and he showed up for worship at least once, usually more, at every church where I served. Before she preceded him to heaven his beloved wife Lynn always came with him.
The last time he popped in was August 2017, 25 years since that first phone call. Just as I was preparing to preach on a Sunday morning, Don suddenly materialized in my office door, as if mimicking his appearances so long ago.
So, I’m thankful that God chose to give me Don Ingle as a mentor, and that God knew I needed to learn the inevitable unpredictability of pastoral ministry from a man who had embraced it with his whole life.
Don wasn’t perfect. But that was okay, and that was part of the lesson, the tutorial. Because when people are hurting, they don’t need us to be perfect. They just need their Pastor.
And for nearly three decades in ministry, each time a crisis calls, and I am about to be pulled away from my well-designed day, if for even an instant I hesitate, if I pause and wonder how all the work will get done, I remember to trust God, and I go.
Because I know, that’s what Don would do.
Remember those who led you, who spoke the word of God to you; and considering the result of their way of life, imitate their faith.
Heb. 13:7