Eulogy for Arnold Belcher

 

Eulogy

Arnold Dwayne Belcher

March 1, 1917 – November 15, 2012

Service held at 10:00 a.m. on November 19, 2012

Elizabeth Memorial United Methodist Church

Charleston, West Virginia
 

            It was some fifty years ago when Arnold and I first met.  I was in college and a student pastor serving two country churches, and he along with his wife, Helen, and their three sons, David, Kirwan and Alan, were fairly recent arrivals in the northern panhandle, adjusting to pastoral and parsonage realities in Moundsville.  That first meeting occurred on an autumn morning in one of the conference rooms of Wilson Lodge at Oglebay Park.  Arnold, Jim Wilson, Chuck Ellwood, Frank Shaffer, Jr., and I found ourselves seated in the same row near the back for the first session of a two-day mandatory pastor’s retreat (even those of us who were student pastors were required to attend).  There’s something oxymoronic about a “required retreat,” but that’s the way it is sometimes in The United Methodist Church.  The focus of the retreat was evangelism, and an “expert” had been imported from Nashville to show us how to be more evangelical.  He began by inviting the clergy to tell about their conversion experience, and the first pastor to do so said something about how one morning he was on the path that led from his house to the outhouse out back when he felt a “strange movement.”  I believe it was Jim Wilson who muttered under his breath, “I think he got his movements mixed up,” at which point, the rest of us along the row had an awful time stifling our nearly uncontrollable laughter.  The one saving grace of that retreat for me was getting to meet Arnold and the chance to deepen friendships with him and the other mentor colleagues seated along what the expert from Nashville probably concluded was the hecklers’ row.

            Later that year, Arnold approached me about possibly coming on staff at Simpson Church in Moundsville as his associate.  The Bishop and Cabinet approved the idea, and in June I left the two churches where I was serving and spent the next fifteen months prior to leaving for seminary discovering realities of parish ministry in a more urban, corporate-style church.  And what a difference it made!

            Arnold’s affable qualities and his genuine care became very fertile soil in which to deepen one’s roots intellectually and faithfully, and thereby, encourage blossoming of potential.  Countless are the reports I’ve heard from colleagues about their experience as associate pastors, most of which detail dominating, abusive expectations.  Fortunately, the three times I have served as an associate have been in settings where a mutuality of concern, collegiality, and commitment took precedence over insecurities of power and prestige.  And Arnold was the first of those exemplary co-workers for whom humane relational values, or should we say “Christian” qualities, were more important than lesser, more self-centered considerations.

            But that was Arnold’s inherent nature.  He truly enjoyed the wide array of individuals with whom he came into contact.  Even though as a pastor he encountered those in churches who were less than amiable, he rarely reacted in a hurtful way.  All churches have their malcontents (well, maybe not this one), but Arnold’s kind, helpful and jovial spirit was never withheld from even the most grumpy of his congregants.  Indeed, one time, rather than run the risk of harming congregational unity and well-being, Arnold requested a change in pastoral appointments, thus ending conflict with a particular family.  He was highly regarded both in the congregation and community, but to keep the church safe, he left.

            If Arnold carried any grief or bitterness about the difficulty in that former church into his new assignment, it quickly melted away.  His next appointment was to a small college town where those same characteristics of genuine regard for others, intelligent faith understandings, openness to diversity, and jovial friendliness soon found acceptance among faculty, students and congregants alike.  The next nine years spent in Montgomery were filled with good times made possible by Arnold and Helen’s hospitality and care, and many are the students who know the value of a second home when far away from home.  There was one problem at the church, however.  The pipe chamber for the organ was located directly behind a wall in the master bedroom of the parsonage, which was attached to the church.  Even if you were sick on Sunday and needed to stay in bed, or wanted to take a nap during Wednesday evening choir practice, there is no way that was going to happen.

            You didn’t have to know Arnold for very long before discovering his deep appreciation of the out-of-doors, especially his love for wild, wonderful West Virginia.  Chances are that had he not been called to the ministry, he would have become a naturalist or an environmental scientist.  To become his friend meant Sunday afternoon drives with Helen and him on some West Virginia back roads observing the flora and fauna, or long hikes in the woods that always uncovered foliage and plants you never knew existed.  Indeed, sometimes when walking along some of the rails to trails in our area, I am accompanied by others.  So, why not try and impress them by prattling off the names of trees, ferns and flowers that Arnold taught me.  (Friends are not always easily impressed.)

            There was one teenager, however, John Williams, who back in the sixties, was so enthralled by Arnold’s ability to connect faith in God with the beauty of nature that he attributed to Arnold’s influence his own love of the out-of-doors.  Later, when John was in his fifties, he was stricken with Cancer, which ultimately took his life.  One item on John’s bucket list was to express gratitude to Arnold for paving the way to his own love of nature.  So shortly before John died, he asked if I would drive him to South Charleston, where Arnold and Helen were living at the time, so that he could express his appreciation in person.  Would you believe that Arnold, now showing signs of advanced aging, feebleness and fading memory, had the three of us driving to a wooded section near his home, once again pointing out the wonders of wildlife to be found there?

            “I lift up my eyes to the hills,” sang the Psalmist, “From whence does my help come?”  Those are words that surely resonated with Arnold’s spirit.  He, Helen, David and Alan have known the full range of life experiences, the joys of affectionate family ties, the miracles of the cosmos both human and ecological, and they have known deep disappointments and awful tragedies, particularly the death of a son and brother at a much too early age.  But somehow mysteriously Arnold and his family (which includes many of us here) have been able through it all to look to the hills for strength and the assurance that the journey is always in God’s eternal keeping.  Thanks be to God.