Have you ever had a parishioner who, no matter what, said thank you for every sermon you preached? Have you ever had that one church member, that every time you looked up from your notes, you could count on them to be looking right back at you with a great big smile?

I hope you have. I did. His name was Wayne Hill. Wayne was famous in our church for two things: sharing his Christmas dinner through the barbed wire fence with his enemy in WWII, and for losing his dentures in the most outrageous ways. Wayne always sat in the same spot, in the same pew—front row, right below the pulpit. Wayne was 91-years-old.

Uncle Wayne

Every Sunday after church Wayne would, without fail, charge me at the door, grab my hand, look me in the eye, and tell me what I did well that week. Sometimes it was “I liked that thing you said.” At others it was, “You’re getting better every week.” Some weeks he simply said, “Incredible job on the sermon today!”

Even when it wasn’t. Even when I’d written the sermon the night before. Even when my main idea wasn’t clear. Even when my jokes didn’t land. Even that one Sunday I’d said “I ate Lindt balls,” but everyone thought I’d said “I ate lint balls,” which sent mass confusion through the church for five days.

On the last day of Uncle Wayne’s life, he was right there, front and center, smiling and nodding like always. After church, as I stood by the door shaking hands and greeting folk, he came up to me, gripped my hand and grinned and told me, “Great job on the sermon today!”

“Thanks, Uncle Wayne!” I beamed. I asked what he was planning to do with the rest of his day. “I’m gonna go home, sit in my comfy chair and watch the Pats on TV.” “Wayne,” I said, “that sounds like a perfect afternoon.”

That night I got the call that Wayne had suffered a major heart attack in front of his TV as he sat in his recliner. I rushed to the hospital to pray with him and his family. That Sunday I learnt first-hand that sometimes your sermon will be the last word someone hears before heaven. I really hope Wayne wasn’t just being generous that Sunday, and that I really did do a great job for him.

I poured myself into that funeral sermon. I wanted to bring my best. Have you ever had funerals like this, where you thought, I really want to do an excellent job for that congregant who treated me as though I was excellent?

But as I was in the pulpit, weaving together those stories about Wayne and all the times he’d lost his teeth, and how sometimes we get lost too, how Jesus is the One who seeks the lost and finds them and doesn’t let them go, I looked down to that spot in the pew and Wayne wasn’t there.

Later that day, I said to Donny, the head deacon at the church, “Wayne always encouraged me. Who will encourage me now?” Of course, there were others in the church who also encouraged me—absolutely they did! But in that moment of grief, it felt as though there was something special about Wayne’s affirmation of me. It was so reliable, so consistent.

Remember those days in elementary school where a storm rolled in and the electricity suddenly turned off, and it felt as though the world had stopped? Wayne’s encouragement was like electricity for me. What on earth would I do with myself now?

“I’m sure God will find a way to encourage you,” Donny said. Standing in the graveyard, I found that hard to believe.

Two and a half weeks after Wayne’s funeral I was having one of those days. I’d visited a friend at their office and left my phone behind. When I realized and turned back, she’d already left work, it took almost an hour of back and forth with security to unlock her office door. When we finally did, there on my phone was a message from my husband: Guinea pigs need food. Can you please pickup on way home? Urgh, those guinea pigs! Why did we get them again?

As I stood in the small pet aisle at Target, trying to figure out if I could feed these pigs rabbit pellets or if I’d have to look for food elsewhere, I heard a woman’s voice. “Excuse me,” she asked, “are you the pastor of Second Congregational Church?” I turned to see a young woman standing behind me with tears in her eyes. “Do you remember me,” she asked, “from Uncle Wayne’s funeral? Do you remember the man I was with?”

I did remember him. I remembered him crying loudly. But when I’d gone to console him, he’d already left the church. I’d assumed he and Wayne were very close. But this woman in Target told me, those tears were because of my sermon. It really touched him.

That man was her boyfriend, and when I started preaching about Jesus finding lost people, he’d realized right then and there that he had a drug addiction and needed to go to rehab. “He’s in rehab right now,” she told me. “I can’t tell you how much your message meant to him. To me. To us. It’s changed our lives.” We both cried as I prayed and hugged her goodbye.

Donny was right, God would find a way to encourage me. Of all places, it would happen at Target, buying pet food for two guinea pigs I sometimes wished I didn’t even own.

God Will Find a Way to Encourage You

I wanted to write this story for Pastor’s Appreciation month, because I know there are some of you who are wondering if this year you will receive any appreciation at all. Maybe you, too, have lost your champion in the pew. Maybe they’ve passed away, or moved away. Perhaps you’ve only just started pastoring where you are, and you don’t know who the “Waynes” are in the congregation just yet. Perhaps you are going through a season at church where tensions are high, and appreciation is in short supply.

Whatever is happening for you, I want to give you the word of encouragement my deacon Donny gave me: God will find a way to encourage you.

I know that might be hard to believe. I found it hard to believe too. But I also know that God orchestrated that chance meeting for me, right down to the timing of an unlocked office door. Which causes me to believe he can do it for you too. Maybe through a text or a card. Maybe through a loaf of banana bread or an unexpected email. Maybe through a word from the Bible that speaks directly to your heart.

Maybe it’ll even happen in the small pet aisle at Target. If you see me there, please say hi. I’m always keen to encourage another fellow preacher of the Word because, believe me, if you are climbing into that pulpit every week without a champion in the pew, you really are doing an incredible job.

Alison Gerber is the former pastor of Second Congregational Church in Peabody MA, now a PhD in Preaching student at Truett Seminary/Baylor University in Waco TX.