There are people who come into your life, stay a few months or even years, and after leaving you rarely think of them again, for the mark they leave is either non-existent or at best, quite small. Occasionally there are people who come into your life and your life is never, ever the same again. Such was Hal Warlick to many, many people — and especially to me. We met in mid 1990 in Seneca, South Carolina when Hal and Diane visited Trinity Baptist Church, where I was then currently and he a former pastor. Several members of Trinity had said to me in my first few months there, “You need to meet Hal Warlick…you and Hal have a lot in common.” Were they ever correct! After a fifteen minute conversation I knew that his journey in life had allowed him to learn and grow in ways that my life in the SBC cocoon had not afforded me. For the next 31 years we would grow closer, exchanging sermons, ideas, books — and arguing furiously over most of them!!
Because of Hal my reading took on a much, much broader field than I had ever dreamed. He would send me books, drop them off, invite me to come up and give them to me, or recommend I buy an occasional one. I easily read 500 books because of Hal Warlick — and those did not include his! More than once he said to me what an elderly member of Trinity had said to him, “You go read — and not the stuff we read — and then come back and tell us what you’ve learned.” He shared that with me as a way to stimulate me to keep reading — and it worked.
Hal was the consummate wordsmith — whether writing a book or a sermon he could communicate incredibly well. With a Ph.d. in homiletics I have read and heard a few thousand sermons in my life — Hal was at the top of the list. Week-in and week-out he was as good a preacher as existed. He had mastered the use of the manuscript — he loved to preach just as he had written — but could preach without seeming to be bound to the copy. His breadth of memory of events, illustrations and textual interpretations was boundless. More than once on a Wednesday I would call Hal and say, “I’m reading such and such a text and I’m stuck. Help.” Five minutes later he would have opened a new window into the text and I would be off and running.
Hal’s mind was a true wonder to behold; he could go off in so many different directions on issues and all of them were fascinating. He was, I believe, one of the most complicated persons I have ever known. No text or subject was simple or easy to Hal. He also loved to take the opposite side of any issue I might bring up. Sometimes that was because he saw it differently, but other times it was because he was just pushing me. Hal taught me that going deep was better than going broad, and if I were to treat a controversial subject from the pulpit then I better do a deep dive.
After my first year of encounters with Hal I changed my sermon preparation from writing an outline to a full manuscript. No, I didn’t read it in the pulpit — having a manuscript was much more difficult for me than an outline. However, the discipline of writing a full manuscript every week sharpened my focus as well as providing a needed discipline for the ever present danger of pulpit wandering. Thanks to Hal when professors and colleagues called to ask if I had some sermons to share in their books and journals, I could just turn to the files!
Hal was a mentor in helping me make some very important decisions. Twice when much larger churches called and wanted me to talk with them about coming as their pastor, Hal discouraged me. In some ways he knew me better than I knew myself! His statement, “There’s only a couple hundred people in any church who will agree with or even understand what you’re saying…and that will leave a lot of unhappy people in a larger congregation!” He helped me to see that a church’s value — and consequentially that of the pastor — is not in how many you have in your congregation, but in the power of that congregation to live out the calling of Christ with integrity. I can honestly say that the two pulpits we shared as pastor, Trinity and Emerywood, were places where we could live out such a calling. Not only did we shape those congregations during our tenures, they shaped us as well.
Hal and I both shared a passion for sports — especially seeing our sons compete. I confessed to him one time that I had been ejected from a game where my boys were playing recreational basketball — the referee was killing us, I knew him personally -- and felt he was homing us in favor of his "home" team!! Anyway, Hal just smiled — then Diane told me about the time he chased after an official at a Furman football game and she had to call after someone to grab him before he got into trouble. We laughed, conversing about how angry it made us feel when an official was obviously incompetent.
We never competed against each other in sports other than a few golf fames — we were too old by the time we met to do anything else. Fortunately Hal’s athletic skill did not extend to golf — foot speed doesn’t help in golf! I can honestly say that even on my worst day I could handle Hal — but that doesn’t really say much. On the few occasions we played we did more laughing and arguing than really playing.
We went through a lot of physical pain together, that’s for sure. Hal had open heart surgery, carotid artery surgery, knee repair — he could not walk for weeks — and other physical ailments as well. I’ll never forget after his open heart surgery getting a call from Diane — we were living in Seneca. “Can you come up here and take him out for a couple of days…if you don’t I think I ‘m going to kill him.” I assured her it would have been justifiable homicide, but came on up with some other friends we have a great 3 days talking, eating and planning sermons together.
There was only one person who was able to get the best of Hal no matter the situation — and that was Diane. Hal would walk to the edge of some discussion, etc., and Diane would give him a stare followed by “Fox” — and that’s all it took. He would just look at me and grin…and I knew we better move on. They were so good together and so complemented each other in multitudinous and wonderful ways.
We all change as we move through life — that’s a process we call maturity. I saw it in Hal and I was able to look back and see it in myself. The persons we are at 35 and 45 are not the same at 55 and 65. Having a friend/mentor so close yet 5 years or so ahead of me, enabled me to benefit greatly from his experience and vision. Hal and I used to talk every so often about the mistakes we made as young ministers and how, no matter how much we wanted to do so, we could not go back and have a “mulligan.” In life, as in golf, you have to play the ball as it lies, and once you hit it you cannot “undo” a shot. What we have to do is to learn from every shot, every putt, every round — and keep moving on in the direction of the Kingdom.
Hal, you’ve entered the great mystery and we all will follow. We had a lot of talks about the promised Kingdom of God, eternal life and how the Scriptures portrayed "heaven" in so many, varying and rich ways. At this stage all I can say is that I am sure of God’s love — and that Hal made that love clearer to myself and so many. I just lean on Paul’s understanding: “For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8: 38-39.
Thanks be to God for the good news of Jesus Christ…and for God’s servant Harold C. Warlick who incarnated this love in powerful and unique ways.
