Hear Me Now (eBook)

Introduction

Have you ever encountered someone who changed your life? Pastor Jerry Worsham did. At age eight he met God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. After praying with his father and a visiting speaker to receive Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior, Jerry’s life was no longer his own. Christ redeemed him from his sin and an eternity apart from God’s loving and gracious presence. The old Jerry was gone and the new Jerry had come (2 Cor. 5:17). Thereafter, God influenced every encounter Jerry had with every person he met.

Pastor Jerry first influenced me through two women in his church before I even knew he was influencing me. The first woman was Loreen Radke who was a staff member at Grace Church. I started attending an exercise ministry Grace offered called Gracefully Fit, where Loreen occasionally taught and worked in the childcare area. At this time, I had two young sons, one who was very rambunctious. Now, when I say rambunctious, it may be a bit of an understatement. Childcare workers at other places would tell me how active he was, and in very indirect ways discouraged our return. Not Loreen. She loved my son and she loved me. She joyfully and graciously watched both my boys so I could exercise and get some adult contact. Years later after reading one of my social media posts, Loreen reached out to me, asked about my son, prayed for him, and followed up with me about him. She was a product of Pastor Jerry Worsham’s shepherding, praying, and leading.

The second woman was Patti Booth, who was the teaching leader of the Bible Study Fellowship (BSF)1 women’s day class in Racine, Wisconsin. Patti was a loving, kind, and careful teacher of God’s Word. She taught me how to study the Scriptures, and she gave illustrations that were easy to understand and apply—something she heard Pastor Jerry do masterfully every week. And like Pastor Jerry, Patti had one foot planted on the truth of God and the other foot planted on the grace of God. So much of Pastor Jerry’s preaching came through in Patti’s teaching and examples, and she led her BSF staff and leaders with love, with dedication to prayer, and with a laser focus on glorifying God. Jerry’s teaching, praying, and shepherding marked her. You will hear both Loreen and Patti’s voices later in this book.

When my family began attending Grace Church, we were coming from a church that was reeling due to a pastor’s downfall. I came through the doors of Grace Church a bit skeptical and a bit cynical about leaders and churches. Pastor Jerry quickly restored my faith in the pastorate and the church. I knew he was a man I could follow because he followed Christ so very closely and prayer was at the forefront of everything he did.

During my public relations and journalism career, I have conducted many interviews, but I have never had to stop in the middle of so many interviews so the interviewees could stop weeping, get tissues, and compose themselves. As men and women shared their stories about Pastor Jerry with me, almost every single one shed tears of joy and love and gratitude for the many ways he marked their lives and pointed them to the Lord Jesus Christ. And I get it. Pastor Jerry left marks on my life too.

Hear Me Now is a book of encounters, a book of ordinary people telling their stories about an ordinary pastor who was led by an extraordinary God. So, it is fitting for me to share just a few things Pastor Jerry said that have marked my life and my spiritual journey. He said:

• I appreciate your heart for Christ. When I first began attending Grace Church, I was part of the Care Team and was responsible for sending cards to the staff every month. As I set out to encourage Pastor Jerry, he encouraged me by telling me how he appreciated the notes I sent and the words I penned. Knowing he appreciated my heart for Christ was the best compliment ever!
• Karen, you see the goodness of God because you look for it. I am an excitable personality, get enthusiastic about worship, marvel at how God delights in answering prayers, and never tire of hearing how God leads his people in the most interesting ways. Jerry never squelched my exuberance but instead reminded me to keep on seeking God’s goodness.
• You are an overcomer in Christ. More than a conqueror. During a sermon series on the letters to the seven churches in Revelation, Pastor Jerry stressed how we were overcomers, more than conquerors in Christ, and that conquering does not come in the way we expect. Christ conquered by suffering and dying. In God’s sovereignty, he knew how many times I would need to be reminded of this truth in the upcoming years. Jerry’s teaching helped me remember that I was an overcomer in Christ and that I could not be unseated. No. Matter. What. Came. My. Way.
• Justification, Sanctification, Glorification. Written in the back pages of my well-worn Bible are the definitions of these words just as Pastor Jerry detailed in a sermon years ago. His definitions were so clear and simple that I have gone back to them repeatedly in my personal study and when teaching women.
• You are on my Thursday prayer list. Pastor Jerry followed a prayer schedule, and on Thursdays he prayed for people who had urgent needs. I was going through an extremely difficult family situation, and it was a blessing to hear him tell me he was praying for me. I knew he would not just say he was praying but that he really would be interceding for God’s kingdom to come and God’s will to be done in my life.
• Yes. I would love to be on the Prayer Shield. One of the roles God gave me at Grace Church after Jerry’s retirement was to lead a Prayer Shield for Pastor Mike Matheson. Mike became the lead pastor of Grace several years after Jerry’s retirement. When I was praying for the names of people who God wanted on this Shield, the Holy Spirit brought Jerry’s name to my mind. I hemmed and hawed, thinking Jerry would be “too busy” and have “too many other things happening” in his retirement years, but when I asked him, he gave me a quick, firm “yes.” It was such a blessing to pray with Jerry and Jane and the rest of the Shield for Pastor Mike Matheson, and it was yet another demonstration of Jerry’s great humility.
• Karen, Jesus does not mind your tears. My brother, Curtis, died unexpectedly at age fifty-one and just nine months later my only other sibling, Linda, died of cancer. Linda had a dramatic end-of-life conversion, and I shared this story at her funeral. When I spoke with Jerry beforehand and told him how I hoped I could get through my talk without crying, he looked at me with his kind eyes and big smile and said, “Karen, Jesus does not mind your tears.” He and Jane stayed for the funeral and gave affirming nods as I got about thirty seconds into my talk and started to cry.

Pastor Jerry has been at home in Paradise with King Jesus for more than two years now and I miss him. So many people miss him.

One of the many leaders Pastor Jerry influenced, Pastor Mike Lueken, shared these words at Jerry’s memorial service:

…Right about now I can hear Jerry saying, “Well now Mike, it’s not about me, okay, it’s about Jesus.” Indeed, it is about Jesus. I get it. But Jerry showed us Jesus in so many wonderful and shaping ways.

I still remember a line from a sermon Jerry gave a long time ago. He was talking about how God wanted Israel to fully navigate various challenges and struggles and trials.

God invited the Israelites, and here I am quoting him “to walk backward into the future, to go forward with confidence into an uncertain future by looking backward into the past and remembering God’s faithfulness and provision.”

Jerry modeled this way of living. He lived this way through the various challenges of his life. When I heard he had died, I spent several hours alone in my backyard thinking about him, and I revisited this picture of Jerry walking backward through his life and ministry, walking backward as he loved his family so well, walking backward as he led Grace Church, walking backward as he invested in so many of us who wanted to learn to be pastors and leaders, walking backward through his life-long heart problems and through his retirement, and walking backward through his recent health challenges and speech difficultly, and then on August 17, 2020, as he walked backward through the final moments of his life.

I like to think he felt a gentle tap on his shoulder, and as he turned around, his Lord and King was standing in front of him with his arms wide open. He embraced Jerry and he said, “Well done my good and faithful servant. You fought the good fight and finished the race.”

Well done, my pastor and mentor and friend.

Jerry is right now celebrating and laughing and worshiping and reveling in the presence of Jesus, and Jesus now means more to Jerry and is more real to him than ever before.2

As you read the accounts in Hear Me Now and walk backward through Pastor Jerry’s life, may you hear not only his voice but the voice of God whom Jerry loved with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength and with all his mind (Luke 10:27a). May you encounter God and be found bearing the marks of a disciple of Jesus Christ just like Pastor Jerry Worsham.