Dr. Paul L. Walker Memorial Service | Mount Paran Church

[Music] so [Music] so do [Music] do so [Music] perhaps the premier leader of the christian faith and doctrine was a man by the name of paul he lived penned and prayed a prayer in the first century that you and i have read and heard many times from the book of colossians chapter 1 verse 9. that prayer was prayed by another man by the name of paul a premier leader in the church in the 20th and 21st century that prayer was prayed by him many many times over all of us maybe you will recognize its words for this reason since the day we heard about you we have not stopped praying for you and asking god to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual understanding and wisdom and we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the lord and may please him in every way bearing fruit in every good work growing in the knowledge of god being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience and joyfully giving thanks to the father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light for he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the son he loves in whom we have the forgiveness of sin and redemption can you say amen let us bow for prayer oh lord our lord how excellent is your name in all of the earth you have set your glory above the heavens your sovereignty presides over the limitless universe and we honor and adore you today we have gathered here today father in this sacred moment to worship you for your holy attributes to praise you for your mighty acts to thank you for your unconditional love your gift of grace your forever mercy in the person of your only begotten son jesus christ the center of your affection and the head of the church and with that worship praise and thanksgiving we are here to celebrate the life of one of your spiritual sons dr paul laverne walker now we can ransack our vocabulary without finding words picturesque enough to describe this larger than life man of god but we won't do that we will just thank you father that you created gifted called and gave him such an unquenchable thirst for truth and excellence that he has now joined the short list of the most influential preachers and leaders in the contemporary church history father we thank you that in the whole of church of god history he is on the very short list of our greatest father we cannot remember dr walker without loving and respecting beautiful and gracious carmelita who for 68 years rejoiced cried served led equally with the love of her life together this couple offered to us father to all of us and thousands of others a canopy of integrity and discipline and example that will cover us for the rest of our lives we know that dr walker is in your presence now and we know that in your presence there is fullness of joy so we close this prayer in the name of jesus and we end it with words so familiar from the man we all loved and honored as we say hallelujah be to god amen amen and amen hmm [Music] when peace [Music] like [Music] [Music] [Laughter] oh [Laughter] [Music] is [Laughter] [Music] with my soul [Music] and when i am [Music] my way [Music] that jesus [Music] is [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] my soul [Applause] [Music] [Applause] is [Applause] oh [Applause] said [Music] [Music] with my soul [Music] [Applause] [Music] is [Applause] [Applause] thank you for grandparents day in elementary school i was asked to write character traits to describe my grandparents when it was time to share i stood up and told the crowded room full of grandparents that my grand doc was like an owl wise and old everyone laughed but i wasn't sure why at the time while i understand now that old is not the most endearing character trait i still stand by my original observation that he was wise not only was he wise but he was generous encouraging sympathetic courageous strong steadfast inspiring and so much more throughout my entire life i have had people come to me and ask and ask what it was like to have dr walker as my grandfather i used to think it was such an odd question because i honestly didn't know any different but as i got older i learned from others just how much his ministry impacted them or their families people were always shocked at how little i knew of all that he had done in his life but i was always proud of how he never bragged or spent our time together telling me about all he had done instead he spent our time together genuinely interested and invested in me and in how i was doing he made jokes and poked fun at me but he would always make me feel important valued and loved as i've grown older i have come to realize just how special he was and how blessed our family heritage is i am honored to be a part of this family's legacy and i'm honored to be called his granddaughter i just hope and pray that i am able to follow god's calling on my life in the same way that he did i wholeheartedly believe that when he met our maker's face god looked looked at him and said well done my good and faithful servant we will miss him every moment of every day but he deserves every bit of that paradise with our savior i hope he knows just how proud i am to have had him as my granddad i will always remember the way he loved retelling old family stories watching old western movies eating cookies or vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup saying this is so dumb at every movie we watched together laughing at the little things and welcoming and enjoying people's company no matter who they were or where they came from those memories may be different than the way the rest of the world will remember him but that's what makes it so special his legacy will always be remembered and shared through generations to come but i get to cherish and keep the memories that only a grandparent can make with their grandchildren and for that i am beyond grateful thank you today i have the privilege of honoring my grandfather you know i'm fine backstage and then i get on a mic all right it just ambushes me he deserves much more than can be stated here but i hope these words help to capture a glimpse of his joy and his love and his wisdom so i've received countless text messages and emails from close friends expressing condolences and sharing stories and celebrating the man that my grandfather was and the governing thread that ties all of them together as ashton already mentioned is their generous reminder of his godly legacy and perhaps there's no greater testament to someone than the combination of these two words godly and legacy but as i've begun to reflect upon the meaning of this phrase since tuesday i'm a bit confounded not because of any disagreement of course but simply because so much of what constituted his legacy in the public eye his ministry his leadership his faithfulness represents only a fraction of my experience with my loving grandfather at grandma doc's house the ministry if anything was a conversational footnote it was like a muted television program that played in the background it figured in a few stories but life was so much more than this and so the following remarks are an attempt at articulating parts of that legacy so first when i think of my grandfather i'm inclined first to remember his voice before seeing his face his speech and his cadence or a signature sound that defines so much of the soundtrack of my childhood his was a booming baritone rasp comparable in my imagination only to the holy thunder at sinai or the voice heard on the mount of transfiguration god seemed to have fashioned his own voice inside of my grandfather and yet in doing so it seems that god neglected to equip him with the very important volume control capability so there was no such thing as a private conversation with doc whatever he thought he was telling you in confidence at the restaurant table could be heard by the valet attendant outside and when we would go to movies together other guests were not aware in the theater that they were going to receive grandack's immediate and ongoing vocal review of the film as they watched together this is the dumbest movie i've ever seen his voice was a metaphor of his person endearing towering gregarious wise emptied of all deceit affectation or guile this was a voice made to tell stories to preach the gospel to laugh and to lead to remind a grandson that he is loved when i think about his legacy i'm reminded of his joy doc's life was a masterclass in the ever disappearing virtues of enjoyment and wonder in our time time with doc was a whirlwind of sensory inputs elegant venues quality restaurants good music hearty laughter his was a life oriented around the table where the only travesty in life was to miss a meal or to reduce it to some over-processed protein bar the table was a place where all the joys converged built toward the ultimate joy of telling stories he would repeat the same family narratives with the same familiar punchlines with the same familiar laughter doc helped me to see the beauty in the world it was doc who gave me my first guitar who introduced my virgin ears to the rhythm and dissonance of duke ellington and his purple jag before i knew what good music was it was a doc who gave me my second guitar who gifted me his stradivarius trumpet for symphonic band who took me skiing for the first time who gave me my third guitar who taught me to shoot skeet until my shoulder was bruised who took us to our first broadway play who took me to vegas for the first time who gave me my fourth guitar it was doc who passed on the legacy to my father and now to me of speeding tickets because there's too much of the world to see to drive slowly some of my most cherished memories of this joy of his joy came from a trip that we took together just the two of us to montana when i was 11 years old as general overseer at the time he had been invited to preach at a local church and pray a dedication for a new church building so he seized on the opportunity to make a vacation of it we would go sightseeing at glacier national park we would see extended relatives which ended up not working out because he had to return for a funeral of all things but here i witnessed the two docks of my memory doc the pastor and doc the grandfather come together this was a trip gleaming with enjoyment so it began as it should with a new cd purchase in the airport to help me pass the time on the long flight and hear me i'm not positive but it may be the only time that a church of god general over this year checked out of a record store with a copy of the red hot chili peppers californication album which is a pretty good record that's how the party started on this trip i remember him preach i remember hearing him preach to a small gathering and a holiday in ballroom i remember them singing victory in jesus so slowly it was painful almost as though they weren't convinced jesus had left the tomb christus victor had become christus victim i remember him encouraging me to be patient in the dedication service because of how much it meant to these brothers and sisters that we were there i remember driving in the mountains riding all day on horseback to stand on a glacier together stopping to see native american etchings on rock faces eyeing a grizzly bear in her cubs in the woods i remember being happy this may be the only week of my life where i sat down at a restaurant table three times a day without fail no drive through windows with doc no pb j sandwiches no grab and go we ate on a hobbit schedule right breakfast second breakfast 11zs these kinds of things as if it were our religion that's how we ate together [Music] doc the sage was schooling me on what life should be on the one hand faithfully dedicated to god's church and on the other hand unapologetically indulgent in god's wonderful gifts as he so often quoted in the king james version every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and cometh down from the father of lights with whom there is no variableness neither shadow of turning doc embodied this truth doc was this kind of gift a solomon in his own right he modeled what it meant to eat and drink and find satisfaction in our toil all the days of this vain life god has given to us under the sun when i think about his legacy finally i remember his intelligence articulate perspicacious cunning doc straddled what many assumed to be bifurcated worlds authentic pentecostal ministry and rigorous academic training doc was a man of wisdom as has been said a man with two feet planted firmly on the ground who approached problems with a combination of pragmatism prayer and quick-witted sarcasm and for doc there was one word that epitomized the source of the world's problems this was a word that captured the totality of human depravity a word i heard him utter continually whether under his breath or an outspoken consternation this word has been doc's word as long as i can remember it was bequeathed to my father and a since taken house in my own rhetoric it was a capacious word it was his rhetorical swiss army knife that applied to the range of issues and affairs from the talking heads on cable news to the most recent celebrity scandal from smartphones to tv remotes to the church to family members nay even to himself and that word is stupid for my grandfather the antithesis of spirit-filled living was not sin or wickedness but stupidity there were no bonus points for being spiritual if it made you stupid the gospel according to my grandfather would read as follows but god demonstrates his own love for us and this while we were yet stupid christ died for us the word of god for the people of god thanks be to god doc understood that true pentecostalism heeds both the wind of god and the wisdom of god that the delivering power of the spirit could be found in both the church altar and the counselor's office that critical reason and spirit and dwelling do not work in tension with each other but in symbiosis he showed us that to find god one need not escape the world but press firmly into it for doc your only intelligent insofar as you're open to the movement of the spirit and you're only growing in christ's likeness insofar as you're willing to be led into all truth this is what i take pride in a man whose legacy enfolded the mind within pentecostal ministry i owe much of my own pentecostalism and educational achievements to the path he pioneered in this regard and oh i'm going to miss him i'm going to miss his voice his advice his wit i'm going to miss him banter with my kids i'm gonna miss hearing him laugh i'm going to miss the exotic world he carried with him his turns of phrase it ain't over until the last dogs hung i don't nobody else says that the stories he told that seems so far from my time i'm going to miss this constant reminder to hold it in the middle of the road i'm going to miss doc but it's because of doc's legacy that i received and carry forward this wisdom and this hope from my father and i pray by god's grace to hand it on to my children and theirs i believe in the holy spirit the holy catholic church the communion of saints the forgiveness of sins the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting amen amen and amen doc we love you we miss you we will see you [Music] soon dr walker was the consummate leader of worship and so it's fitting and right today that we would stand if you're able and join our hearts and our voices in worship to our savior to our god and sing together so many of the songs that he has led us in so many times in moments like this i sing a song i sing out of love to jesus in moments like these i lift up my hands i lift up my hands to the lower [Music] you lord [Music] this this is the day that the lord has made that the lord has made i will rejoice i will rejoice and be glad in it and be glad in it this is the day that the lord has made i will rejoice and be glad in it this is the day this is the day that the lord [Music] [Music] you has and i lift my voice to worship [Music] take joy my keys in what you hear maybe a sweet sweet [Music] i love you lord and i lift my voice to worship [Music] take joy my keys what you hear may it be a sweet sweet your ears he is here [Music] amen he is here holy i will bless his name again he is hear him out your name he is here you can touch him you will never be the same [Music] of peace [Music] [Applause] [Music] hearts are mended [Music] sing in the presence he is here in the [Music] praises god oh my [Music] god troubles vanish hearts are made in the presence [Music] of the keys since i started for the kingdom since my life he controls since i gave my heart to jesus the longer i serve him the sweeter he grows the longer i serve him the sweeter he grows and the more that i love him more love he bestows each day heaven my heart [Music] overflows the longer i serve him the sweeter he grows and oh i want to see him look upon his face there to sing forever of his saving grace on the streets of glory let me lift my voice cares all past home at last ever to rejoice oh i want to see him look upon his face there to sing forever of his saving grace on the streets of glory let me lift my voice cares all past home at last ever to restore and want to take that will be when my jesus i shall see when i look upon his face the one who sings me by his praise and when he takes me by the hand and leads me through the promised land what a day glorious day that will be what a day glorious day that will be what a day a glorious day that will be amen you may be so how do we remember paul l walker all of us who sit here from so many parts of his life so many places so many generations all of us who knew him and loved him or who worked for him or just heard him preach who saw him close up or maybe even from a distance those who called him pastor or called him boss or called him friend those who watched him build this church lead this family those of us who knew him as a young superstar full of flesh and vinegar and the holy ghost or those of us who knew him in these later years slower surely wiser as an elder statesman of the church fading a little but never less than the most impressive man we ever met how do we remember paul walker well the first impulse is to try to sum up his life but we know we can't do that i've found myself many times not just in the last three days but in the last 20 years trying to answer the question what was it so special about this guy and i have wondered what produced such powerful impact such over-the-top admiration he preached and people got excited sometimes they got excited about god sometimes they just got excited we want to sum him up and of course that's not possible in a short time like this no no one's going to be able to sum up paul walker so the best we can do is just remember we remember him for a couple of things his gifts and his style now we remember his gifts because he had such massive gifts and so many of them he was an athlete he was a musician he was a trumpet player when he was younger and he played piano and of course he sang and he was a great preacher he was the kind of natural leader that people just wanted to follow him people who knew dr walker in his later years can't appreciate how much he loved athletics and what a fierce athletic competitor he was he played played church of high school football which in that day was a virtually a scandal that was so unknown in the church of god but he loved it and he always played whatever he played so hard the first time i ever met carmelita was when i was in high school i was working at j.c penney's in cleveland in the menswear section paul and karma were in town for a lee homecoming and he played in an old-timer's football game broke his ribs had to go to the hospital overnight and karma came in looking for a pair of pajamas for him since he hadn't planned to be away from home that was my introduction to the family and several years later when i was leading a mount perrin youth camp up in north georgia at camp glsen he came up to preach to the young people and the next day we had a pickup football game it didn't matter that these were 13 year olds he was competing against he got into it so much he dove in the air to catch a pass landed as on his arm and broke it so cleanly honestly we could all hear the bone snap all across the fields he loved handballing after that racquetball in tennis he loved knocking people up against the wall it was his favorite part of the game and of course he loved golf and he hated to lose to anybody on any day under any circumstances i learned very early when i was a young man on his staff that if i was keeping score and he had a bad hole you just didn't write it down you just left it blank and went on to the next hole and of course he did love to ski how he loved to ski and for him skiing wasn't about grace and finesse and technique it was strictly about speed skiing was a race to get from the top of the mountain to the bottom of the mountain he just got down in that crouch got going as fast as he could and if you got in his way and he note you knocked you off the slope that was even better it juiced up the sport for him he skied so hard there's a theme here most of us remember the time in vail when he fell and crushed his shoulder and arm so badly he had to be airlifted back to an atlanta hospital and was in rehab a very very bad injury he loves sports he was a gifted competitor we'll always remember him for that but his great gift of course was preaching no one will ever remember paul walker without remembering his preaching the first time i ever heard him preach i was 17 years old i was a freshman in my first chapel of my first semester at lee and this guy was introduced to preach at something called the formal opening now trust me there was nothing at all formal about it it was just another church service i'd heard of this guy paul walker but i had never met him or heard him but i want to tell you to this day i still remember that sermon i still remember the subject i still remember that it was electrifying not just to me but to the whole crowd i had been dragged to church all my life i was the son of a church of god preacher i'd been on every camp meeting floor i had been in every revival i'd heard every kind of preacher but i had never heard anything like this he took the whole art form up a notch and in those days it worked to his benefit that there were no wireless mics so he had the microphone cord is anybody old enough to remember paul walker with a microphone cord in his hand was a lethal weapon he would whip that thing across the stage his career took a dive when they invented wireless mics actually because so much of part of his stick we remember him not just for his gifts but for his style now this man had style the way he dressed the way he preached the way he walked into a room paul walker had a sense of style did you ever see him when his hair was out of place or his pants weren't perfectly creased did you ever see him when the cufflinks were just right the cuff sticking out just the right distance even when he was dressed casually for him it was also so thoughtfully color coordinated it was once said that when paul walker drove onto the lee university campus pulled up in a sleek new jag got out of the car tall and handsome in a tailored italian silk suit with carmelita so gorgeous and classy everybody compared her to jackie kennedy every young guy on campus was immediately called to preach he called more of them to the pulpit than their mama did this was a man with style and he had such a distinctive style in the pulpit that younger preachers all around the country tried to imitate him and failed so he had young guys all over the lord exhorting the crowd to let's just worship the lord in this place having no idea what it actually even meant one day when i was on leave faculty paul walker came to chapel to preach and i didn't go to chapel that day so i was still in my office when the student crowd came out of the chapel and into my building a young female student came by and i hollered out to her and said did you go to chapel today to hear dr walker she said yes and oh it was just great he was fabulous she said i said well tell me about it and she said well he wore a navy blue blazer with gray slacks red pi pocket hanky these really cool gucci loafers and i said yeah but what did he preach about and she's oh i can't remember that but he was fabulous remember another time he was on campus and was meeting students at a reception and a young man told me later he said i got to shake hands with dr paul walker and i don't know i've been wanting to do that for so long and he said dr khan when i met him i just kind of got flustered and kind of got in the zone and i don't know what to say just kind of zoned out he said tell me dr khan was i just nervous or was that the holy ghost son trust me you're just nervous i was on staff here with a guy named joe bailey people would come up after dr walker would preach and they would practically hide for a ventilate sometimes telling you how good it was in this one kind of late middle-aged lady came up and joe and i were standing there listening and she came up to him and said oh dr walker pastor walker that was so good that was so wonderful he thanked her and walked away and she turned to us and said no mortal lips ever spoke such wisdom as we heard here this morning and i could see joe over her shoulder and he kind of rolled his eyes over and like oh no here we go again uh another 60-something groupie and he said to me afterwards no mortal lips that became our kind of watch word we would just say to one another for years i would see the guy five years later he's pastoring in texas i'd see him and he'd say no mortal lips and the thing is dr walker heard us laughing about it one time and asked us what we were laughing about we told him about it and he got a huge kick out of it he thought it was funnier than we did no more lips so we'll remember the man's style and his competitiveness energies cowering gifts but that's not his legacy that's just how we remember him his legacy is what he taught us what he left in us four things let me mention he taught us that seeking excellence through hard work is compatible with the pentecostal message we didn't hear that message a lot we still don't hear it that much not enough with all of his gifts his style his talent he didn't coach on that he pushed hard he worked hard he always wanted to be better he never mailed it in he never slacked off he never settled for mediocre i remember once when i was a young guy on staff here he was in he was preaching at the birmingham at the alabama camp meeting and he had left something that he needed brought to him and i was sent over there drive to birmingham and take it to him and i did so and i went to his hotel room and he was uh in a motel and i knocked on the door and he said come in he was preparing for the night service now see i heard this guy preach many times people said he had a photographic memory which of course is nuts he didn't have a photographic memory he just worked very very hard and was very smart but he had he preached without notes he seemed to have an endless ability to reel off these fantastic sermons and uh it seemed so easy to him it seemed kind of intuitive and natural but it wasn't natural at all and i walked in that motel room that day he was sitting on one double bed and on the other double bed the entire bed was covered with notes all kinds of notes stacks of notes all over here and he was there studying those getting ready and i was kind of shocked by this i thought what he did he just did because he was so gifted no he he did it because he worked so hard i called him one time after i became president a friend of mine took her a friend of mine's wife took her life and i was asked she was not a church-goer and i was asked to come conduct a funeral service for her i got over there and i was paralyzed by this i didn't know what to do i was struggling with it big time i remembered that paul walker had preached the funeral of someone who had committed suicide not long before that so i thought i'll call dr walker and get him to help me probably remember his outline he'd give me three good points some good scriptures at least give me guidance tell me how to handle this and i called him and i reached him and i explained my situation is i'm over here i've got to do this funeral tomorrow i don't even know where to begin i don't know what tone to take i don't know what to say can you please help me he said i can't help you i said well you know can you just i know you remember that i mentioned the service that he had done a few months earlier could you just tell me can you help me here know how to go about this he said i can't help you paul these things are individual here's here's what i'll tell you to do tell the truth and trust your instincts and you'll be okay that's all i got for you whoa and so you know what i did i hung up and i told the truth and i trusted my instincts and it turned out all right he believed that paying the price oneself was the only way to do a good job second he he taught us that the kingdom of god is inclusive not exclusive he didn't just preach it he modeled it he made mount parent church a laboratory than a showcase of a certain kind of openness that was very rare in our church at that time you know god puts particular people in a time and place in his place with atlanta in the 60s and 70s those were tough years in atlanta atlanta america was in an immense change in the turmoil that went along with it the 60s and 70s were defining periods in atlanta and in the country mount perrin that was in this place mount peran had his roots in a religious tradition that grew out of the appalachian mountains and the rural south it was white to the bone it was a church however that by the hand of god was in urban atlanta it was next door to the for you old-timers the pick brick and lester maddox it was during that time that martin luther king jr emerged as the conscience of america in respect to race and here was paul walker with this church at the juxtaposition of these two great forces on collision and he had to navigate with this congregation that maybe was his finest moment the 60s and the 70s it was a moment when great music and great preaching wasn't enough it was a time that called for moral leadership and paul walker stepped up and said if this is not the church for all god's children it's not god's church at all and the racial racial divisions weren't all there was the hippie movement remember that the long hairs the street kids so threatening the older conservative pentecostals and in a different way there was the charismatic movement which for all its importance as we look back so many conservative pentecostals it was unwelcome and unfamiliar because it was threatening so there were all these loud voices coming to bear on the life of this congregation looking back through the lens of 2021 all this seems so easy it's so easy to say well of course mount parents should become this open loving multi-racial multi-generational church which loves and accepts all of god's children but that wasn't so clear in the 60s and 70s in fact it was martin luther king jr himself who said in his letter from a birmingham jail change doesn't roll in on the wheels of inevitability but it comes only through a constant determination and courage and paul walker's signature was that he provided that courage that determination and that leadership i watched and the whole church watched across the country we watched as he navigated these turbulent waters the central question was will mount perrin and the church of god be a country club for conservative middle class white people or who would be a beacon of jesus christ for all people throughout greater atlanta and throughout the country a lot of people have balance but lack passion a lot of people have passion but lack balance i'm so grateful that i was in the laboratory of a man who kept his passion and kept his balance he taught us and left us this legacy that god's church is an inclusive place not an exclusive place third he taught us that relationships matter more than anything else you know when i really started to love paul walker not when i was dazzled by him as an undergraduate i was on his staff i was 24 years old i got the phone call late one night that my sister had died she was 26 a young mother very sudden illness and death i immediately jumped in my old car and buzzed north of cleveland to be with my family i never gave mount parent another thought honestly i was totally absorbed in that time with my family preparing for that being with my family grieving the loss of my sister i don't think i ever even told pastor walker i was leaving i didn't even get permission to go i just went went to that funeral sat on that pew with my family and when i came i knew how busy he was he was doing about three things at once when i left my pew and headed back up the aisle behind the casket of my sister and looking back there in the crowd is paul walker didn't even know he was coming as i'm going up the aisle he looked at me he made eye contact he just nodded that's all we never talked about it i went into his office the next week and said thank you so much for coming you will have never have any idea how much it means don't think anything about it that's where i wanted to be paul walker taught us that relationships matter more than anything we really can't talk about his life without talking about paul dana can we when in 1980 he had that deepest deepest dark night of his own experience and he and karma made that walk up an aisle in this church i could almost feel mount perrin and the church of god hold its breath wanting to know how what will happen now how will what happens when the priest has a crushed heart how will he deal with this how will they would deal with this there was such love for this family and such an understanding of the profound blow of that death and i watched paul walker in that moment it reminded me of the words of the poet esculus the greek poet who wrote even in our sleep pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until in our own despair against our will comes wisdom through the awful grace of god did that change paul walker you bet it did did it beat him did it crush him did it defeat him it absolutely did not it took it to some degree in some way through the awful grace of god that pain brought out of him this qualities that we have seen so clearly and so brilliantly it's qualities of love for other people of knowing that relationships matter that produce the kind of grandfather you've heard about this afternoon the other things to say and talk about but i'll i'll quit he was an executive he was a strategic thinker he was a denominational leader but in his innermost core he was a pastor that always shined through it was a grace cultivated by deep pain and that was his gift to all of us and finally he taught us that we can love our institutions without worshiping them he taught us that loyalty should not necessarily be blind in his life that crucible was the church of god he learned and showed us how to challenge the status quo in a larger context of loyalty and love and care the church of god saw him coming they knew he was trouble because he was the son of paul h walker who was trouble by trouble i mean what one famous american recently called good trouble paul h walker i recently read and shared with mark was described as being in the forefront of every progressive movement in the history of the church of god during his lifetime l doubled it and took it up a notch when he began to emerge in 1960 it was clear that he had a different view and a different voice it had its costs he pastored the largest church in the church of god for 14 years before he was ever appointed to a standing board or committee because he was just too controversial because he's heard that different drum beat and responded to that different voice in these latter days it's easy to forget that everybody who doesn't love paul walker who doesn't admire him well that's been true for the last 30 years but there was a time in which he pushed the envelope he challenged the system he navigated what it meant to be the agent of change in an institution that he loved and we learned that from him ted kennedy once said about his older brother bobby kennedy he taught me to sail against the wind anybody can sail with wind can you learn to sail against the wind so when a wave of legalism and hyper-emotional worship swept over the church of god during those years paul found a way to sail against the wind he taught us that leaders ask questions they don't just hand out answers he never said be like me he said be yourself find your own voice and he went from the margins of the church of god leadership to the absolute core between 1974 and 1976 so that in 1976 it wasn't a matter of could he get on a board or a committee he was being asked to serve on everything in the church of god in an unprecedented way gave him a mandate that's never before been experienced in our church to come straight from the pastorate to become the chief executive officer the general overseer of the church of god he went from the margins of the church to the heart of leadership and he never changed one centimeter he drew the church toward his perspective it didn't change him he changed it so here we are february 2021 we gathered to celebrate a man who lived a life in full he envisioned his life boldly he achieved extravagantly he loved deeply and was given love in full measure his life was an adventure his impact was too great to calculate he experienced all the highs and lows with eyes and arms wide open his commitments were profound and permanent but tuesday this man paul walker took life to a whole new level for 80 years he'd talked about god thought about god preached about god explained jesus to crowds and the individuals one at a time but he was always looking in the words of corinthians threw a glass darkly for a man so curious with such an intellectual appetite with such a desire to know god better there was a point beyond which he could not go but now paul walker is there first corinthians 13 12 now we see things imperfectly like a puzzling reflection and a mirror but then we shall see things with perfect clarity the apostle paul said all that i know now is partial and incomplete but then i will know everything completely just as god knows me completely amen [Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] [Music] god [Music] as it is [Music] [Applause] [Music] right [Music] is [Applause] [Music] temptation [Music] r is [Applause] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] [Music] man [Laughter] [Music] ah [Music] thank you thank you for being here today thank you for coming out on a nasty friday afternoon in atlanta georgia there's no worse place to be than on a friday afternoon when it's raining in atlanta georgia everybody knows what hell will be like now if you've but thank you thank you dr cooper barbie for opening mount perrin to us today thank you pastor kent you're awesome thank you stan mark all the leadership here all the servants you have been wonderful to us to any of the mount pearen north family that is out here thank you for being here today to my lee family chancellor khan darlia thank you for being here voices danny this wouldn't have been the same without you guys thank you very very much general lorcier dr hill all of the church leadership thank you for being here i don't know if there's anybody here from ross memorial this where my dad spent the last seven months of his life i don't know if any of them are watching but thank you thank you for taking care of him thank you for serving him so well in the condition that he was in and if he had to be anywhere with that i'm glad he was with you thank you i have his cell phone that he had for the last seven months of his life in ross memorial kovit 19 locked down nobody could go visit him unless you talk to him through a window so this was his lifeline this was his lifeline you know when i picked this up and the word got out that my dad had passed away i was very tempted to just start calling numbers in here and just see how they responded when his name popped up on their phone but the holy spirit convicted me but if you've got a number in here meaning you called him while he was there thank you this is really all he had to those that he loved i know you have been here a long time but i need to talk about my dad is that okay my dad's been described by phrases like larger than life giant of the faith transformational leader leader of leaders pastor of pastors agent of change profound preacher orator amazing man of god ahead of his time pioneer musician athlete author counselor educator statesman on and on and i agree he was all of those and more but to me he was simply dad my brother paul dana and i are the only two people that had the privilege of calling dr paul l walker dad all of their lives and just three days ago when my dad entered into heaven for the first time in over 40 years i believe my dad heard his oldest boy call him dad and i believe it was a glorious reunion now as i grew up i realized the greatness of my father and the celebrity type recognition that he was to receive i can't tell you the number of times we were out in public people would come up to him and say are you paul walker yes dr paul walker yes dr paul walker of mount perrin yes oh you're wonderful i love your sermons your churches fantastic and on and on it was so sickening i mean it was so wonderful and although dad had this kind of recognition when i was growing up he made it a point to be dad first and foremost it was the greatest gift he could give paul dana and me he was simply dead and he just taught me dad son stuff he taught me how to ride a bike he taught me how to drive a car he taught me how to throw and catch a ball he taught me how to swim he taught me how to polish my shoes and i polished him in his honor this morning he taught me how to tie a tie he taught me that cufflinks tie bars and handkerchiefs never go out of fashion in fact these are his cufflinks and this is his handkerchief he taught me to endure great suffering as a braves falcons hawks and georgia tech fan and as a result he told me how to cuss in a christian acceptable way he taught me that john wayne westerns were the only real western movies ever made and that johnny carson was the only real late night talk show worst worth listening to all the others were just wannabes he taught me to listen to my mother and never talk back he taught me to respect authority especially when they're writing you a speeding ticket he taught me that wives do not like for their arms to be slapped at the breakfast table after multiple times of asking you to stop or they baptize you with a full glass of orange juice over the top of the head it was one of my greatest childhood moments but he also taught me that it's not just at the breakfast table that wives do not like their arm slaps but it's also at the dinner table and it's not orange juice that they douse you with but it's a full glass of iced tea it was the second greatest moment of my childhood and it taught me how to express myself with phrases like i need that like i need a hole in the head it's just too much of a hassle mark you can't suck and blow at the same time brilliant getting old is for the birds here's the one i heard a lot karma where's my and just fill in the blank wallet shoes mints keys eye drops chapstick on and on karma karma karma am i right i heard this one in fact my brother and i both heard this one if you end up in jail don't waste your one phone call calling home because i will not bail you out but i figured i had a 50 50 shot if i called home and mom answered i knew i was out of there as dad he taught me that even in death your wife will still speak the truth and love to you as mom and udela and i we're standing beside my dad's body after he had gone to be with the lord my mother was standing there weeping and standing over him and loving on him and patting him on his chest and she said sweetheart paul you loved your boys you loved your wife but you loved yourself the most true story [Applause] your wives will tell you the truth gentlemen even after you are gone he was just dad teaching me dad and son stuff if i could narrow down what i've learned from my dad in one simple statement it's this be true to who you are and live life full because god loves you be true to who you are to my dad begin with discovering who you are in christ it was the entire message of his life christ in you the hope of glory to live is christ and to die is gain i can do all things through christ who gives me strength i have been crucified with christ nevertheless i live yet not i but christ lives in me and the life i may live i live by faith in the son of god who loved me and gave himself up for me that's what my dad modeled to my brother and me to accept yourself as god sees you through jesus christ and let that become your true identity my dad was unapologetic about who he was in christ my dad had this great sense of who he was even what his flaws were and he understood that it's the only in christ that he could live confidently and fully in the tension of his flaws and his failures and his strengths and his successes if i heard him say a hundred times i heard him say it once it was this mark just be you when i was making the decision to go to lee university i sat down and shared with him that this is where i believe god was really taking me that was one of the first things he said mark he said i think he'll do a great job there when you go just be you living life full to dad was all about living out who you were and how god made you hold nothing back love big laugh big try big cry big do everything with excellence never ever ever settle for less that was his less his message to paul and i he taught us that no matter how tough life is or how great our setbacks or how tremendous our failures that in jesus christ you can still live your life into full potential and he never ever would let us use our sufferings or our failings or our setbacks as an excuse to live life less than my full potential it was all about moving forward keep living keep striving stretch yourself learn grow develop risk do not be afraid to fail my dad was true to who he was and he was gonna live life for one of the greatest examples of that is when not too long after my brother had been killed it was within the first year of that we went out to jackson hole wyoming to ski my mom and brother and and dad and me and we'd never been to jackson hold a ski and my dad and i were going out for the first time to make some of the to to begin to ski that first day and mom didn't go with us but my dad was just coming off a ski accident dr khan made reference to how my dad skied it was all about speed and one day he decided out in colorado to ski through the woods decided to take on a tree the tree won cracked his ribs punctured a lung they had to haul him out of the woods take him down the slopes get him into a hospital so he was just coming off of that injury and mother said to him paul you promise you will not ski through the woods sweetheart i promise you will not do anything stupid it was kind of a family word really stupid one i promise then she looks at me i'm all of 22 years old at the most you are responsible to make sure he does not do something stupid so off we go you already heard about his competitive nature we're out there we've having a great day we've made four or five runs it's a beautiful day aren't many people on the slopes he's about 20 25 yards ahead of me as we're skiing down a trail and all of a sudden he veers straight left i'm going where is he going and i look ahead of him where he's skiing and there's a jump i'm saying oh god no he hits that jump and when he gets off the top of that jump instead of staying perpendicular he goes parallel parallel is not a good way to be in midair he hit that mountain broadside it was like an explosion i went skiing down towards him i i passed his skis i passed his poles i passed his gloves i passed his goggles i passed this out i thought my gosh he's gonna be naked by the time i get down got to what was basically a snow mound with two ski boots sticking out of it i dug him out and he looks up at me snow in one eye and he one eye at me you know the first words he said to me don't tell your mother exactly right you were there you know yeah to this day for 60 years i have carried this burden of never telling mom now you know as if you didn't know dad basically said you only have one life to live live it full know who you are live it full because god loves you he made you to do this the one thing my dad wanted my brother and i to know it was that god loved us i heard him preach on it thousands of times but that's not really where i discovered that love of god it was because my dad showed me what the love of god was my dad's love was safe it was dependable it was trustworthy it was real it was authentic it was painful he was a disciplinarian he was tough and tender the same hand that would wear your butt out in a weapon is the same hand that would draw you close and love on you and make you feel valued and important and my dad believed in saying i love you i mentioned my dad last seven months of his life was in ross memorial and as he drew closer to the end of his life he he he would get confused and forget why he was there and he would ask me mark why am i here and i say well dad your heart has really weakened and that's the place that can care for you he said well am i going to get better and i would say well dad barring a miracle of god i don't think so he said so so this is where i'm going to die and i will say well dad that is certainly a a possibility yes sir and we would have that conversation i'm probably not exaggerating we probably had that conversation at least 20 to 30 times because he would forget but here's the gift i received each time we would have that conversation it would always end this way well mark i want you to know you have been the best of sons i could not have asked or received a better son i love you and i'm proud of you in every way i got to hear that a good 20 to 30 times what a gift the last words to my mother he said whatever happens babe you are the love of my life and i could have not accomplished anything without you mom you were the love of his life and you have been an amazing mother you have been an unbelievable wife and you did make it all about him god knows you made it all about him but you held your own you had your place you see dad made it simple he simply said we love because god first loved us and him just being dead taught me that be true to who you are and live life full because god loves you and now my dad is in heaven my dad is in heaven and now he really knows who he is he really knows what a full life is and he truly knows the love of god am i heard my dad preached heaven so many times i heard him officiate hundreds of funerals i always heard him say this life is just a passing through this is just a dress rehearsal for the main event and i heard him quote first thessalonians 4 16-18 the lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout with a voice of the archangel and the trumpet call of god and the dead and christ are going to rise first and we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds and so shall we ever be with the lord it's the next verse though that we don't often quote but i always heard my dad quote it he said therefore comfort one another with these words now heaven is a reality he is seeing my brother he is seeing his parents paul and margaret he's seeing his in-laws gus and eva he's seeing his twin sisters that he never ever met before he is seeing my parents my my my my wife's parents in heaven he has seen charles and piccola and jerry he is seeing his grand nephew matthew he is seeing dr mack and merle he is seeing dwayne he is seeing great friends from all over like don altman and cecil knight and vinnie trippit play triplett and john nichols he is seeing all the amazing bible characters that he preached about and of course he is seeing his lord his savior and his maker that's where my dad is and so i say welcome home pop i love you don't worry about mom you dug and i got her and god's got us and i'm not going to say goodbye i'm just going to say see you later dad but i'm going to see you again and i look forward to that day when i can look you in the face and i can call you dad one more time [Music] there's a piece i've come to know though my heart and flesh may fail there's an anchor for my soul [Music] jesus and the grave is overwhelmed the victory is [Music] no more sorrows no more pain i will rise [Music] and [Music] me when this darkness turns to life and my faith shall be my jesus has overcome [Music] is [Music] no more sorrow no more my [Music] god [Music] worthy [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] no more sorrows no more pain i will rise before [Music] and [Music] i will [Music] thank you jesus [Music] [Applause] i was asked to share a few personal marks and pronounce the benediction mark thank you for inviting me and carmelita this service has made me maybe more sad and more glad at the same time than i think anything i've ever experienced when i was little my parents taught me to say thank you when god gives you a gift ephesians 4 11 says that christ gave gifts to the church he gave pastors i only know dr walker as a pastor my pastor i was born and raised in east point grew up the priest born presbyterian church where my grandfather who i never met was an elder in that church my dad was a deacon when i was eight we moved to the christian american alliance church in east point i accepted christ there the month i turned 16 my parents uprooted my brothers and sisters and i brought us to mount perrin i think we joined the first sunday membership then was once a month the closing song dr walker say anybody wants to join the church come forward our family came down filled out a card and at the end he read all the names and welcomed us i would learn many years later that a pastor is supposed to read the statement of faith and the practical commitments he didn't do that he believed if you love jesus and you want to be in the church you are welcome and those are still to this day our requirements for membership that's all i didn't want to be at mount pair and i loved our church maybe 150 people but this is where our parents put us summer came and the youth choir had a trip acquired trip david and angie tilly were our youth pastors then they're here today great great mentor in my life i didn't want to go my dad and mom were of the old school you go to church where your parents say that they didn't ask us anything about that and you do everything the church does so i had to go along with bolden brother i did take my guitar with me and that would be the one thing that saved me paul dana and i formed a friendship that's trip over that guitar and his guitar that made us lifelong friends until the day the lord called him home when i woke up this morning it dawned on me how much of my life has revolved around dr walker carmelita mark paul in this church everything in my life since i was 16 has revolved around the center of his influence i went to lee because paul went to lee and we were best friends we both majored in psychology only because his dad was a psychologist i guess we didn't know anything about it that's just what we did i never stood in a line to sign up for classes paul was favored dr khan was there we just went to see him and he was going to take care of paul and wherever paul went he was going to take me so i got the red carpet treatment dr walker and carmella had always mentioned her because i only know them together they welcomed me into their home i spent countless hours as a teenager in their home playing music hanging out i accepted the call to preach i knew i was called to preach when i was about eight i had no idea what that meant my dad was an engineer but i love the lord i always loved going to church halfway through lee the summer before my third year i accepted the call to preach in this church during his sermon in the middle of his sermon the lord had me look at the pulpit we had a large pulpit then and i heard the lord say i want you to preach my gospel i went down to the altar call if you were to go to the great halls where the kitchen is now that's the exact place of the prayer room where i went and accepted the call to preach under his ministry when i got my exhorter's license which i failed the first time i hate to admit that i thought it was going to be throughout the bible for the officials here for our statement of faith all those verses in parenthesis i memorized every verse it was about church politics and so i failed by three or four points i just couldn't get me over the hump i knew what to expect next time around i was set forth in the ministry here on this property that he and his family and this church consecrated in 1967. i accepted the call to preach on this piece of land i was set forth in ministry under his leadership when i got out of lee getting started in ministry was very difficult hard to find places to preach he wrote letters recommended me to pastors six months passed i was at his home with paul dana one day and walking past his study he said david how are things going i said not very good and he said come tell me about it he took out a little piece of paper he had these small cards he said you know my dad was a pioneer preacher and i've ministered in a lot of our states and our denomination he said i i've been in this state and he wrote north dakota south dakota i thought i don't want to go there florida he wrote california when he wrote the word california i said i want to go there that's where he sent me dr mcclellan had me teach his wednesday night bible study the church gave me a check for 300 i bought a one-way ticket to la i'd never traveled out of the south i'd only flown one time in my life flew to los angeles with 120 and a little bit more in my pocket took all my books and suitcases the two suits owned and arrived in lax not knowing a soul two preachers knew i was very lost and they found me i spent a year traveling all over southern california preaching all the churches where he had been in so many of those pastors remembered him and talked about him occasionally they would say you preach a lot like him a lot of people would be offended by that that was quite an honor to say the least one day the next summer been there nine months paul dana called me he said hey i met this girl julie we're gonna get married i want you to come back and meet her and check her out so he left augusta for two weeks for his youth pastor we took i came back home from california stayed most of the time in their home hanging out for two weeks julie in fact met me at the airport and picked me up before that week was over julie set me up on a blind date with barbie paul dana was right there he just wanted to hang out i fell in love the night i met her and i've loved ever since everything in my life has revolved around their family and this church when we started our first church in athens it really came through him in mount perrin i've been a youth pastor in west georgia felt god was calling me to leave there started traveling around preaching as an evangelist which is a synonym for starvation if you're interested in doing it i would not recommend a traveling ministry but there was a group of people that had started a small church they'd come out of the church of god their pastor left they were floundering about to go bankrupt a little piece of property one acre they'd call mount parents for help that's how my name got mentioned he made the connection but god spoke to me when i went up to that little group share the vision was our theme at one acre land a little gym he paid my housing for one year he made sure that i had what we needed we had no money in that church he came and preached several times he watched the progress i still have the recordings of him preaching i've listened i believe to every sermon he ever preached other than the hemphill sermons i haven't heard those my mother always got the tapes 10 years pastor in athens i received the sermons every week i've watched every television program ever produced i've read every book he is my pastor that's how i know him our church grew it grew to 1500 members almost 2 000 attendance in 10 years he called me about coming here we never spoke about me coming here he never talked about things in the future he dealt with the present the first time i got to preach was during this infamous story of his skiing accident people thought i grew up preaching that's not true i got called toward the end of my time in athens and i came down that day terrified but he was out thank god he was laid up somewhere i preached on when the church is really the church from colossians 1 verse 24 through 29 a passage that has shaped my understanding of being a minister preached at north at nine that was easy that was great arrived back to this church central where i grew up turned the corner to go into the sanctuary and there he stood with a blue suit on i've never been more intimidated in my life i thought why couldn't you take this sunday off had me sit on the platform with him introduce me i've never been more frightened in my life to deliver a sermon in front of him when i came to be the associate pastor of the church we had but one conversation he had a conference here for pastors three days he took me to lunch at the georgian club on the way over he said david it's on my heart i feel like you need to come and help us here i told him yes the lord has spoken to me two and a half years before that in fact i chronicle it in the journal i just told him yes when i came as associate pastor i had no job title nothing i went back in the next week resigned my church the following sunday i was installed as the associate pastor it was a highlight of my life i didn't come here to be the senior pastor we didn't speak of that i came to serve him i can tell you something today if he was still the senior pastor and i was associate pastor i would be very very happy during those five and a half years he never told me one thing to do he never corrected one thing i would go to him occasionally about things he just seemed to wind me up and let me go i remember when i went to california and brother giles was so gracious to let me come out there and he and his family became like family to me he only mentioned dr walker one time to me he said you know david dr walker told me that if i would give you an opportunity you'd come out here and dig a church out of nothing if i would just give you an opportunity i never knew he believed in me to said that when i built the church in athens i remembered that statement and i said i'm going to live up to that when i built this 58 million complex i remember him saying that that he gave me an opportunity and he believed in me someone once asked for an interview if dr walker was my mentor i said no i am his student they said what do you mean i said dr walker is not the kind of man to step into your life and try to direct your life but if you wanted to learn and you wanted to be with him you were always welcome i said i'm his student but he was not my mentor when i pastored an athens he let me come down to staff meetings i served a pastor on duty on fridays in a rotation i attended meetings if you looked at an agenda of a meeting i have today it looks identical to the agendas that he prepared if you look at my sermons they're identical to the way he structured them i'm privileged to teach preaching and homiletics for southeastern university and have for a couple of other universities i never had a preaching class until my doctoral level i got an undergraduate in psychology a master's in counseling preached for years i only had one course and thank the lord that didn't ruin me i only took that as an elective when i accepted the call to preach i would sit on the pew of the churches and i would just take out a tithe envelope every sunday and just write down every scripture outline the sermon i didn't need a class i got a class every time i heard him preach the bible i like all pastors or ask a lot of questions you know the number one question i'm asked in any setting how do you memorize so many scriptures well i said listen to my pastor do that sunday after sunday and i just figured that's what a pastor is supposed to do he's supposed to preach the bible it seemed natural to me and that's where i learned it when we built this campus i called him had he make videos i haven't come and preached i'd have him come inspire the generation before us that this church is a pioneering church we need to step forward we can't live on the greatness of yesterday when i became the senior pastor of the church he was a general overseer he installed me as well as the state overseer dr delvin rose he's been there at every significant decision every turn of my life and ministry he and carmelita have always been there he always would come back once a year and preach for us at least i never wanted the new people coming in to not know the hymn and the greatness of his ministry the sadness for me was the day that he was no longer able to do that many times i've told barbie i wish he could come back and preach so our people could hear who i consider to be really the greatest orator of the gospel that i have ever heard three years ago our church celebrated its 100th anniversary i talked to him in carmelita i saw them at houston's i said they want us to have this service and i want you to come and he said i don't know if we're going to be able to do that or not i said i have a limousine at the front door and i told him i said if you're not here i'm not going to have a 100 year celebration i didn't grow up in the church of god i still don't know much about the church of god the only church of god i know is mount perrin without his presence without carmelita and it was an incredible blessing many of you were here when he stood up that night and opened his heart without preparation what a blessing that was to hear him he is still our pastor today the lord has called him to heaven i have and i will always honor him for the amazing legacy his legacy is embodied in people like me that he took time to invest in and to shape not only his son and his grandchildren but he's invested in a lot of people thousands of people hundreds of ministers churches planted and spawned as a result of his ministry and today i could not speak of an addiction i would be remiss if i didn't say thank you for the gift of having a pastor like dr walker this morning i had planned to pray the prayer that dr culpepper began with and i still intend to pray that prayer i first became familiar that prayer when i was a teenager and he preached four sermons entitled what it means to be in christ from colossians chapter 1 verses 9 through 14. would you join me for prayer father today we're reminded how pastors are gifts and today we celebrate the gift of paul walker dr walker in our lives in the church and we come before you as the great apostle paul today and i pray that you will fill us all with the knowledge of your will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding and i pray this in order that we might live a life worthy of you and may please you in every way bearing fruit and every good work and growing in the knowledge of god being strengthened with the law of power according to your glorious might so we might have great endurance and patience joyfully giving thanks to you our father for you qualified us to share the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light for you rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the son you love in him we have redemption through his blood even the forgiveness of our sins in jesus there's name to be [Applause] [Music] from [Music] you have heard [Music] there are many many others in the bible [Music] [Music] [Applause] to me will be glorious [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Mount Paran Church

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Id: gavy9Ist3W4

Length: 123min 23sec (7403 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 26 2021