This book contains a series of unique but true stories recounting this extraordinary pastor’s influence on several people’s lives. Each narrative stands on its own merits as compelling reading due to the remarkable events chronicled in these pages. More importantly, each chapter also offers an inspirational message and some important life lessons for the reader to discover.  These are accounts of real people searching for, and reclaiming, faith from doubt, life from death, joy from sorrow, redemption from paralyzing guilt and peace from overwhelming despair.  The people in these stories were all assisted in this quest by this extraordinary 20th Century ministerial disciple who served as the instrument of God’s unfailing Grace–and whose life is the centerpiece of this book.

All are uplifting accounts of faith and redemption, rich with examples of this man’s influence on each story-teller’s life.  Every chapter ends by extracting the insights he gained from each episode, summarized in the key points from one of his sermons.

The book begins at the visitation service after his death. The book is structured as a series of “flash-back’s”, as people kneel beside the open casket and recount how this man’s influence changed their lives. These are the people—some famous, some just ordinary parishioners—who came to him in need of spiritual guidance and whose lives were enriched by their interactions with this special pastor.

But, above all, this book is the story of one man’s “calling” to the ministry.  It recounts his resistance to the gravitational pull of that calling—an irresistible summons that eventually drew him into its divine orbit and changed his life and the lives of those he encountered forever.