Reflections on Being a Dull-of-Speech Preacher

Some anniversaries on the calendar mark more significant milestones than others. Ever since 2005, March 8 reminds me how dramatically and increasingly challenging my pastoral vocation became from that day on. It took five hours on the table that Tuesday for a surgeon to excise an egg-sized cancerous tumor along with one-third of my tongue. Never again would I step into a pulpit without acknowledging that an already tough task had become even harder because of the new speech impairments.

Also vivid in my memory that year is the Sunday just five days after my surgery. Surprisingly, I felt well enough to attend church. Nancy, my late wife, and I occupied the front row as usual. A fellow elder, slated to give the pastoral prayer that day, sat supportively beside me. As the time approached in the service for that prayer, I felt strongly impressed that the Lord actually wanted me to do it. Much to my surprise and to the congregation’s, there I, their teaching pastor, stood before them to pray, with 33% less of a tongue and sporting a hockey-stick shaped, still-sutured scar running from my right ear to my Adam’s apple.

I don’t remember what I prayed. But I do recall exactly how I started. I slowly read this text from Exodus 4:10-12:

¹⁰ But Moses said to the Lord, “Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.” ¹¹ Then the Lord said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? ¹² Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.”

Our guest preacher of the day, Dr. Bruce Waltke, called that extraordinary God-moment a sermon all its own. He was right. I’ve never forgotten that day, or the day of my surgery, which marked me for good ever since.

Ten years later my slow-of-speech-and-tongue mouth got even worse. Downstream effects of radiation treatment in ‘05 eventually fried my mandible requiring jaw reconstruction in 2016 (see image above). Multiple surgeries added to my frustration and difficulty with articulation throughout the last six years of my vocational ministry. Thankfully the Lord continued to help me all the way to the pastoral finish line. Retirement in 2022 brought a measure of welcomed relief from weekly pulpit demands. And yet . . . I’ve wrestled often with what usefulness in retirement looks like for me. Could I or should I still preach occasionally, as humbling as it is, or chalk it up to “that was then, this is now”? Over the last few years, I had all but given up on the prospect. After all, who wants to listen to Preacher Dull/Heavy/Slow of Speech and Tongue (literal meaning of the Hebrew kabed)? Or so I thought.

But recently the Lord has been working in some unexpected ways. Last month I found myself officiating a wedding including a personal charge to the couple. This Sunday evening I will preach my first sermon in three years at our local church. And Lord willing, this September I will bring four messages on fighting for peace and unity for a church camp in British Columbia. Go figure! The Lord seems to have more for me to do.

Whatever speech issues plagued Moses enough for him to balk at his calling, mine make me sympathetic to his reluctance. I’m so thankful this exchange between him and the Lord made it into the biblical record. It serves as a continual encouragement in my retirement to welcome any further calling he may require of me, no matter how surprising.

Who has made this man’s mouth? Is it not the Lord? It is. How will this man speak no matter however, wherever called upon to do so? Same answer as always. Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.

I believe Lord, help my unbelief.