THINKING OF DAVE MILLEY 7 WEEKS LATER

"For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope."  (Jeremiah 29:11 New King James Version)

It doesn't seem possible that it's been about seven weeks since my dear friend the Rev. David C. Milley passed from this life into Heaven.  I really miss him.  It's not that I saw him that often; but  almost every day there were anywhere from two to five e-mails I received from Dave.  Most of them were forwarded e-mails about what a horrible president Mr. Obama is.  Dave wasn't shy about sharing his political views!  Some were humorous e-mails about getting old.  Some were just plain interesting.  One was a series of photos of cars of the fifties which included a multiple choice test to see if you could correctly identify the makes and models.  I was proud of the fact that I got 100% on that one!  There have been no Dave Milley e-mails since the first week of January, and there will never be any more.  I still have Dave Milley listed in my on-line address book.  I cannot bring myself to delete that; nor have I been able to delete Dave Milley's home phone and cell phone numbers from my cell phone contact list.

I knew Dave Milley for thirty-six years, in quite a number of capacities.  I met Dave Milley in early 1978 when he would have been about thirty-seven-years old.  I met him with a group of other Bible College students at a Shoney's restaurant in Springfield, Missouri.  Dave was the new pastor at our church in Massachusetts.  He was in Springfield, Missouri on church business and decided to meet the church's college students and treat us to dinner.  It was nice.  I will say that I didn't know what to make of him at first.  Dave was totally different from the previous pastor, old country preacher Lloyd Westover.  He was impeccably groomed and very well dressed.  He reminded me of a successful lawyer or an energetic candidate for the state senate.  It would take me awhile to get used to him, but during that year's summer I came to enjoy his style of preaching and running church services.  We sang a lot of upbeat chorses.  The sermons were simple, often evangelistic, but dynamically preached.  Dave Milley was not boring!

It's a very long story of how I came to be an Assistant Pastor at Christian Life Center church in Walpole, Massachusetts working under Dave Milley a few years later.  He had hired me against the better judgment of a number of the church's lay leaders.  I was seen as a very nervous and insecure young man who was not a leader and was afraid of my own shadow.  Perhaps that was a bit unfair of them, but it was not completely inaccurate.  Despite their misgivings, Dave enthusiastically hired me.  He told me he believed I was an amazingly gifted teacher- very bright and very talented.  He told me I should get a couple of graduate degrees and teach in a Bible College- that I'd be far better than any of the professors they currently had.  To this day, I don't think that was true,  but I very much appreciate that Dave Milley believed in me and gave me an opportunity that no one else would have!  That's one of the most important aspects of Dave Milley's personality and philosophy that many more of us need to emulate and cultivate:  Dave Milley saw people not as they were but as what they could become.   He believed in people that perhaps no one else would believe in.  I have never forgotten what he did for me.  Oh, make no mistake about it, Dave Milley was a very difficult guy to work for.  He was a strong Type A personality and a perfectionist.  In those traits he reminded me a lot of my father.  He could me moody and he could have unrealistic expectations, but he had a huge heart!  (It's ironic that his heart was the cause of his death.)  Dave Milley was also quite the "businessman".  That may sound very unspiritual, but the fact is that pastoring a church is really (in so many ways) running a small business.  I'm not a business type at all, but I learned invaluable lessons from working with him that greatly helped me when I pastored my own church.

One of those lessons was about not giving handouts to strangers who inevitably show up and ask for them.  It may surprise you that  most pastors and most churches encounter strangers who phone them and even show up at their doors on occasion expecting a handout of money.  It may also surprise you that a lot of pastors and churches regularly give handouts to such strangers.  Dave Milley never did.  Never.  He had a rule:  If you will show up at church for three Sundays in a row, then we'll give you financial help.  Of course, ninety-nine percent of them never showed up again; they went off yelling angry profanities.  This may sound cruel, but in reality it wasn't.  It was good stewardship.  In fact, Dave Milley saw to it that quite a few truly needy people in the church congregation received a lot of financial help and other practical blessings.  He was all for helping people, but he wasn't going to be a stooge for anyone.  I followed that exact pattern when I was pastoring.  Yes, a lot of people swore at me and accused me of being a terrible Christian, but I believe I did the right thing just as David Milley had done the right thing regarding such situations.

During quite a number of years I had no contact with Dave Milley.  We lived our lives and went our separate ways.  I only saw him once in a great while.  In the summer of 2009, I came to a place of great crisis in my life.  I was in a very bad way.  I was not far from a complete mental breakdown and hospitalization.  (Thank God, neither ever happened, but they very well could have!)  One morning I put out a mass e-mailing saying I was taking myself off the computer for a period of months.  I was essentially saying I was going to pull myself into a cocoon and totally isolate.  An hour after sending that I mail, I received a very anxious phone call from Dave Milley.  He sounded truly distressed.  I could hear the compassion and concern in his voice.  "Bob," he said, "I received that e-mail. What's going on?!"  In a very feeble manner, I poured out my heart to him.  Dave told me to not isolate the way I'd planned to.  I told him I did not know how to undo the message of the e-mail I'd sent out.

"All you have to do is say you made a mistake."  is what he said.  He told me I did not owe anyone any explanations.  I did that.  I have never forgotten the help and compassion he gave me that morning.  It is very possible he saved my life that day.  I really mean that.  From that day forward, Dave Milley was a giant to me.  His friendship and support meant everything to me.

I last visited with him last November.  We had a great visit at his apartment.  He phoned me a few days later and asked me if I'd visit him much more regularly.  I told him I'd be glad to.  A couple of weeks later I called him asking if I could come over.  He sounded very weak.  He told me he was not feeling at all well- that it just would not be a good time for me to come.  I told him that was fine and we'd do it another time.  Well, Thanksgiving Day and Christmas and New Year's came, and that visit never happened.  In early January, Dave Milley collapsed, was hospitalized, and died a couple of weeks later.

At every Communion service he presided over, he always closed by saying, "If the Lord returns before our next Communion service, I'll meet you just inside that Eastern Gate!"  Well, someday when I enter the next world, I'm really not expecting to see St. Peter.  I'll be looking for Dave Milley- just inside that Eastern Gate!