Lessons from John Calvin Dancer

I’ve had the blessing of having two great Dads in my life. My own father, William Batty, Sr. has been an undeniable and indelible influence on me. So also my father-in-law, John Calvin Dancer. Yesterday, around 1:15 in the afternoon, he breathed his last and went to the presence of God through Christ Jesus his Lord. As much as I would like to praise God for him at his memorial service, I don’t think I’ve got the spiritual strength to get through it. And so I thought I’d write a series of blog posts about how he touched my life.

My father-in-law was not an ordained minister. Though he spent all of his adult life as a pastor, and 32 years in one church even, he wasn’t ordained. One day, we were alone together, driving somewhere, and I asked him why he wasn’t ordained. He told me a story of how he was in Bible college, towards the end of his education there, and how he overheard two guys talking about graduating college and becoming ordained. One of them was excited for his ordination because that meant he could get a discount at a local clothing store. There was something about that, something about the idea that the exciting part of starting out life as a minister was a discount on clothing, that saddened my father-in-law. He then told me this. “I always felt my ordination was like Jeremiah’s. And if God ordained me, what difference was there if I was ordained by man?” Now, we could have a discussion about ordination, what it means, and whether it’s important or not and why, but you’ve got to give it to John Calvin Dancer: he had his reasons, he was determined that scripture backed him up, and he stuck with that decision his whole life. He believed he was doing the right thing by his Lord. That lesson has stuck with me.

Jeremiah 1:5 “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.”

 

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