“WHEN GOD SPEAKS, WHAT IS A MAN TO DO?
I don’t really know why I entered the ministry except that I was aware
of an overwhelming compulsion to do it, and neither God not I would be satisfied
until I did. This was after I had spent 32 years as an apprentice, journeyman,
and finally proprietor in the retail meat business. So at the age of 46 I
became a candidate, taking what is call the “short course”. This
means, of course, that my training was – and is – only reasonably
adequate.
Do I enjoy my work? Well, yes I do. This does not mean that I enjoy, in the
usual sense of the work, visiting a home where death has tragically entered
before me. Or visiting in the home or hospital when death is imminent. But
I have learned that joy and tears are not always in opposition.
Neither does this mean that I enjoy some of the frustrations of the ministry,
and there are many. There is the frustration of not ever getting done all
that needs to be done. I am continually frustrated by my own unwillingness
to give as much of myself as I know I should; I am continually frustrated
by my own lack of understanding and knowledge and training; I am frustrated
about the hours of work, not that they are too many, but too few. But I am
not frustrated about the salary – I didn’t go into the ministry
to get a large one anyway. Neither am I frustrated about the role of the ministry,
mostly because I don’t really know what the real role is, except to
do what seems to be necessary and called for in terms of human need. Sometimes
I wonder if the present fuss about the role of ministry isn’t an attempt
to escape doing unpleasant duties.
There are times, of course, when I feel very much like Elijah, and want to
run off to the mountains to hide. But then God speaks to me, usually through
the voice of some kind and concerned friend, “Why are you running away?
We care too, you know.” Of course, the ministry is frightening and frustrating,
but when God speaks through human need, what is a man supposed to do?
I have no particular solutions to the problems other minister’s face,
and yet I know that to them they are very real. I only know that as long as
I have health and strength I will want to proclaim the love of God, and to
share the love of God I have been given through Jesus Christ.
G. W. Keenleyside
From the United Church Observer – Summer Issue 1968
MEDITATION AND REFLECTION
GEORGE WILLIAM KEENLEYSIDE
August 9, 2002
Notes by Rev. Ivan Cumming - The minister in Golden when George Keenleyside
was called to the ministry. He conducted the memorial service in Vancouver.
George was a brother of Jesus. I don’t mean this in any lofty, or super
holy sense, or as an attempt to paint him as a saint of some kind, but he
lived faithfully and thankfully and seriously. As far as he was able to understand
it, he did the will of God. It was the story of his life. We see it in the
brief account he wrote and left for us, and we experienced it in our day to
day living.
He was a hard working lad on his father’s farm – leaving school
to work for Burns and Co. for $30.00 a month. Then to Princeton where he and
Mary lived on $30.00 a week, which shrunk to $14.00 dollars a week, yet where
they celebrated the birth of their three children. Then to Greenwood and soon
to Golden with his own butcher shop and grocery store.
George was what Golden needed. He was a competent and trustworthy businessman
…a community leader. God was part of his everyday life.
His call to a preaching ministry was as clear as it was dramatic. His movement
toward ordinations was full of surprises and excitement for he and Mary. His
three ‘summer fields’ were faithfully harvested, and his ordination
by B.C. Conference of the United Church was enthusiastically supported. It
was God’s work, and he was God’s man.
His ten-year ministry in Terrace was an experience of renewal both for the
town, and for the congregation. His energy and commitment were appreciated
by transient and long time resident alike, and continued through Mary’s
cancer and eventual death. He seemed to those of us who watched, to be doing
the will of God.
After his marriage to Vi Seaman their ministry together flourished on the
Thomas Crosby V. It was demanding, faithful and fulfilling.
We will miss him. Especially we will miss his direct questions, his hearty
laugh, his crumby jokes, his strong singing, and the sweet sound of his now
silent saxophone.
Thanks be to God for this life well lived.
George’s ashes have been put with his wife Mary’s grave in the
new cemetery at Terrace – what he referred to after her death “the
place prepared for her by a loving God”. Vi’s ashes had been scattered
out of Cowichan Bay off Vancouver Island.