Many Christians know J. Vernon McGee from his Thru the Bible radio broadcast. While it’s been many years since Dr. McGee went to be with the Lord, his recorded messages can still be heard on hundreds of stations in the U.S. and in many other countries – as well as on the Internet (ttb.org) – around the world.
But for myself, I knew Dr. McGee for the first nineteen years of my life as my pastor and family friend, whom my parents hosted in our home on a number of occasions. I trusted the Lord Jesus Christ as my savior at the age of ten while listening to one of his messages at Church of the Open Door in downtown Los Angeles. My high view of the Bible as inspired, inerrant and authoritative from beginning to end is a direct result of his influence.
So the last thing I ever wanted to do was poison this amazing man of God. And yet I did. Here’s how it happened.
My first real job was working part time as a church custodian for five years at COD (as we all called our church) while I was in high school and college. Since the building was very large, I was only one of more than ten custodians employed by the church. I worked weekends: all day Saturday and early Sunday morning. On Sunday mornings, I arrived at the church at 6 am to open the building up. Since it was eight stories high, it took Leighton Ogg, another custodian, and I an hour and a half to complete the process.
One of my responsibilities was to make sure there was a glass of water on Dr. McGee’s pulpit. So each Sunday morning I would diligently take the glass from his oversized pulpit, wash it with dish soap, rinse it out, fill it with fresh water, and set it back on the pulpit. But this particular Sunday, I couldn’t find the dish soap. All I could find was Ajax, “the foaming cleanser.” So I decided to use it. Unfortunately, I didn’t rinse it out well enough and didn’t realize it. I filled the contaminated glass with water and set it on Dr. McGee’s pulpit.
You can imagine what happened next. Right in the middle of J. Vernon McGee’s sermon, he grabbed the glass, took a big gulp and gagged. He barely made it through the rest of his message.
The next day I got called into the executive pastor’s office. (It was summer, so I worked some weekdays as well.) There on his desk was the glass from Dr. McGee’s pulpit. I could clearly see a thick blue film covering the inside. He proceeded to give me a firm rebuke about the importance of paying attention to details.
I’ve never forgotten that rebuke, especially when I’m serving my care receiver with my team. “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much,” Jesus taught. No service is too small. No care receiver is unimportant. Cleaning their gutters. Fixing their broken window. It all matters. Eternal realities are at stake.
Because our Lord is watching.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
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