Spring Devotion
Monday, April 16, 2012 at 3:35PM As we celebrate the new life of Easter that our Risen Lord gives to us, I wanted to share with you a special life that influenced me greatly. His name is Jack Gilbert and he has now claimed Christ's victory over sin and death in his place in heaven. The following is a tribute from my friend Kelly Kullberg, whom we were blessed to have with us as a guest speaker at LRU several years ago. This partly explains my deep gratitude for such mentors as Jack and my deep passion for youth ministry.
Blessings, Pastor Mike
Jack Gilbert ~ In memory (Kelly Monroe Kullberg reflection, April 12, 2012)
It was the 1970s. We seemed an average bunch of teenagers from a normal Midwestern town, Columbus, Ohio. We liked dances and slumber parties and TP’ing houses. Some of us liked James Taylor and Dan Fogelberg. Others disco, lava lamps, shag carpet and waterbeds. Alas.
And there was this OLD GUY -- in his 20s -- who hung around our high school. His name was Jack. It seemed as though students liked going to Burger King and Tommy’s Pizza in his VW bug with a license plate that read, Yoda.
I was then a sophomore when an senior and the captain of our volleyball team, Kim Stone, asked if I would come to the passion play she was in.
I asked, What’s a passion play?
She said it was about Jesus and Easter.
Though honored that she was talking to me, I said, Thanks but I’m really busy.
Kim responded: It runs for 10 straight nights. How busy are you?
I said: Well, I’m 15 and I don’t drive. I’m busy -- and immobile.
She said: It’s in the Lutheran church 200 yards from your house. (pause) Would you like a ride?
I responded vaguely, No thank you.
I later learned that the mysterious Jack encouraged older students to care about younger ones. As well as to do secret acts of kindness for near strangers.
Without telling Kim, I hid in the balcony of this sanctuary 4 of 10 nights. Not only was I gripped by the story and person of Jesus, I also saw the love of the students in the play for God, and for one another. For the first time in a long time, I felt joy.
So I began coming to Luther League and saw Jack among those who made things happen. Skits. Singing. Laughter. Volleyball. And this thing called Bible study that we all began to love. I remember how he looked at us, and paid attention. I didn’t know then that he would go through high school yearbooks to pray for students, and remember our names.
My parents had divorced three years before this, caught in traps of relativism and the sexual revolution. The questions of truth, and the soul, were important to all of us. Jack and other League staff welcomed those questions with thoughtful answers, and, again, with joy.
Jack organized a bunch of us to go to Young Life camp, Saranac. 1975. Many of us came back as new believers, and he introduced us to Scripture as well as books by John Stott, J.I. Packer, and C.S. Lewis. Fortunately we weren’t smart enough to say, we’re not smart enough! We’re just teenagers!
Leaders took us to Cedar Campus and to the Urbana Mission conference. They imparted to us a sense of wonder and mission. It helped that all this was punctuated by mud fights, hundred mile bike rides, retreats and bizarre games like Trapper and Hurtle-the-Turtle – a cynic would say “bonding rituals” that often involved the shedding of blood. I still have a few road and carpet scars that make me smile.
Jack moved to L.A. where he would mentor younger writers -- for three decades. In about 1977 we sent Jack off with a large pool party at my house that that had begun to feel alive again, like a large extended family of our church. We made a slide show to the song, A Place in the World for A Gambler.
Jack was not saying Goodbye. Out of sight was not out of mind and heart, for him. He encouraged many Ohioans for the next 37 years. Not just with his famous Christmas letters that ended with Tiny Tim’s, God bless us, everyone, and contained his favorite films and wild adventure of the year (running with bulls in Pamplona, or his 50th birthday Casablanca party in Vegas with Batchlers, Nagys and many). But also by his calls and Thanksgiving visits and prayers.
Many of us left Ohio. In the late 80s, I went to Boston for grad school where it seemed scary but not unprecedented to hang signs up all around campus for Christian fellowships in the Yard and grad schools, and to later begin the Veritas Forum at Harvard to talk about the Truth (Veritas) of Jesus in relation to the hardest questions of the world. Within two decades Veritas Forums are in 120 universities involving hundreds of presenters, and about ½ million students throughout American and Europe. Why? Because Jack Gilbert and a few of his crazy friends noticed a hurting teenager. And made the wonders of God, and life, and purposeful friendship, seem normal.
In the 90s, Jack joined some of our Harvard fellowship ski trips in New Mexico where he also loved to fish and see his family. He would listen to our woes and talk about the art of story until we realized he was helping us see our own lives as the story worth living into. That the Author could be trusted. That there really are orcs, and risks. That we have heroic notions because there is are actual battles for the Shire and the race of men.
I was just one of hundreds of kids from Ohio. Others did greater things: married young and raised children to keep the good Story going into more generations of VBS and youth ministry, church and Tetelestai. Longs. Nagys. Bruns. Fullens.– 37 years now.
Looking out at you, people so loved by Jack, you became healers and missionaries. The Manns, Whites, Camerons, Steph Woods, many.
Some became artists and musicians, Jim Zangmeister with Billy Graham, Nagys, Fullens, Delcamps, many. Business people, engineers, teachers and lawyers. Civic leaders like Joe. Every inch is God’s world. Ministers like Mike Stone, Andy Jones, Delashmutts, Chilcoats, so many sharing good news that I shouldn’t begin to name you.
Jack never married or bore a child, yet in Ohio and in Hollywood he showed us what romance is. Chivalry. Honor. He was a brother, and a father. We sensed his covering love. We are still growing into whatever he saw in us. Average kids -- but, thankfully, not in Jack’s eyes.
Jack chose story and humor and beauty to change the world. He chose kindness. Imagine the hundreds of writers he’s encouraged in L.A. Hollywood industry papers wrote glowingly of this kind wise Christian man.
One mutual friend, Bobette, teaches film at USC. Today she said, at the first of several L.A. memorials for Jack, a former Warner Bros executive, explained that he was Jewish, and that as a little boy he'd seen the actor, William Warfield play "God" in the old movie, Green Pastures. Thereafter, his image of God was always William Warfield, with his great bass voice. But when this man worked with Jack - over years - he said that Jack became, for him, the very example of a true Christian. And then this man wept.
This same friend, Bobette, wrote to me on the day of Jack’s passing:
I awoke today deeply aware of God's grace moving in Jack. It has taken this very quiet man -- so full of dignity and constancy -- to draw the Christian Hollywood community together in a way I've never witnessed in all my years here.
How like Jack. Drawing us together, and drawing us to the best Story, to the Gospel, in his dying -- as in his living. A good Author would script it thus, even if – for the time being – the absurdity of death gets a part in the plot. And so we grieve, but not as those without hope.
The friend who invited me to the passion play, Kim, wrote this week from New York, "Now life will be a little less sweet, death a little less bitter." As we wait to see Jack again.
For now we borrow from Jack the wisdom to live forwardly into the Story, giving glory to the Author in all things -- and sharing in Jack’s courage to play our parts, fully, now, in the time that is given us.
God bless us, everyone.