Guest commentary by Tod Bolsinger
“Could we just celebrate a little, Tod? Before we starting making plans for the next thing, could we just take five minutes and enjoy what we did together?”
It was the middle of summer and we were in a staff meeting at San Clemente Presbyterian Church the week following a really fun and successful Vacation Bible School. I had come in that morning so energized by the good work of the whole staff that I immediately began planning how we could build on that momentum for a new fall push for engaging families in the life of our church. That’s what I do. I plan things. I strategize about the future. I start looking for the next thing.
Jim was different. He was as much a dreamer, visionary and strategist as I ever was, but he had this different gift as well. While I was always looking to discern the next thing, Jim could see with utter clarity what – and especially who – was right in front of him. Many pastors are celebrated for their visionary leadership. Jim taught me that true vision is being able to see what God is doing right in our midst.
Jim was the associate pastor at the time, overseeing all of our family ministries. So when I grabbed the dry erase marker off the whiteboard and began coaxing the team to start brainstorming how we could turn a big VBS week into more outreach to families in our community, it was his team that I was challenging. Jim knew his team was up for the challenge, but he also saw on their faces that they were tired, pleased with their good work and needed to celebrate what God had done through them in this thing before they moved on to the next thing.
“Tod, could we take five minutes and just cheer and give thanks to God and enjoy what we were able to do together before you start challenging us to the next hill to take?”
I smiled and shook my head. Yoda was right again.
On Saturday, April 24, I received word that Jim Toole, then the senior pastor at St. Andrews Presbyterian Church in Tucson, Arizona, had passed away. Eight months after a surprise diagnosis of aggressive bile duct cancer, Jim, in his own words, had been “taken home.” Many stories of Jim’s humor, transparency, earthiness, vulnerability and warmth are being told by those who knew and loved him. Pictures have been shared, money has been given, prayer have been offered.
Years earlier, Jim’s staff nicknamed him Yoda. With shining eyes, an ever-present laugh and a warmth that made you feel like you were the only person in the world, he seemed to be able to see what you could not. Jim had this incredible God-given gift to see the work of the Spirit in the lives of the people around him, and then to gently offer wisdom and perspective. When Jim told you something about your life, it was a bit unsettling — perhaps what it must be like when a healed blind person struggles to make sense of what they now suddenly see.
Even though I was the senior colleague at the time, I literally went into Jim’s office every day that we worked together to get his perspective on the things I suspected were hidden in my own blind spots.
“Got a minute?” I’d ask. The answer was always yes. I’d sit across from him, settle in and put my feet on his desk. He’d sit back and do the same. While looking at my shoes, Jim would help me see what was going on right beneath my feet, right in front of my face. When he left to take a call to pastor the church that he would love and serve for over a decade, I gave him a pair of my old shoes as thanks for all the many times he had helped me see what I needed to see in order to take the next step.
Whether it was offering his boss eyes to see a staff that needs to pause and celebrate before strategizing again, or giving a guitar to young woman on the youth ministry staff to help her discern her own gifts for leading God’s people in worship, or seeing a junior associate who was ready to take on leadership when Jim went on disability, Jim’s gift of vision was truly prophetic. Nurtured through a life of prayer and the calm that comes from a life of joy, humility and deep care, Jim could see with clarity what many of us strained to make out in the dimness of our busy and anxious lives. While many like me were constantly looking down the road, Jim could see all that was around him; when asked, he generously invited you to see what he saw — and celebrate the beauty that was you.
A few months before Jim died, I asked him to do an interview with me for the Church Leadership Institutethat I run and to share his perspective on the future of the church that he knew he wouldn’t inhabit. Like Moses looking over the Promised Land that he wouldn’t enter, Jim tried to help others try to see what God was doing in the church — even in a pandemic, even in his own ebbing life. And even amid all of the struggles of the moment and the challenges of his own life, Jim urged us to see the beauty of God in our midst — and allow that beauty to help us gain a new perspective on success, affirmation and faithfulness. Even in the midst of many challenges like COVID-19, “there are moments and if we don’t celebrate them, we’ll miss them,” Jim said.
In the months preceding Jim’s death, he shared a weekly video with hundreds of friends and family reflecting on what he was learning through his cancer and his reflections on hope, optimism, setbacks, gratitude and more. Each week he offered the perspective of a man and a pastor who was being given glimpse of the glory that awaits us. He shared how he would wake early in the morning and watch the sunrise knowing that the beauty of an eternal morning awaited him. He shared a vision that God had given him one night: an image of himself and his beloved wife, Pati, floating in inner tubes in a river in Yellowstone National Park, holding hands while the current took them downstream further and further into the beauty that awaits us all.
A few weeks before he passed, he offered a final video message. It was a six-minute testimony, an Easter witness of what he was seeing and an invitation to borrow his eyes and behold the beauty that is right in front of all of us — right in the midst of life.
“To be honest,” he said, “I’m dying. … There is nothing like celebrating the resurrection when you are dying.” He went on to remind us that the celebration of Easter is not just what Jesus did in his death and resurrection, but what awaits us all with the coming of the new heaven and the new earth — something that can both give us comfort and direct our next steps, here and now. On that day, Jim reminded us, “there will be no more crying, there will be no more cancer, there will be no more death, but there will be beauty and we will be with God.”
What made Jim such a trusted pastor and mentor was his ability to see in ourselves what sometimes we could not. Occasionally, that meant calling us out; most often it meant bucking us up. But what truly made Jim such a gift was his ability to see – and celebrate – the beauty of life that is, always, right in front of us, if we know how to look.
TOD BOLSINGER is executive director of the Church Leadership Institute of the De Pree Center at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, California, and an associate professor of leadership formation. He is the author of five books including “Tempered Resilience: How Leaders are Formed in the Crucible of Change.”
