The Passing of Richard Roe
A Primer for Effective Evangelism
by Francis Gardom
I buried Richard Roe at the local cemetery last week. He had died of lung cancer at the comparatively early age of 52. As they lowered his coffin into the ground and threw earth upon it, I read the words of committal from the Book of Common Prayer: “Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear brother here departed, we therefore commit his body to the ground . . . in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
It was those last words that brought me up with a jolt: What earthly reason was there for hoping that the “sure and certain hope of resurrection to eternal life” applied to Richard? I decided to find out. Because he had died comparatively young, I was able to trace quite a number of his contemporaries. His mother was still alive, as was the pastor, now retired, who had actually baptized Richard as an infant.
It was in fact that pastor’s insistence that baptism is something really important that was nearly the cause of Richard’s not being baptized at all. He had a policy that all those parents bringing their children for baptism should be obliged to attend just one instruction on the meaning of their child’s baptism and the duties it would lay upon them. This so annoyed his parents, Mr. Roe in particular, that they nearly refused to bring him along for baptism at all.
“I think it’s disgusting,” said Mr. Roe to his friend in the local bar, “telling us he won’t ‘do’ our Richard unless we go for some sort of talk or instruction. Anyone would think we were the ones being baptized! Mind you, he was quite nice about it—he said he’d make it any day to suit us—but what right has he to dictate terms to people like us? I’ve a mind to write to the Echo about it.”
And Mrs. Roe was no less indignant than her husband. “I call it a shame,” she said. “They never used to make all that fuss. We’d have called the whole thing off if I hadn’t already made the cake and bought the booze for the party.”
So Richard Roe was baptized, but only because the cake had been made and the drink purchased. And in the course of the baptism service Mr. and Mrs. Roe solemnly promised that they would bring up Richard as a practicing Christian. In the end, as we shall see, they did almost nothing about it.
A Golden Bell
When Richard Roe was five years old, a number of his friends started to go to various Sunday schools. It so happened that Richard chose to go to a local church’s Sunday school because there were no roads to cross. Mrs. Roe was glad to have him out of the house. He went to the Sunday school on and off for a couple of years. Then he got wind of the fact that another Sunday school in the neighborhood gave its pupils free packets of candies for regular attendance. So, not unsurprisingly, in company with a number of his little friends, he transferred his allegiance.
Mrs. Roe wasn’t worried. She was still feeling sore about the baptism incident. So when the Sunday school superintendent from the church called to find out the reasons for little Richard’s absence, she just said, “Oh, didn’t you realize, Richard now goes to the Golden Bells Mission—it’s all more or less the same, isn’t it?” And before the superintendent could open her mouth to say that it wasn’t quite the same, Mrs. Roe added, “Anyway, it’s in the afternoon now and that gives Dad a chance for a nap.” So the superintendent had to withdraw empty-handed.
Francis Gardom is a priest in the Church of England and Honorary Secretary of Cost of Conscience, an international association of Anglican priests committed to safeguarding the deposit of faith.
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