I could never outrun Roger Shriver (and now I’m glad I didn’t)

Roger Shriver was an “old man” as long as I knew him.

The truth is, he was about 58 years old when I first met him. Since I was in kindergarten at that time, he looked very old to me.

But Roger would challenge any one of us youngsters to a footrace in the church parking lot. He would blow our young minds by winning every time.

What is special about that last sentence is not that a seemingly “old man” could outrace boys in their prime.

What is special is that Roger challenged us in the first place.

I didn’t know what to do with him when I was a kid. Every time I was at church, this “old man” tracked me down to ask me questions about myself and impart wisdom.

I mean he tracked me down. We didn’t just cross paths in the church lobby. I think Roger came to church with an agenda to speak to every kid in the place. Whatever made him want to talk to us kids got stronger the more we grew into teenagers. I confess that in my teen years I came to church making plans for how I would avoid Roger.

But I couldn’t avoid Roger. As he would remind me about once a month, he was at the Battle of the Bulge…and he could also beat me at a footrace.

A man like that will get you.

I avoided Roger because the advice he gave me when I was 16 was way too advanced for me at that age.

For example, he insisted that I eat a bowl of Raisin Bran for breakfast every morning. He ate a bowl of Raisin Bran every morning for the last 20/30/40 years (the numbers went up as the decades went by) and “never missed a bowel movement in all that time.”

This is the kind of advice a 16-year old thinks must be dementia setting in.

But as a 45-year old, I see that Roger was really on to something.

A few months ago, a friend of mine got to talking to me about how things are different at church now. She and I are both lifelong members of the Church of Christ. She attended the same congregation from her youth group days well into marriage and motherhood.

We both grew up in Church of Christ congregations where it was hard to find an empty seat on Sunday mornings.

These days, we observed that the majority of the seats are empty.

She made an observation that I didn’t think about before.

“When I was growing up, old people and young people did a lot together at church,” she said. “I remember the older people asking me questions and giving me candy. I remember sitting next to them in the pew.”

These days, she said, she looks around the auditorium and sees old people on one side and young people way on the other side.

“It’s like we program the church to keep everyone in their own little bubbles,” she said. “Married with kids over here, old folks over there, teenagers in their own space down in the basement. It doesn’t feel like a big extended family anymore.”

Which brings me back to Roger.

The older I get, the more I appreciate him for caring about me when I was a little kid and then a “too cool” teenager and then a jet-setting young adult.

When I was young, he truly annoyed me (as did most adults in my life to tell the truth). But now that I am older, I understand how just the memory of him affirms and encourages me and makes me better and wiser.

What seemed like an annoyance when I was young turned out to be an investment in me that is now paying big returns.

Roger saw the man I could become before I imagined it myself.

He made the choice to keep treating me like that man even when I acted like a child or a punk teenager.

This morning, I found out that Roger died earlier this week–at age 98!–and that his funeral is today. If I weren’t leading 20 teenagers on a volunteer project his morning, I would go. His funeral is one I swore I would not miss.

But maybe spending time with those teenagers is exactly what Roger would do and is exactly the best tribute I can pay to him on the day he is honored.

It’s my turn to be the “old man” now.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go eat my morning Raisin Bran.

Grace and peace.